What would it take for you to trade Mookie?

First off, thanks to Jmei and others for their reply on FanGraphs and using some other advanced statistics, I really appreciate it. Like Chris and others, I love the way that BB-ref quantifies their splits, and I also firmly admit that I love their similarity scores pages and links. I haven't been able to find anything like that on FanGraphs in looking it over the past couple of days (but I do love their valuation score translated to free agent dollars).

Larry, that's kind of exactly the point I'm making on Betts. Major League pitchers (and advanced scouting) will almost assuredly catch up to him at some point - and that will likely come fairly early in the season as there is more of a book on what he's done in the majors. That will likely cause him to struggle, and while we hope it wont be as bad as Bogaerts went through this year, I was illustrating the struggles of some other very talented young players to give support to how normal this is.

Also, I disagree with you a bit on saying Bogaerts wasn't able to make adjustments. I don't mean this to come off as condescending (so forgive me if it does) but did you watch a lot of the games after the All-Star break or even into the end of the season? It was often tough baseball to watch, so you might have not watched as closely as the beginning of the year. If not, you might have missed his turn-around to end the year. He really had five distinct portions to his season: His first 60 games (approximately 240PA) where he was arguably the most consistent offensive performer on the team. An awful stretch of about 25games June 7th - the All-Star break where he looked run down. After that four day break, he had a very good stretch of about another 15 or so games lasting until the end of July. He then had an abysmal 18 games in August before getting hit in the head by Hernandez. Following that week or so off, he went on an absolute tear for the last 25 games of his season where he hit approximately .313/.317/.490/.806 for an RC+ of 120 over that time frame. I don't quite buy into the "he's too mentally weak to handle a move to 3b" argument since he was, you know, a stud there in the most-pressure he's likely ever been under last October. What I do buy into is the look of a supremely talented kid who came up and was able to be a very good MLB hitter, until adjustments were made to him. He then struggled for three weeks, but adjusted and had another good two weeks. Adjustments were made, and he struggled mightily before getting some time off to make adjustments back, and then he was great again for a month. Pretty darn typical.

While I realize this isn't a thread about Bogaerts, I think this is relevant because with he and Betts you have similar players (very talented, highly graded by scouts, advanced approaches to the game, kids who seem to have good mental make-up and poise). Struggles are what young players go through - it's normal, and will likely happen to Betts too, so nobody should start re-evaluating him after he experiences some struggles next season. I also want to make clear that I'm not stating you have re-evaluated Bogaerts in that we agree between he and Betts (and Swihart) there are really very few players whom we'd trade them for - most of whom aren't available anyway.

Would you do a cespedes and betts for staton trade?

Sadly, sounds like some folks want to resurrect! I still say there's no scenario where equal or commensurate value will be attained, and you work to sign Mookie up until the ink is wet on a contract. Keep him. Pay him market value. Profit.