If you are a follower of my work at RedsMinorLeagues.com and here at Redleg Nation, then this first part may be a bit of a repeat as I will have now written about it in both places, but I think it’s quite important to discuss with as many people as possible. Buster Olney has an article up on ESPN.com about how Major League Baseball would like to implement an International Draft to replace the current international signing system.
I spent just over 10 minutes talking about some of the proposed ideas that were mentioned in the article, and got off topic a tad bit a few times, but there’s a lot to it. One of the more interesting things is that they want to raise the signing age for players, which is currently 16-years-old, to 18-years-old. That’s just one of the new rules that leaves open tons of questions that, at least for now, are unanswered. I’ve covered it a bit more in depth if you’re interested in reading more about it.
Last week in A Minors Obsession I talked about the fall and winter leagues starting up. The first week has gone quite well for more than a few of the minor leaguers. Out in the Arizona Fall League Zach Vincejhas homered twice in three games played and driven in five runs. Chad Wallach has gone 5-16 (.313) with a double and a home run (.563 SLG).
In the Mexican Winter League Sebastian Elizalde is hitting .400/.478/.600 while leading the league in both runs scored and runs batted in through five games.
If you want to follow how all of the Cincinnati Reds players are performing in fall and winter leagues, you can check in here. It is usually updated each day, though in past seasons every so often it would be a day behind on statistical updates.
Baseball America has the released their draft grades for the 2016 Draft and they have the Cincinnati Reds at the top of the ledger. Strong performances from many of the draft picks certainly helps get a good early review. Nick Senzel, Taylor Trammell and T.J. Friedl all got nods in individual categories from the draft.