- Wanted Gose in the Halladay trade. Tried to trade for him in the Spring
- Only 19 years old and already in the FSL. Has really good tools.
- Heavily scouted Gose for 2 years
- Very good reports from every single scout. Could be a All-Star CF
- Didn’t say if Lind will or won’t be at 1B next season
- Open minded to making the club better. Thrilled to have Bautista but wouldn’t say if he was going to be with the Jays next week
Interesting interview on The Fan with AA just now. He says they have followed Gose extensively for about 2 years and their scouts absolutely love him. They think he's going to be a really good player. AA says it is very tough to get catchers, shortstops and centrefielders in trades and the organization was short in legitimate CF prospects. Gose has gold glove potential. AA says they love his leadership qualities, and that he has a swagger to him. Says he is quite raw.
Given what he is doing at high A ball at the age of 19, I'm not surprised they're as high on him as they are. Wallace's numbers didn't impress me given the league/park he was playing in. Given that Wallace was acquired for M. Taylor, I suppose some are going to compare Gose to Taylor. Taylor is 5 years older and only 2 levels higher than Gose, and Taylor''s AAA numbers don't look good this year, especially given that he is playing in the PCL. Hitting .269 with 5 HR's.
I like this deal a lot. Big question now is who plays 1B next year. Lind?
"The worrying thing about Wallace is the repeated inability to hit RHP"
..... and you might say the worrying thing about Gose is that he strikes out far too much. It all depends which side of the fence you are on. My first reaction is puzzlement but I said I would trust AA and I have never seen either player so who am I to question the move. If they want him for CF they will have to move out that unmoveable contract they have there now. Now that would be a juicy rumour.....someone wants V-Dub before 2015! I just hope this does not mean Overpay is off the market. Hopefully, Lind becomes the 1B when he is hopefully dealt. That's 3 "hopes" in one line, more than we ever had with JP!!.
Jeez I sure hope these two can get along with each other at Dunedin
I hope they can get along with the big club.
As for the deal, I must say I am shocked by it. Didn't see it coming, and really don't no what to think. But I've never been impressed by Wallace as a 1B prospect. 3B maybe, but not 1B. So I guess dealing him for a high upside guy is worth the risk. Lind to 1B is LONG overdue.
While I like this deal & was unsure about Wallace - Let's not forget that AA promoted Wallace as the middle of
the order bat that the Jays needed & that he was very high on him & had scouted him extensively for the draft etc.
Now, perhaps the Jays are higher on Goose or maybe they have soured on Wallace but I remember how AA
talked up Wallace when he acquired him - so let's keep that in mind regarding what he is now saying about
Goose and future deals.
I'm shocked that Hafner was considered a comparison to Wallace. That would be the guy who for a couple years was hitting .300+ with 40+ home runs and 1.000+ OPS? Wallace doesn't compare anything to the heights Hafner hit.
We already have a great comparison to Wallace. That would be Overbay. High average, low/medium power 1B. Overbay walks more, Wallace likely hits for higher average.
Championship teams are always build by there strength up the middle. Obtain as much talenbasemant as possible in the areas of Starting Pitching,middle infielders,catchers, and center fielders. As you stock pile talent in these areas its easy move guys to other positions; Middle infield to 3rd base, center field to left or right field,starting pitcher to reliever. You can`t do the opposite. You dont have to have a big slow lumbering firstbaseman who hits 30hr 100rbi to win a penant. I remember when KC got rid Mayberry. While he was hitting 30 hr for a terrible team, KC was winning pennant without Big John clogging the bases. We are loaded scouts , AA is trusting his scouts.
And when was the last time there were 2 Roys in a team's starting rotation?
It doesn't appear to have ever happened. I may well have missed something -- Bauxites, I hereby challenge thee! -- but in looking at the five-man rotation for the Hall of Names' All-Roy team, Oswalt and Halladay are now teammates, of course, while Mahaffey, Meeker and Parmalee all pitched for the Philadelphia A's, but never together (Mahaffey, 1930-35, Meeker, 1923-24 and Parmalee, 1939). So this is History! Er, make that HistoRoy!
Mastroianni profiles as a Reed Johnson type, a scrappy, fast outfielder. Gose has all-star potential. I don't think AA was dissing Mastroianni, it's just that he sees Goes as having a higher potential.
In the short term it means nothing for Mastroianni. Next year Gose will probably stay in Dunedin and Mastroianni should have a shot at AAA. If Mastro "clicks" he could have 2-3 years service time before Gose gets here.
Bryan Smith at Fangraphs is not a big Wallace fan.
Wallace is pretty much just the opposite. His game is so dependent on offense, that even getting to 2-3 WAR consistently will be an issue. After Lance Berkman moves out of Houston, Wallace is the future at first base. He’s not good there, and is surely somewhere worse than 2.5 runs below average. To even reach 3 WAR, he’d have to produce 25 runs with the bat to be worth three wins. And given the fact that he’s never walked 50 times or hit 25 home runs in any season, getting to a .370 wOBA seems impossible.
Houston didn’t do well today. With their best chance to finally acquire a player they could build their future around, they acquired two players with role player ceilings.
Smith points out a couple of things about Wallace that we have been mentioning here, the lack of walks and big time power. When you add the poor defence at first base Wallace would have to hit a lot to offset the deficiencies.
Smith will give his opinion of Gose tomorrow.
..... and you might say the worrying thing about Gose is that he strikes out far too much. It all depends which side of the fence you are on.
But thats not accurate.
