Not always.
Fangraphs now lists top 30, top 40, top 50 prospects for some teams. Let’s be clear - no team now and no team ever has had 30 future major leaguers in their minors at once.
Sometimes accepting prospects is like having a yard sale and taking lotto tickets as payment. Sure you’re more likely to score big than if you accepted modest cash totals instead. But the most likely outcome is you got nothing.
Except the PR, I guess. Some fans do get excited by prospects…
Any job that involves predicting the future will be wrong a certain portion of the time. Watch your weatherman. Check your Vegas oddsmakers. Read pre-season NFL predictions.
The only person ever to accurately predict the future was Nostradamus, and even then it’s because people wait for something to happen, make up a cryptic quote describing the event, and attribute it to him…
Cincinnati ranks one place ahead of Boston in runs scored, but is 22-20 while playing in a division where every team is over .500.
When watching teams like this, it’s easy to pretend a potent offense is at least more fun to watch. It isn’t. Watching an 11-9 loss is just as frustrating. The Sox SP has been excellent lately and no one is talking about it.
The offense isn’t working, but it wasn’t ignored. The changes either didn’t work or have had minimal impact.
The bullpen? That was ignored. Making changes that don’t work is understandable and going to happen. Status quo? Rarely acceptable. Stand still? You’re road kill…
They clearly banked on the same players as last year. Duran, Anthony, Story, Abreu, and Contreras replacing Bregman. It worked last year but not so much this year…
But what does that have to do with them not being neutral? My original point was these players were not solely hyped by Boston but rather by a neutral (as is no allegiance to any team) party.
They ignored offense because they scored 4.85 runs per game last year. And trading Devers had no impact; they scored 4.86 rpg with him and 4.84 rpg after trading him. Contreras has done well replacing Bregman. But a lot of players just are not performing, which several veterans having the worst season of their careers…
You don’t think every team does that? Even the Dodgers and Mets this past off-season gave out shorter, higher AAV deals to Tucker and Bichette than anyone expected, just like the Sox did with Bregman..
I think Whats most want is the team to not be wrong. Yes, some early extensions don’t work out. Guess what? So do a lot of free agent contracts. What team is being killed by bad contracts given to pre-arb players? What about free agents? Are we pretending those always work out? Whose more tradable - Campbell or Story?
Huh?
So they give favor to the prospects of larger fanbases? I guess it was obvious after ranking Konnor Griffin #1 this year, resulting in clicks from nearly 8 of the 11 known Pirates’ fans…
Was Bello ever really paid TOTR money? It seems like he got free agent low end starter money.
Not sure if the never-ranked Bello was ever viewed as TOTR material..
The faith most of us had in Campbell, Anthony, etc. wasn’t from the organization; these players were all highly ranked by neutral third party evaluators like Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and MLB.com…
But it will never happen.
A team gets about 6.100 plate appearances a year and only hits about 180 home runs. No plans on scoring for ther other 5,920 PA?
Kind of see most teams doing it. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. Campbell is hardly the first. Eloy Jimenez for example. David Fletcher as well. Colt Keith isn’t exactly thumping. And the jury is still out on Konnor Griffin, Cooper Pratt, Colt Emerson, etc.
The point is the Sox risked paying like an MLB regular/bench player, as opposed to waiting until he became a star (if ever) and paying him like one. They took a risk. It didn’t pay off, still might, but they’re better off whiffing on 7 year $50mill contracts than 7 year $217mill ones. Right?
They only started extending players a couple years ago. Has there been any time for an established star?
Might as well argue that MLB is so much weaker today because 50 years ago, there were 60 Hall of Famers playing. Today? Not a single one!
The Sox are 23rd in OBP and 27th in runs scored. It’s a pretty solid relationship. It’s not like they’re 10th in OBP here.
Now, Milwaukee is last in MLB in home runs and 8th in scoring. Tough to say that’s an established link. But there 7th in OBP…