Promotions and Rotating thru the league

[Mike Sixel]

Just thought I'd post this nugget from KLAW, which is pretty much what the Twins seems to say/do.......

 

This was said about a nearly 19 year old in low A......

 

"No reason to move him up given his age, and I think there's value in letting a young player go around the league more than once to see how pitchers adjust to him and how he adjusts back."

[Seth Stohs]

That's pretty standard philosophy around baseball, regardless of the organization. 

 

There are obvious exceptions to these rules, and they're elite types,

[bird]

 

That's pretty standard philosophy around baseball, regardless of the organization. 

 

There are obvious exceptions to these rules, and they're elite types,

 

 

 

Yeah, and I wouldn't classify it as either a philosophical or a policy/rule thing. Each prospect is a material investment for its organization and is logically going to be subjected to intense scrutiny. Because so few are exceptional, it seems to be the rule of thumb that a young prospect is going to be thoroughly tested at a given level.

 

 

[Mike Sixel]

I mostly posted this because of all the "promote him now" we* post here......almost didn't post it.

 

*including me

[gunnarthor]

I saw that too.  I submitted a question about Hu and Gonsalves and promotions but he didn't answer it.  

 

In any event, I think we'll some promotions in the coming weeks.  

[Steven Buhr]

 

That's pretty standard philosophy around baseball, regardless of the organization. 

 

There are obvious exceptions to these rules, and they're elite types,

Even elite types get covered by this, at least Buxton did in Cedar Rapids. When he started tearing through MWL pitching by mid May in 2013, a lot of us thought they'd promote him any time then. I was told, though, that they wanted to see how he handled adjustments by pitchers the second time he faced those teams.

 

Interestingly, by the way, the MWL made a subtle schedule change this year that I can't help but believe came about at MLB teams requests related to this.

 

Previously, MWL teams would roughly play a couple series against teams in their own Division in early April, then spend the rest of April and maybe in to May playing their one series each that they face the opponents in the opposite Division. Then they would get back to more games within their own Division.

 

The result was that these promotable prospects weren't getting exposed to many teams multiple times until late May or early June.

 

This year, the games vs opposite Division opponents don't start until June 3. The result is that the Kernels have already faced some Divisional opponents as many as 9-10 times, allowing talent evaluators to see the "adjustments" sooner in the year.

 

May be totally unrelated, but since I'm not one who believes much in coincidences, it makes me wonder.

[drjim]

Another similar question from a Ben Badler chat:

Kenny (Charlotte): Can someone please PROMOTE Bradley Zimmer already? What are the Indians waiting for???

 

Ben Badler: There are a TON of these types of questions that I get every day about why a team hasn’t promoted some prospect who’s hitting well. With Zimmer, he’s been outstanding, I’m sure he could handle Double-A right now and he’ll probably be there soon. But we’re also barely a third of the way into the season, it’s not like they’re just leaving him in Low-A, and there are other factors in play when teams consider promotions (including who’s going to get bumped out of the way at the next level), and it’s not like there’s some urgency to get any prospect to Double-A. Patience, my friend.

 

 

Certainly not just people on this message board that are impatient for promotions. His answer, combined with Law's point, really nails everything that goes into a promotion.