Seth's Preliminary Top 50 Twins Prospects: Part 8 (1-5)

Hypothetically, if Gonsalves had been the pick at number 4 and Stewart the pick in the 4th round wouldn't we all be very pleased? Gonsalves is performing like what we "wish" Stewart was, and Stewart like a solid 4th round pick. Both have a very solid upside still.

I must need rose colored glasses. Sure, one would like to drink the koolaid and ignore this year's future "stars", but what I saw with clear clean lenses was a .230s club that includes Sano, Kepler, and Vargas, and Buxton lucky to see the .220 club. Yeah yeah... better months and weeks here and there. Strikeout mania. Berrios massive fails. So they all need to be average before they are stars. Reality folks.

You should be able to borrow those glasses from one of the many posters on TD.

A possible contributor to draft "failures" is: "we like what you've done--now change to do things our way." If a prospect "doesn't get it, they dump him.

I didn't put them all in the same category of MLB player... I put them in a sentence of Twins HS hitting draft picks that have had solid MLB careers. And I should have put Plouffe in there. Revere's got 5-6 years of MLB service time. He fits the "had a solid MLB career" status. 

 

Waldrop, Rainville and Boyd were HS pitchers, and I noted that they haven't had much success in that type of draft pick. 

 

I certainly don't expect anything draft-related to be perfect... 

What thrylos failed to do was to compare results to other teams. It's hardly instructive to make lists of failures and successes like that. I can do that for any one of the 30 teams and it looks exactly like that list. If anyone doubts this, just look at a recent  look-back to the 2005 draft authored by John Sickles of the site minorleaguebaseball. He dug up his list of the Top 50 pitching prospects from that draft, which was regarded as an excellent one. Here are some facts:

1. Exactly 25 of the 50 most-coveted pitchers from that draft busted. 

2. Of the busts, 13 simply busted, and 12 were injury busts.

3. Among this elite list of 50, the Twins garnered 5 selections. That's 10%. No other team had that many.

4. Only 5 other teams had more than 2 names on the list.

5. The Twins results matched (exceeded, actually) the overall results. Of the 5, 3 were successful: Crain, Baker, and Perkins. One was an injury bust (Harben) and one turned out to be a head case (JD Durbin)

The point is simply this: making a list, good or bad, with zero context and attempting to sell it as "proof" is at best inferior analysis and at worst disingenuous. Even a factual, accurate comparison like what Sickles allows us to do neither proves or disproves an argument that the Twins are good or bad at the draft. It proves that the draft is really hard, and that's about it.

BTW, many people believe that Sickles would run circles around the knuckleheads the Twins have out there scouting pitchers. He had Crain (#6), Durbin (#19) and Baker (#30) ahead of Verlander (#34) and Perkins (#35). It's a bit of a crapshoot, people.

{The Twins did great (Sano, Polanco, Romero, Kepler, Jorge, etc.) with international free agents during the Bill Smith time.}

That Bill Smith was a genius. Hiring and overseeing the international scouts, and then getting out there and evaluating those guys personally, and getting all those handlers to warm up to him personally after shoving the local scouts out of the way, and doing 100% of the negotiating with every one of these guys' agents. I mean, just getting the three dozen pesky people who were involved in international scouting and who followed these guys for years to step aside so he could perform his magic. Pure genius. 

The genius part is that, unlike his spendthrift predecessor and successor, he opened the wallet and invested good $ in long-term potential, instead of spending the $ for the likes of Pelfrey and Correia.

I give Billy Smith credit for being one of a number of people who advocated in favor of opening up the wallet and taking the risk on Sano. Contrary to your myth, he wasn't even the most adamant voice, or the most influential. I doubt he even offered an opinion about Kepler, Polanco, or any of the others. He never saw Kepler play a single inning of baseball, and wouldn't know what to make of it if he did. Howard Norsetter had multiple times more influence on that decision, financial and otherwise, than Smith. I admire Billy Smith for who he is and what he's accomplished for the organization. I wish you and others gave him the credit he deserves for the things he's actually done instead of making up your own incredibly false history in an opaque attempt to continue to smear Ryan. 

I must need rose colored glasses. Sure, one would like to drink the koolaid and ignore this year's future "stars", but what I saw with clear clean lenses was a .230s club that includes Sano, Kepler, and Vargas, and Buxton lucky to see the .220 club. Yeah yeah... better months and weeks here and there. Strikeout mania. Berrios massive fails. So they all need to be average before they are stars. Reality folks.

