Rule 5 Applesauce - Rangers Sign Harden, Worrying About Pelfrey, Boras Speaks And Twitter Is Still Ridiculous

has very little to gain in the rule 5 pick.

Most teams have gotten the idea that you have to protect your top guys. The pieces left are generally a few years from being productive.

To just give a roster spot to one of these guys is a stretch. If we were a team in rebuilding mode… I think the rule 5 draft is much more valuable.

the players we all bring up (Santana, Uggla, Flores) were all taken by teams that were not in the hunt for the playoffs.

if you draft this guy we will buy him off you (maybe someone after mets/before dodgers wanted him).

how is this a big deal? It seems like a way to get a little extra cash and take a prospect away from one of your biggest rivals.

like I said, injuries.

Cause pretty much everyone King picked could play in a 4-3 or 3-4. Plus that’s only one gms opinion, if the discussion were about baseball would you trust just one gm to give you an explanation of the market, considering that one gm could easily be Colletti, or Sabean, or Minaya, or Wade? Plus Smith is considered the best d-end in the league in a defense, the 3-4, that’s pretty much owned the NFL this decade/revolutionized it the last 2. Which, I could be giving King to much credit, could factor into the decision since Smith’s skill set allows for a variety of defensive schemes, 4-3 end/under dt, 3-4 end, 3-3-5 end/dt, where as Strahan as far as I know is strictly a 4-3 end, and King specifically mentioned he didn’t want to put just the best players but the best players to make a team, he also mentioned the Vrabel’s versatility to play in a variety of schemes and spots along a linebacking core as a reason for him being picked. Which makes sense given the d-line he’s chosen, Taylor can and has play olb in a 3-4, the bigger Williams can play nt and the smaller one DE in a 3-4. So i really don’t think looking at it as Smith over Strahan is even the correct way to look at it, it seems more like Strahan wouldn’t have made it regardless.

Couldn’t that also be because, until the last few years, only a handful of teams, like 4-5 that I can think of, even ran 3-4s? And everyone else was running 4-3s? If you notice in the last few drafts 3-4 ends, like Adam Carricker, although he ended up going to a 4-3 team, and Tyson Jackson, have shot up draft boards, as well as 3-4 OLBS who teams used to find off scrap heaps. So rather than 3-4 ends just being easier to find I’d imagine it’s just that until recently there were just so many more teams running 4-3s. Not because of one position having an easier skill-set. Guys who could start for us who use to fall to like the 2nd and 3rd rounds or even, second day, are suddenly top ten picks. Tyson Jackson being a prime example since there was pretty much no other position for him other than a 3-4 end.

That as great of a player as he was he doesn’t really exemplify the defensive trends of this decade where pure 4-3s are being fazed out and more emphasis is being placed on versatility and the ability to switch between defensive fronts. Whether he could or couldn’t fit into these types of defensive isn’t really relevant, since he was never asked too and the team was put together to represent this decade. This is kind of a poor analogy but I’d say Strahan is sort of part of the old guard, where as a guy like Tuck, who is a terror at DE or under tackle, is more of an example of the new/current era of defenses.

Any olb is useless without an end, that’s why the smarter 3-4 teams, like the Pats and Steelers, let OLBS walk constantly without even thinking about it and and rarely pick them up in free agency usually only invest in OLBs that can play multiple positions along the 3-4 linebacking core.