Konnor Griffin debut preview w/Baseball America’s JJ Cooper, Prospect extensions, 2016 Top 10 revisited

0:00On the Serving Pancakes Podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court. Today we have a little best-friend compatibility test. Okay! And how long have we been best friends? It's just a day we met. As the league won volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in. You'll hear unfiltered analysis behind-the-scenes stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport, whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, Serving Pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Join your free iHeartRadio app, search Serving Pancakes, and listen now. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of The On Purpose Podcast. My latest episode is with Noah Kahn, the singer-songwriter behind the multi-platinum global hit, Stick Season, and one of the biggest voices in music today. Talking about the mental illness stuff, it used to be the thing that I was ashamed of. Getting to talk about this is not common for me, right now I need it more than ever. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

1:02you get your podcasts. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of Motor Racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1. Including the astrology of the current grid, the story of the sports' most consequential driver's strike, and plenty of other mishaps, scandals, and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent, dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to No Grip on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Baseball America editor and chief JJ Cooper joining us right now, a perfect timing. We arranged having JJ on the show before we learned the news of Connor Griffin, and we love how that works out, so happy Connor Griffin news day to you, JJ, and then we're excited to see him in his debut. Let's start with the good stuff in terms of the projections, the scouting profile, everything. Tell us how excited fans and baseball should be to watch the next supposed great star in

2:03our game. So, if Strasburg's rival is Strasburg, I guess this is Connor Griffin Eve, and I kind of think that this might be the most anticipated debut of a true prospect since maybe Strasburg. Now, you could say Shoei Otani, but Shoei Otani was coming over, yes, he was coming up from the minor leagues technically as a international amp, but you know, all that, but he was, I mean, he was fully formed. Connor Griffin is arriving as the number one prospect in baseball, a guy who can run as fast as almost anyone can throw as hard as almost anyone can hit the balls. Hard is almost anyone. And by the way, also has the fourth best batting average career manning batting average of the minor league since 2010. So like there's just so many things here. And by the way, he's this first teenager position player to reach the major since Wonsoto in 2018. There's just so many things stacking up here. Oh, yeah, also he makes the pirates much more interesting and probably much better. I like the little segment that Bucko territory did there where they just have talked about

3:05how this is the team that needs a shortstop. The thing I like about this is I think the message that the pirates will have, the message they'll have to Connor Griffin is play defense, run, hit the ball hard. There's going to be some growing pains here, but you're going to make this team better while you're kind of adjusting to the major leagues because he is a big league shortstop and they needed one of those. All right, JJ, very happy for the pirates, very happy for Connor Griffin. What happened in the week? What happened? Actually, it was less than a week. What happened in the five days? He was in trouble. Man, they're like, he went down there and got hot, guys. Let's call him up now. Like what? Besides the fact that they want to sell tickets for opening day, besides the fact that they wanted people excited for their home opener, besides the fact that we all know he's going to sign an extension not the day of, but it'll be a few days. Dallas probably agreed to it there, keeping that quiet. What happened in those five days? He did it at 4.38, so maybe that, maybe he did play good defense at shortstop, but no, I think that this does feel like we've seen a couple of these, I feel like now, where

4:07it's like, oh, we're starting on the road. We, I don't, the funny thing is I don't even think it sells more tickets, so like if Connor Griffin had made his debut on the road, I still think Pirates fans would absolutely be like, I want to be there for Connor Griffin's first home game. It is odd because I don't know, you know, maybe they tone down the hype 10% by not having them on the opening day roster, maybe, but it doesn't really change much of anything. He does, you know, he's still eligible for a PPI pick. As you notice, you know, as you noted there, AJ, you like, you can't sign an extension before he makes his major league debut and be eligible for a performance prospect performance incentive pick. So if you want to win that pick by having him be rook of the year or finish high in MVP voting in the next couple of years, that hold off on that extension. But yeah, but look, that's the point. That's the point, JJ. They got to wait because he can't sign an extension before he gets the big league. So now they're going to call him up and then they're going to wait a couple days.

