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What should we conclude? 1) That these rankings aren't all that relevant? 2) Those teams that are expert in MiLB development aren't shown? 3) Many top players are promoted to the majors before they were "ranked"? 4) that signing high-quality, expensive free agents does make a lot of sense because most teams rarely develop them?
It shows the draft is a grab bag. Tigers should have done better in the 2000 era with as many of top 10 picks they had. Twins will be judged by how they do during this number of years with early draft picks. Internation stage will help now with the ceiling caps in place.
Actually it's still the opposite. People just need to stop acting like prospects all succeed. If you adjust your expectations as the analysis shows the future Twins are still in good shape but there could be holes pretty much anywhere to fill. As fun as it is to write in a 2015 lineup with every prospect succeeding is a little too optimistic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwak
It also shows that prospects are a great currency to trade when you want to go for it.
1) I think rankings are relevant but fans probably over value ranking lists. Jeremy's article with the scout touches on that slightly. (Twins Daily - Scouting with Sean Johnson). I think it's natural that we overrate rankings since those are one of the few things we as fans get to see about the inside work of developing baseball players. But baseball teams have different rankings and access to more information on those players so, as good as BA, it still misses things on players. One current case in point, according to Mike Newman of fangraphs, the Nationals right now consider Goodwin their best prospect, ahead of Rendon. Nearly every ranking cite would have Rendon #1. I suspect that the Twins, who tend to be pretty patient, might have different views of a player like Koskie, for instance, than BA does.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwak
2) I think the Twins showed that they were pretty good at MiLB development. Maybe they aren't the best but they were able to rebuild a playoff caliber team from one nucleus (Koskie, Dougie, Jones, Hunter) to another (M&Ms) without much of a slip up.
3) I don't think BA misses on many "top players." Santana was a rule V pick who used up his rookie status b/c we had to hide him. But he also spent all of the 2000 and 2001 seasons with the ML club. He started 02 in the minors to get stretched out and only threw 48 innings there before he came up and started 14 games that summer for us. He did a lot of his developing in the ML bullpen. When BA misses on guys like Koskie or Youkliss I think it's b/c he was considered too old for his level (good news for Plouffe and Parmelee?). Sometimes certain tools take longer to develop. Span didn't show his patience until the end of his MiLB career. AJ made it to AAA at 21 but wasn't much of a hitter. And some guys - Baker - are probably straight misses. Baker's stuff might have been better than scouted or his control made it play up. Radke too, for that matter. (Good news for Hermsen?) But I would suspect that, however you want to measure the top players in baseball, BA probably hit on a vast majority of them. Some might have been too low (Utley peaked at 81) but they'll be on the list.
4) Free agency, as the main building block, doesn't really work. And it's working less so now that teams are getting extensions out to younger players. Yankees were able to buy a few great teams but that was the rarity. Longterm big contracts usually hurt in the longrun but can be helpful in the short run. If the Twins were one pitcher away this year, it might have made sense to pay Sanchez nearly 100m.
Particularly when a team makes no effort to improve the positions through free agency or trades, either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boom Boom
I've often wondered this as well... My assumption is that that worst manager/coach is the home team's manager/coach. THere will always be the people who think they know more than people in the front office, the GM, the manager, the coaches. There are even some who probably think that they're as good as some of the players. It's strange. I'm sure there are Angels fans who think that Mike Scioscia isn't a good manager. And there are Nationals fans who probably don't like what Mike Rizzo has done. Kind of just comes with the territory for those jobs. I definitely think it's due to the advancement of blogs and stats and all that. Everyone can be a armchair GM or manager.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwak
A couple of thoughts, and obviously I enjoy reading prospect rankings and making my own, but you have to always take them with a grain of salt. Here are some thoughts:
1.) Some Top 10 prospects become frequent all stars. Some Top 10 prospects bust.
2.) As Kyle Gibson has said in conversations with me a few times, Being ranked is great, but being a "prospect" only means that you haven't done anything yet.
3.) My reason for being more excited about the Twins farm system than I have been for a long time isn't that I think they're all going to make it. I just think that the more high-ranking prospects you have, the more likely you'll get a few who do make it to a very high level of big league play.
4.) As was pointed out above... if high prospects don't meet their full potential (which is always a touchy subject too because no one really knows what "full potential" is, and in reality, what they become likely is their full potential), they can still be a valuable part of a winning team. In other words, if Alex Meyer doesn't become a true #1 ace, but he still becomes a solid #3 starter, that's important. If Oswaldo Arcia doesn't become an every year All-Star, but he becomes a guy who plays well for the Twins for a half-dozen years or more, that's still a good thing.
I also think just looking at the ranking can be dicey. There is still some context about the prospect that is important.
For example on the Twins Hicks is going to be a major leaguer of some sort while it is still quite possible Buxton never makes it. I would imagine very few of the busts listed had success at AA. BA tries to balance their rankings but I would find it interesting to dig further in those numbers to see what the rankings are with corresponding levels and what that might tell is. It would be enlightening as to how we view the current state of the system.
He's just trying to be one of my new favorites isn't he?Quote:
Originally Posted by Seth Stohs