I understood you,
@Fishy1. I think we all agree that Grissom a) has a good offensive track record, b) is a much-needed RHH, and c) is the right age for our presumptive window. In that context, it would be hard to move him for anything less than a king's ransom — which is why he blocks our other bat-first 2B/LF types, e.g., Yorke and Valdez.
Was surprised he got called up to Worcester, but he's off to a good start there -- 1-4 with a walk yesterday and 2-4 with a double so far today.
I think Yorke's call-up to Worcester was more about clearing AA playing time for Kristian Campbell than anything he had done. Also, with everyone in Boston, Worcester needs bodies!
You're not wrong, but that's also just kind of how prospects work, particularly any team's top 25-30 prospects. Those guys are the team's top 25-30 precisely because they have demonstrated a positive trajectory. . . until they move up the ladder and suddenly they don't, at which point they drop out of the top 30 and are replaced by someone else. In other words, I think you could do this exercise every year and determine that most of any given team's top 30 prospects are "on a positive trajectory."
It's a fair point about logical circularity (every team always has X top prospects, and by definition those are the X players people feel best about), but I don't think it's as undifferentiated as you suggest in terms of both momentum and relative to other systems. Sometimes those are the players people feel best about
because of their recent results, and sometimes those are the players people best about
despite their recent results.
If you'd done a similar exercise last year around this time, you would've seen a lot more of the latter: the number one and two prospects Mayer and Bleis had suffered season-ending shoulder injuries; Casas was our big rookie position-player promotion, and he had a .697 OPS in Boston — he was about to go on a tear, but we didn't know that yet; Bello was our big just barely non-rookie pitching promotion, and he was allowing a .770 OPS — he, too, was about to go on a tear, but we didn't know that yet; Crawford was less heralded, and he was still pitching in long relief — he, three, was about to go on a tear, but we didn't know that yet; and Brandon Walter had returned from injury with severely diminished stuff; Romero was hurt; Mata was — surprise! — hurt again; Matthew Lugo was awful after surprising to the upside a year earlier. A ton of setbacks in terms of health and performance.
Against which, Rafaela was thriving in AAA and Yorke was playing pretty well in Portland after the disaster in 2022. Wikelman was striking everybody out, but walking 5 per 9. Infield prospect Brainer Bonaci was playing great, but would later be suspended for some sort of serious off-field issue.
While Anthony had been ranked on the basis of his bonus, he hadn't done much as a professional. He would have still been a week away from his surprising promotion to Greenville despite a .700 OPS in low-A; it wasn't until the second half that he would rocket to top-prospectdom on the basis of his ~1.000 OPS at 19 in high A. Teel hadn't been drafted yet.
It was a really different situation, and the lack of prospect depth probably impacted what Bloom felt he could do at the deadline.