5:07Sorry. That's, that, it's just all to convene. They're, they're going to see him arrive in Pittsburgh and they're going, oh, this guy's really good. Maybe we should sign him to extension. That's how it's going to work, AJ. You know, they're going to, they're going to come to their realization after they see him in Pittsburgh that they now feel like he might be worth an extension. All right. Well, that's fair. I'm glad that his first game has so much pressure on it that he could make $130 million if he has a good first game. I want to go back to last year, his first full season in professional baseball, Connor Griffin, played 15 games in the outfield. Was that a misjudgment by the pirates in the sense of, well, you know, we just don't know where he's going to be defensively or was it kind of like a Bryce Harper type of situation where they're like, we put him in the outfield easier to learn. He'll be in the big league sooner because of how much we like his bats. I think it's a little bit more of the second like the funny thing is that this time last

6:10year, we really were coming off of a spring training where Connor Griffin almost all his game with the big league club last year in spring training, we're in the outfield. And by the way, I mean, this is kind of a, you know, rich prospect problems here because if Connor Griffin was in center field, I promise you right now, we say that the pirates have a hole at shortstop. If Connor Griffin was in center starting in center field tomorrow, he would vastly make the pirates defense better because we have seen O'Neill Cruz in center field. Connor Griffin is a potentially gold glove center fielder if that was where he was going to play. I think they actually did though kind of have a little bit of ambiguity about that. And then as he played, he kind of just showed like, no, this is a shortstop and kind of goes back to that old kind of, hey, as good as a center field or great defensive center fielder is, if you got the shortstop, you got the shortstop and they needed a guy like this. I do think that he's actually gotten even a little bit better this year at shortstop. Just watching his, yeah, I think he made 12, 13 plays at shortstop over those, those five

7:13games at AAA. He's showing a little bit more kind of of a savvy that you see that you want to see from a shortstop. It was a play where he went kind of his backhand was about to rush it. Then looked over, realized how slow the runner was running and just kind of geared down and just kind of made an easy throw, those kind of things that you're seeing a little bit of that polish get at it now that we weren't seeing at the start of last year. Defensively, you have to be a big league shortstop to play in the big leagues. And what I mean is guys can play shortstop, but you have to be a big league shortstop. If he never wins a gold glove, is it going to be a failure as a baseball America, diagnosing him as a ridiculous defender or is his ceiling really just an above average big league shortstop? I would say his ceiling is gold glove caliber, but I would say it's more likely that he's just above average, right? I think his ceiling is there like because he does have a cannon of an arm.

8:14He is athletic. He does for a guy who's, I really keep using the comp as kind of true like it's kind of a mic trout body, but if mic trout didn't move to the outfit, mic trout played shortstop some in high school. But like that kind of body, but with enough agility enough of a quick enough first step to work. But if you said like, is he going to be the rangiest shortstop in the major leagues? It's hard to believe he'll be that over that kind of, you know, cat quick, kind of more traditional type of shortstop. But when you throw in the arm, when you throw in the savvy, I will say that one thing that he's going to do much like we've seen with Ellie De La Cruz, he's that shortstop who, if the balls hit over his head, well, for one, if I'm an outfielder, I'm watching out because if he runs over me, he may kill me because he's that big. But if he sees that ball kind of in that, that, that bermuda triangle like behind the third baseman in front of the, you know, the, the left fielder, he can make that play that not a whole lot of guys can make. He tracks balls in the air really well.

9:15He does have the arm. If there's going to be a little bit of issues early on, I would say again, there's range there, but I don't think it's going to be exceptional range. I don't think that he's going to make the play up the middle and the play deep in the whole time after time. But there is that potential. He's still a teenager. This one's for the dudes looking for that peak bedroom performance. Blutchew just dropped their newest innovation, Blutchew Gold. Blutchew is the number one chewable ED brand. And yes, Blutchew Gold dissolves under your tongue and works in as little as 15 minutes peak passion and peak performance in a single tablet. See why millions of men trust Blutchew now with a gold standard upgrade that is changing the game for good. Make life easier and discover your options at Blutchew.com. And we have a special deal for the FTFAM. Get 10% off your first month of Blutchew Gold with CodeFile. That's promo code F-O-U-L. Visit Blutchew.com for more details and important safety information.

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11:20Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Serving Pancakes and listen now. This has been Serving Pancakes and we'll catch you on the flip side. Okay. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeartWomenSports. KJ, let's not sell anyone short, okay? Let's make sure that we don't sell anyone short, all right? So Conner Griffin's going to be a stud and I'm happy for Pittsburgh and their fans. And for Conner Griffin, once he signs that extension, once they see him put on the big league uniform. Because I haven't talked about it yet. And they haven't even come close to two. Nope, exactly. Yep, exactly. We haven't heard anything about him signing the extension. I want to go to the other two guys, the prospects of signed extension Emerson and Cooper Pratt. First of all, I'd never heard of Cooper Pratt, I'd obviously heard of Emerson before because of the Mariners and he was their top prospect. What do these two guys bring to the table? And what are the Mariners and the Brewers seeing these guys that would allow them to sign both these guys to big extensions before they even really come close to the big leagues? So Emerson is our number seven prospect in the game.

