If you want to evaluate a pitcher, you want to identify elements he can control. Walks, strikeouts, contact rate, etc. are things under a pitchers control, hits, runs, etc. are dependent on other factors.
Players aren’t generally very involved in the negotiations, agents have their parameters and cut the best deal possible. I believe this is all on the agent.
There is only one possibility with this deal that makes sense, and that’s Erod’s agent agreed to terms for the deal and then reneged at the last minute. Nothing else seems at all likely.
Chapman is a pretty good ball player, but he has some real holes in his offense to where he doesn’t fit the profile of the hitter Harris covets. He is going to wait and get the player he wants, not the one you think is an upgrade.
If you had a veteran, championship caliber club, and this was the last piece of the puzzle, maybe you’d make that trade, but for the tigers at this point, it would be an exercise in futility.
I think the best question to ask, regarding any sports regime, is are they moving in the right direction? In this case, I believe the answer is yes. Good trades are generally made when you trade your surplus for a weakness, anything else is just rearranging furniture.
No one with any sense would use whip to evaluate the potential of pitching prospects. It may give you an inkling regarding readiness to compete, but it says nothing about potential or ceiling.
The point is the Lions are not going to spend high draft picks or major free agent dollars on a de who can rush the passer but can’t really man up in the run game, so they might as well stop projecting them to the lions.
It’s interesting that people are always trying to mock smaller speed rushers like Chop Robinson to the lions as a complement to Hutch. That just isn’t their style, they want a big, strong presence at de to set the edge and control a gap first, and rush the qb second. They do incorporate a pure speed rusher, but it’s a part time position on passing downs, and they are not going to commit premium resources for that.
Obviously, the lions had him graded much higher than that, or they wouldn’t have made the deal. The reason for his low rankings in the media was lack of knowledge, not lack of promise.
He’ll finally be more than a year beyond the significant surgery, so like Latu, he may really come on now that he can properly train. Or he may not, we’ll see.
Sorsdal was a developmental pick; small school guy, switching positions, training at several spots, I think he probably exceeded expectations for his rookie year.