sk7326
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Everything posted by sk7326
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This is true - but pitching is also so important that you kind of can't avoid it. Now - high school pitching is far and away the riskiest category of amateur ... I think folks like Law and a couple others I've read are extremely skeptical at this point of using first round picks on them. Really what you'd like is to figure out how to develop college pitching like Cleveland has. The mystery of how to nurture arms through 18-22 (or heck, most any other age too) has clearly not been cracked. Digression: Jeff Passan's The Arm is a good read on this.
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This. You can't ask an org to NOT sign teenaged pitching prospects - you go where the talent is - but this is the downside risk, especially if you build a lot of the plane with it.
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Could argue bad luck ... the TJS cases were all signed out of high school (or equivalent) ... high school pitching can be scary that way (obviously so can college pitchers - but the extra 3-4 years of physical development matter a lot from a probability perspective)
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Well, putting their limitations where the ROI can be the highest. Scouts are cheap, relatively speaking.
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Now, we do see things that Bloom wants to do in how he has drafted ... there are a lot of high contact middle of the diamond sorts, with the idea that the team can coach them up on finding power. (the Dodgers do this too - of course the Dodgers are the large market fever dream of what the Rays do)
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One thing Tampa does is that it has the largest pro scouting operation in the sport. That is part of it. Another thing is creating a development specialty. You look at Cleveland - who seems to be spitting out one quality arm after another. There, they have largely been drafting college starters with good command/control and develop the additional velocity and stuff. A factor in the Sox' defense here has also been that where they have drafted historically (mostly) you are left with high schoolers for the quality upside - but high school pitching is simply THE most volatile stock of all in amateurland.
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The one thing Dombrowski and Bloom have done is just get more arms in the system. Even if there is high reliever risk across the board, the state of "guys who can be big league somethings" is better than it has been in a while.
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He pretty clearly explained his view - the position player prospects are pretty good, the pitching is far less certain. And as ESPN's prospects guy (Kiley McDaniel) noted - after Mayer and Casas, most of the top prospects in the org last season had tough seasons. Basically - if one or two of these pitchers with a wide range of outcomes raises their likelihood to be a big league starter, things will really start looking up. If Sale stayed healthy this would all look so much better - that said, the Sale extension that Dombrowski and ownership signed was a ticking time bomb ex ante.
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Oh i am not sure it will work necessarily - but I am okay with trying it. The sport - at a 30,000 foot level - has been trending towards less and less action, and I really do appreciate attempts to roll that back. The sport shouldn't be snooty and overly precious about tradition in exchange for trying to make the sport more entertaining. The pitch clock is fine too - in the minor leagues it did knock time off the games, and as long as nobody's arm falls off whatever.
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And of course, universal DH remains a great idea.
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I have gone back and forth - but MLB is often so stoddgy about new rules and tinkering with entertainment value that this is a welcome departure. I don't love the ghost runner - but I do agree that in the regular season having games longer than 12 innings, particularly with how pitchers are handled - is not sustainable and kind of sucks for viewers. Would you prefer something like this over declaring ties after 13 innings or something? I have come around on the shift banning. Mandating suboptimal behavior so there are more balls put into play makes sense to me. Little baseball is fun - not instead of homeruns, but just being able to have that as part of my baseball life.
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There is a wide range of outcomes - this is where looking at some of the detailed reports and not just the rankings helps. Mata missed development time with the injury. Chris Murphy has just had trouble throwing strikes. And of course pitching is just volatile anyway. But the org does not have at this moment even an Anderson Espinoza of yore type - yes he was dealt, got hurt, flamed out ... but the industry saw a #1/#2 starter in there in lower levels. Kopech was the last blue chip pitcher they have had. What has happened is that the org has done a nice job just getting big league "something" type of arms - more than in a long time. But whether those are quality starters or long relievers or relievers where 20 of them will appear in a big league game and Cora manages the team like an All-Star game? That is an open question.
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This year will give us an idea exactly how gold plated he is ... at some point he's going to be a 20 year old in Portland, which would make him one of the youngest regulars in AA. If he plays well this season, then it's time to dream very big.
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This is fair ... McDaniel's main critique is the next wave of prospects coming has to step up. And of course if some of the arms in the organization start to flash some "closer to ceiling" outcomes then everything really starts coming up Red Sox.
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Since Theo/Cherington left? No - but it was also when the system was drained by graduations and such. He put Devers in his Top 100 at ESPN based on what he did in the complex league.
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18 is also not very high and probably outside where you'd expect likely major leaguers anyway. I reckon there is not much separation between 18 and 40 aside from some positional preference and where ceiling vs floor is in your values system.
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A dart throw based on an elite athletic profile.
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This is a little bit unfair. Ownership hired him to build a champion - and they gave him the greenlight to do it. Indeed, Dombrowski's acumen mattered a lot - in that his job was to look at all of the Sox premium prospects and make ex ante calls on all of them. And it turned out, he was mostly right - though Moncada has been a perfectly solid starting IF and Kopech is a very good starter when healthy (which has not been often). And the two prospects he and his team decided were the real deals, he promoted them extremely aggressively. (I think Benintendi and Devers had a combined 3 days at AAA)
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(more) Honorable Mentions Fallen: Cam Cannon Leap Candidates
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Law deep dive on Sox: https://theathletic.com/4146022/2023/02/07/red-sox-top-20-prospect-farm-system-ranked/ 1. Marcelo Mayer (#11 overall) 2. Ceddane Rafaela (#37 overall) 3. Triston Casas (#40 overall) 4. Miguel Bleis (#72 overall) 5. Bryan Mata, RHP 6. Nick Yorke, 2B 7. Mikey Romero, SS 8. Matt Lugo, SS/3B 9. Brandon Walter, LHP 10. Blaze Jordan, 3B/1B 11. Chris Murphy, LHP 12. Roman Anthony, OF 13. Edinson Paulino, Wherever 14. Brainer Bonaci, SS 15. Wikelman Gonzalez, RHP 16. Gilberto Jimenez, OF 17. Cutter Coffey, SS 18. Nathan Hickey, C 19. Nico Kavadas, 1B 20. Shane Drohan, LHP
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The mood swings are 100x more important than the GM here.
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It's not. NOW, the firing of Dombrowski was not really justified because he did exactly what the owners wanted him to do. But Bloom has been fine - he is dealing with ownership level issues. Heck, Dombrowski's worst move - the extremely risky at the time extension for Chris Sale - had ownership buy-in. Ownership doesn't blindly delegate spending decisions like THAT.
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A lot has to go right in a division there 83 wins might be last place. The bullpen makeover is encouraging - we know bullpen performance is volatile as a thing, but there is a lot of depth. The rotation has a lot of bodies. And I do trust Cora to piece that together more or less. Last year we had a case where the team got jack squat out of key offensive positions. (RF/1B) That should be better Of course, the center of the field is now uncertain. I will say last year, the team's farm guys all had rough seasons. And basic law of averages points to hopefully that not being the case. And yeah, Sale is a huge key - though at this point I am waiting for the next, innvovative way he gets himself injured.
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ESPN (Kiley McDaniel) ranks Boston at 14
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Ultimately the assessment of the system comes down to how one views the pitchers in it. The team has brought in a lot of pitchers with a fairly wide range of outcomes. Position player-wise the org is in a much better position for sure (4 guys in the top 100 is evidence there). And of course longer term, the goal is for the system to be able to get to where the Dodgers are in consistently being able to make players better, or how Cleveland has been able to spit out one young starting pitcher after another.