12:21I would say that he's, you know, again, he's not as fast moving as Conner Griffin. Few very few players are. But he is kind of still on the very much the fast track. I mean, the Mariners have been pretty open about saying that they expect him to be their third baseman before too long this year. He's a very well-rounded player. Again, it's hard we just talked about Conner Griffin. And we also have Kevin McGonagall, JJ Weatherholder. I think our exceptional prospects as well. I would put Emerson in that next year below that. That doesn't mean he's not going to be a very, very good player. I mean, he could be a star. I just don't think that he has that one like Conner Griffin could be, you know, the fastest dude who hits them all the furthest, all those things. McGonagall and Weatherholder are probably going to be two of the better hitters in the major leagues by, you know, this year, by next year. I would say Emerson kind of fits more in that well-rounded where he's going to provide defensive value. He's going to hit for average. He's going to hit for power. He's going to be a cornerstone. He should be a cornerstone for the Mariners. And that contract kind of shows that like again, he's giving up potentially some money

13:25down the road, obviously. But you don't sign one of these contracts where if you hit on everything that they hope you'll hit on that you're going to end up still making every bit of that. He's giving up on a couple years of free agency that he could be a very young MLB free agent long based on the road. But this is one of the top prospects in baseball. The Pratt extension I do think is a little bit kind of more interesting, more unusual, I would say, from the standpoint of we have him as our number 50 prospect in the game. And that obviously means it's one of the best prospects in baseball. But the number 50 prospect and a top 10 prospect are two very different things. A top 10 prospect had a piece of baseball America about this recently. A top 10 prospect means that we expect there's kind of almost like a coin flip chance that you're going to be a star, you're going to be one of the best players in baseball. Top 50 prospect. Some of those end up being stars, a lot of them end up being solid regulars, but a lot of them don't pan out. Pratt is kind of he's still young as a high school pick, kind of guy fell in the draft, but quickly showed very savvy, can really hit all those batting average last year in

14:29the Southern league may not have shown that. And good defender, you know, should be a very valuable infield or shortstop who could play second or third as well. But what he doesn't have is he doesn't have power yet, maybe that'll come. And the batting average again, there, even though we think and scouts really like his hit tool, there may be a little bit more uncertainty with actually did hit I think 234 last year in the Southern league. That's one where the brewers clearly believe an imprat is a top prospect, but there's a little bit more risk to that one. I would say on the brewers side, that's also why the number that he signed for is significantly less than cold ever since. It's still $50 million. And this is a perfect transition into your list of the 2016 top 10. Now I didn't go to your list. I went to Major League Baseball's list for number 50 in 2016, 10 years ago. And it's Wilson Contreras. So had a team given $50 million to Wilson Contreras, it would have been major value.

15:30But let's talk about that group, that list of top 10 from 2016. And where they are now, and how much you expected those guys to be able to do that. So as funny now, I'm going to probably try to call up our all time 50s when we do this. But yes, I would say that would say it's like, you look at our top 10 there. And I would say, what you see with this is, again, we do not say that every top 10 prospect is going to hit. And I would say that you would say there, and you say Alex Reyes, you know, pitchers through throw hard and get hurt or a challenge, Orlando RC obviously is a guy who's been a solid big leagueer, but he's been less than you would expect for a top 10 prospect. And Joey Gallo had an early kind of, you know, peak. And then it kind of tailed off pretty quickly. The guy does have a ton of, always had a ton of strikeouts. But I would say overall, you look at that list and you say a poor seeker, there's a lot of very good players. Skip one, JJ. You skipped one. You skipped number four. Which one? Number four. No, who are you? Because a really good pitcher until, you know, off the field legal issues and all, but you

16:34guys don't include those. You don't include those in your prospect rankings, JJ. We do, but they are hard to fully evaluate, you know, it's hard to, you can wake up. That's a great point. You know, but hey, some guys who, you know, you hear, you make up some of these, make up very difficult to evaluate. And, you know, Eureus was a guy who was a 16 year old, was considered to be advanced enough to go to the Midwest league at an age where no one gets to go there. And then, you know, down the road, he was a very good pitcher, even in the postseason. And then, but he was one of the players who were the legal issues or such that he essentially just kind of disappeared from major league baseball, almost like that because of that. But I think that that's a good way, a good, useful way to lay out like place, the piece I did yesterday, kind of, you could say like, okay, why are they giving Cooper Pratt or let's say, especially cold Emerson, why are they giving cold Emerson this much money? He hasn't proven that he can play in the big leagues. And the piece that I kind of tried to lay out yesterday is, that's true, but they feel

