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Brendan Gawlowski Prospects Chat: 2/24/26
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Brendan Gawlowski
3:17
Possibly; I'd want to see what it looks like this year vs. last season before commenting specifically but guys can get stronger/change their swing in a way that leads to harder contact.
RE: no draft
3:17
With all due respect, I don't want to emulate anything about college football. I don't want one team to have the ability to grab a huge share of the best recruits.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:18
I'm not a huge fan of bonus pools and restricting amateur bonuses, but that system is compatible with a signing day format.
Ozzie
3:19
Am I crazy or is De Vries being underated by most everyone? Dude was 18 last year and put up a 144 wRC+ in AA. I just don't see how he isn't a consensus top 5 guy.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:20
The five guys ahead of him on our list were pretty good, too. And, look, I love the guy too but a 144 wRC+ in 20 games is not a thing to go nuts over in and of itself. Especially since a third of them were in Amarillo.
RE: no draft
3:20
Would no draft be the death of small market teams?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:20
No
Guest
3:21
When do you think Duno is up for CIN? What is his closest big league comp?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:21
It's going to be a couple years. He's ridiculously toolsy but he's a catcher and he was in A-ball last year. He's not on the fast track.
romorr
3:21
Can you think of a prospect like Honeycutt for the Orioles, who struck out 40% of the time, and still made the majors? Not even a useful player, but just made the majors in any capacity.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:23
None come to mind immediately. Steven Moya had a season like that but made more contact as he matured.
RE: no draft
3:23
"I'm not a huge fan of bonus pools and restricting amateur bonuses"

What would you propose then?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:24
Pay the guy what he's worth on the open market
Guest
3:24
When you see that a team blatantly has zero faith in a top prospect, does it affect your evaluations at all? Like Lawlar or Rushing
Brendan Gawlowski
3:25
It certainly raises questions...
3:26
For a team, it's something to dig into. And you may well find something that makes you disinclined to project heavily. But I wouldn't sand down Lawlar's hit tool JUST because the dbacks keep finding other guys to play instead of him.
Mariners!
3:26
Now, put Farmelo, Arroyo, Montes, and Celesten in order of most likely to become an above average everyday player.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:27
Above average? I think you've got it all sorted right there.
Guest
3:28
do you still view zebby matthews as a 3/4 starter?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:28
He can still do that, yes.
Dodgers Blue
3:28
Can you rank, in order of preference to you, the traits you look for in a young catching prospect?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:29
Defensively: athleticism to handle throwing/framing/blocking; strong kid with physicality to withstand the position; personality to work with pitchers/game plan.
3:30
If you've got all of that, if you can do anything at all at the plate, we're off to a great start.
Dan Norman Lear
3:31
This is likely a larger than a chat question, but do you foresee any kind of boomerang effect on the development of starting pitching? The threshold keeps drifting lower and lower; now 140 innings feels like an acceptable number. At what point are starters not being used enough, and a balance is found?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:32
I think it keeps dropping until the rules change. If anything, we see more likely to go the other way. If, say, we move to a 154-game schedule and bake a few more offdays into the season and you have 13 pitchers already and functionally a 14th with the way teams option the last guy on/off the roster... You can go to the bullpen pretty early.
3:33
If you want workloads to increase again, you need an 11-man pitching staff.
RE: no draft
3:33
"Pay the guy what he's worth on the open market"

I don't see why this wouldn't end up with the large market teams outbidding the small market teams for most of the top guys. And maybe you don't care about that, but it is an entertainment business at the end of the day.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:33
Devil's advocate; the prem is pretty popular, no?
Douglas
3:34
What improvements would Wenniger need to make to pass Tong as a big league rotation option for 2026?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:34
Less about improvements, more about how he might just be more capable of turning a lineup over multiple times. We'll see, it's a possibility.
DBRuns
3:34
Cleveland fan here. Did they whiff at 1:1 in 2024? A year and a half later, I have to imagine Kurtz, Burns, Griffin, Wetherholt, Cags are all ahead of Bazzana.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:35
If they could re-do it, they'd take someone else.
Guest
3:35
Lowder and River Ryan will probably be sent down, but would they be better off working swing?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:36
Boring answer, but depends on a lot of factors. For someone returning for TJ especially, there's a plan based on things we're not really privy to (how many innings is he going to throw, how should we throttle his workload throughout the year, how is his arm responding to x pitches and y days off, etc.)
3:37
And then there are the needs of the big-league club to consider as well.
Guest
3:38
Will Cijintje debut  this season, and what’s the Reliever Risk?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:39
The more he's focused on the RH side, the more likely that becomes. Reliever risk is pretty high.
RE: no draft
3:39
"Devil's advocate; the prem is pretty popular, no?"

Devil's advocate; the NFL is the most valuable and richest sports league in the world, no?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:39
It is, and it would remain so if the league replaced the draft with signing day as well.
guest v2
3:39
In your experience, what is a flaw a player is least likely to overcome?
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