According to these stats it IS accurate. However, my point is you can concentrate on strength and/or weaknesses of any player but to do it objectively you may need to be able to take who is receiving who out of the equation. It is tough to judge a trade of minor leaguers at different ages and levels like this, not to mention different positions and styles, so we just have to trust AA and the scouts.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=gose--001ant
ZekeBella, glad to have you commenting. It's nice to have more different voices here.
Anyway, I think Wallace isn't the player we all hoped for when the Jays got him.
Interesting to compare Gose to Kenny Wilson. Both were 2nd rounder CFs out of highschool in the same draft. Gose went higher and Wilson is 8 months older. (Gose turns 20 in few weeks).
Wilson seems to walk a bit more but is doing it in Lansing while Gose is in high A. Both project as speedy flycatchers with little pop and the ability to steal a base.
He seems to fit into that Wilson, Ahrens, Eiland, Jackson mould of raw athletes. Hopefully if you line up enough of these guys, one will be an impact player.
Baseball America says this in part:
While he remains an unfinished product with the bat, his speed, center-field defense and arm all draw raves from scouts—and even a few 70s on the scouting scale. His tools are apparent in his standing in the Florida State League. Gose ranks second in the circuit with 36 steals (one behind Jupiter's Kevin Mattison) and 15 outfield assists, while pacing all FSL batters with 67 runs scored and 11 triples. He employs a slashing hitting style that lends itself to below-average power, though he will occasionally sting one the other way. Gose's pitch recognition needs signficant refinement if he's to profile as a true on-base-oriented leadoff batter, and the Blue Jays (and before them the Phillies) are betting that it will, given his athleticism and baseball acumen.
I think even the Overbay comparison might be generous, because Wallace isn't showing that kind of patience right now.
Just to add and bore you all with my two cents.....I like Wallace, and think he's fairly safe and can challenge for the .300avg and .350obp marks in the majors if things go well, but his power will probably hold him back from ever being more than just a good 1B.
But surprisingly this year this "safe" prospect has started to show signs of much more risk than maybe we thought heading into the year - his BB and K numbers are simply not very good, and even worse they're just not improving, and his overall performance this year in AAA can barely be described as "average", given that his ops ranks 7th of the 9 starting position players in vegas, and only barely ahead of 8th.
It came up during arguments over EE's place on the team - but I've been advocating Lind/Snider in the 1B/DH spots the rest of this year and even starting next year anyways, with Wallace staying in AAA until he showed some real improvement, so I can't say I'm too upset about moving him. I don't think he's ready to contribute now, and I was starting to get discouraged about even counting on him being ready next year. Especially since athleticism at the CF (and 3B) spots are real positions of need in the organization, so this type of talent swap is something I was looking towards.
And I like Gose quite a bit - not only his great package of talent, but I'm actually impressed by his numbers this year - he's holding his own at A+ at age 19, which IMO is pretty encouraging. I think quite highly of 19 year olds Carlos Perez and Jake Marisnick, and Gose has to be considered as that kind of prospect, at the very least. But he does have tremendous risk attached to him, being so young and raw and without so far a great approach at the plate. Still, the Crawford comparison makes plenty of sense offensively, but unlike Crawford, Gose comes with a hose of an arm in the OF as well.
Given that Vegas has inflated Wallace's numbers significantly, and that Gose's aggressive promotion has likely hurt his numbers, this might be a nice case of buying low / selling high again by AA. Of course, Wallace could turn into Adam Lind II, and Gose might bust completely, so there's plenty of risk in this deal. Still, with Lind and Snider here as our unathletic sluggers, and with our organizational black hole in terms of athletic outfielders, and with Wallace being a prospect I was really starting to worry about....I'm pretty happy with this deal .
I think my favorite part of the deal was how it came out of left field
Center field, actually. 8-P
Question:
Doesn't a "rocket arm" in a young prospect almost always translate into at least some power potential at the plate?
I agree. Can't think of a better opportunity for Collins' development than to let him get a peek at Wagner during a stretch run. Couldn't hurt.
Although we can debate about the quality of Pastornicky and Wallace, it's fair to say in both deals that what we gave up were players where we have organizational strengths. SS is taken care of for years (or so we hope) and we have a couple of left handed bats that can't play defense in Lind and Snider, who I'd take over Wallace anyday.
On a pure value basis this is clearly a loss for the Jays, as Wallace is a B+ prospect and Gose is one of many raw teenage speedy outfielders in the low minors (the large majority of whom are destined to be nothing special).
Clearly a loss?! Because BA ranks Wallace in their Top 100 and Gose doesn't make it?! If this was such a clear loss to the Jays on a value basis the Phillies would have swapped Gose for Wallace a long time ago. The fact that both Anthopolous' team and the Amaro/Gillick one valued Gose > Wallace is more than enough for me, and Ed Wade being on the other side of the trade makes it even more likely that the trade was in the Jays' favour. Once Wade was gutting the Astros by trading their 2 cornerstones away, Berkman and Lee, it made sense that he would want an MLB-ready "top prospect" to placate the fans - for all we know he too believes that Gose is actually a more valuable chip than Wallace.
When AA took over the organization clearly lacked in two areas - CF and SS. He went hard after Hechevarria to solve the SS problem (and this will likely solve the 3B problem as well by shifting Hill or Yunel there) and the Gose trade was an attempt at picking up another impact talent at the position the team needed most. Gose's timeline works well with Wells' contract, and players who can't field or run tend to have limited all-around value no matter how well they hit. AA viewed Wallace as an easily replacable piece in any given season, and it's hard to disagree with that notion when solid hitting veterans like Vlad, Abreu, Damon, and Matsui can all be had on one or two year deals worth around 5m.