17:34pretty good about the likelihood that he's going to be a long term productive regular, even if he doesn't have that MLB, you know, that asterisk by his name where you could say he's already a big leagueer. But the other part of this is, is I think that the way just our brains work, if he had been up for a year and gets this extension and then it all falls apart, it'd be like, oh, well, that wasn't surprising. He showed that he could do it and then what happened? Like, I used an example yesterday, Johnson, India was the dash league rookie of the year, not that many years ago, and he had a great season that year. And he was 24 years old. And if you saw that season, you would say, oh, this is what he should be able to do or something like this for the next five, six, seven years. And that's been the best season of India's career. That was his highest and bad average on base percentage, lugging percentage, home runs, you know, war. Anyway, you want to look at it. He was at his best as a rookie. And but you wouldn't look at that and say, you know, if they'd assigned him to an extension, it would have been, oh, it's disappointing that his production tailed off, but it wouldn't

18:38be because he was unproven because he had already proved it. He'd already had success at the big league level. Colt Emerson may not have had success at the big league level, but when you look at what he's done in the miners, when you look at the evaluations of him, there's a pretty good likelihood, much like we talk about these counter-griffens and Kevin McGonagall's and JJ Weathers, there's a likelihood that this guy is going to be a long-term productive regular because most guys who are top 10 prospects, especially at this age, most of them end up being long-term productive regulars or better. And that is why you make these moves now so that when they hit, you save a ton of money. That is the whole point and the player gets rich right away, so it's good math. Could I just point out with that, like to JJ's point, like with this extension that, you know, they're not talking about yet, but that they will maybe, you know, broach with counter-griffen once he's uprooted and big leagueer. But this is kind of a problem, I think, for the MLB PA in the long run because on the individual player side, these deals make a ton of sense.

19:40If the pirates are going to pay counter-griffen, let's say $130 million, we're only in three-type contract. It's really hard to turn that down because you've got one career. And yes, you may be sacrificing hitting free agency as a 26-year-old Alon Juan Soto, but you're also going to be, not you're just, you're going to be rich, but your grandkids will be rich because of that deal. That's something that's a little difficult for that. You don't get as many of these kind of reset the market free agent deals, reset the market arbitration moves when these players, these stars get locked up so early in their careers. And I don't know what they real answer is that for if you're the PA and you want to see these, you know, record free agent deals that kind of then move the entirety of the market, counter-griffen is the kind of guy who, if he doesn't sign extension, could be the next like, oh, this is the record-breaking contract. But this would probably, if he extends, it'll probably buy out that age 26, age 27, maybe age 28 year where you're going to need to be a much smaller

20:43contract with 29-year-old free agent doesn't make the same as a 26 or a 27-year-old free agent star. Right. That's a good point. That's a good point. Salary cap is the answer to everything. That's all the other problems. Salary cap, just salary cap. And by the way, also, what you just said is 100% true. How do you tell a 19-year-old kid, hey, here's 130 million. Man, I really hope those first couple days of him in the big leagues go well because if he don't go well, he's not going to sign that extension. And if he does go well, he'll get that extension. So, man, I'm hoping and praying for counter-griffen that he gets this first day goes really well. So they can announce on this. I mean, so they can offer him an extension. Hopefully, the first five days go as well as that five days of AAA did that imagine if they go as well as in AAA, they might have to double that contract offer. I can see the documentary one day. One week changes everything. JJ, thank you for changing. That's JJ Cooper from Baseball America. Hotsheet is the show that you can catch him on. Among other shows, of course, on the Baseball America YouTube channel,

21:47Baseball America podcast, the channel as well. Subscribe to it. Hotsheet airs Tuesdays 3PM Eastern right after FT live. This episode is brought to you by Fox 1. Go get that new app stream baseball, stream football, world cup action. You'll be watching. I definitely can't wait. I actually want to try and get to a game. But while I'm there, I'll still have my Fox 1 app. I'll have MLB, the shows, the great shows that Fox has, college football that I love college basketball. They have it all. This really is the app that you can get all of anything you want to watch on an app. Fox 1 has it and they are great at. Yeah, the big sporting events. And by the way, the world cup is June 11th to July 19th. You can get a free seven day trial of Fox 1. So go check that out. And you can start your seven day free trial. Today offers our subject to change. Go to Fox 1 for complete turns and conditions. Fox 1 streaming now on the serving pancakes podcast conversations about volleyball go

22:47beyond the court. Today we have a little best friend compatibility. Okay. How long have we been best friends? So today we met as the league one volleyball season heads towards its final stretch. There's no better time to tune in. You'll hear unfiltered analysis behind the scene stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport. Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Open your free iHeart Radio app, search serving pancakes and listen now. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Noah Kahn, the singer songwriter behind the multi platinum global hit stick season. And one of the biggest voices in music today. Talking about the mental illness stuff, it used to be the thing that I was ashamed of. Getting to talk about this is not common for me. Right now I need it more than ever. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your

23:48podcasts. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip. A new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman as we dive into the under explored pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid, the story of the sports most consequential driver's strike, and plenty of other mishaps, scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.