Take heart, h2oface. Over the years, there have been a lot of fans who have needed glasses when it comes to the early stages of a player's big league career. We don't know which of these guys will end up more like Torii Hunter versus Marty Cordova, but it's not drinking koolaid to be optimistic, for example that Berrios will get it figured out any more than it might have been to excuse Frank Viola or Brad Radke for a shaky start. Or Brian Dozier. Or Gary Gaetti, especially defensively. Or Byron Buxton. Kepler. Sano. There's been plenty of evidence beyond the raw numbers that are telling discerning baseball people that Buxton and Sano still have the makings of future stardom. That's reality.

In short, I think it's reaonable to be optimistic that most of the players you mentioned with fulfill expectations eventually, and I think it's reasonable to be optimistic about this next wave too, as long as we remember they don't quite have the elite pedigree of Buxton or Sano.

So who was the most influential voice during the Smith era, according to your truth?

Maybe the Twins fired the wrong person after 2010 then...

Every single one of the scouts assigned to the international draft had more influence about both who should be signed and for how much than Billy Smith. And anyone who thinks they should all be fired is frightfully ignorant about the Twin's comparative success in the international arena.

Smith's influence on the international effort, in truth, began much earlier than his short and disastrous tenure as GM. He, along with Andy MacPhail and Jim Pohlad, waged a long battle with Carl Pohlad before Carl finally capitulated and approved a massive budget increase that allowed the organization to finally build the necessary infrastructure of facilities and staff to build relationships and compete for talent in the D.R. This initiative took years, but they now have a beachhead there. Smith was a huge part of building this, and is still leaving his prints in this effort in very positive ways. The most striking recent evidence is the new joint facilities there, and anyone familiar with how the organization works will tell you that Billy Smith has been one of the people at the center of this undertaking.

Very good point and question... I would think we'd be thrilled.

 

Someone whose opinion I trust a ton on this kind of stuff told me that I ranked two guys took low... 

 

1.) Kohl Stewart.

2.) Brusdar Graterol. 

Agree on the 18yo Graterol, but with only pitching a couple of innings in Instructional Ball this fall, kind of hard to put him high up the ladder even with him hitting 97 mph.  Next year though, look out for Brusador Almighty in the GCL/Etown, he could climb exponentially.

It's just an odd coincidence they never spent big before or after Smith....and that three of their best prospects were signed the one time they did. You are totally obsessed with not giving Smith credit, every time this comes up. He was the GM the one time they did what needed to be done to get more great talent, whether you like it or not.

I admit to an obsession with combating that dogged obsession of yours and others to paint a false picture of things. You aren't obsessed about crediting Smith. It's all about discrediting Ryan. It's actually unfair in different ways to both men.  

They spent big because it was Sano, Mike. No odd coincidence involved in any way whatsoever. Wander Javier probably garnered similar conviction from the scouting staff and therefore was signed at what constitutes a greater organizational risk than Sano represented, and this was not done under Smith's "watch".

The point I have repeatedly made is that the GM's role in all of this is being overplayed, often for the sole purpose of getting in another dig at Ryan. So let's have a truce. You guys give up your obsession at blaming Ryan by crediting Smith, and I'll give up responding with a very accurate description of how a whole lot of people should get the credit and why both Smith and Ryan are practically bit players in the scheme of things. If Wander Javier turns out to be a stud, and you start to obsess about crediting Ryan for signing him (now THAT'S funny!), I'm gonna be there.

I'll give up responding with a very accurate description of how a whole lot of people should get the credit and why both Smith and Ryan are practically bit players in the scheme of things. If Wander Javier turns out to be a stud, and you start to obsess about crediting Ryan for signing him (now THAT'S funny!), I'm gonna be there.

What an odd debate. Smith was willing to gamble while Ryan wanted the low/risk high reward victories. But Both were bad GMs and both made horrible decisions as well as a few good ones.

Twins fans just be should be hoping the Boy King Falvey does better.

What an odd debate. Smith was willing to gamble while Ryan wanted the low/risk high reward victories. But Both were bad GMs and both made horrible decisions as well as a few good ones.
Twins fans just be should be hoping the Boy King Falvey does better.

You are incorrect in isolating the risk decision regarding international signings to Smith's desk. If it had been entirely up to Smith, Sano would not have happened. But I generally agree that Smith was a risk-taker and Ryan was not.

We share hope about Falvey. One of the first things he will do is to isolate the Twin's historical talent evaluation decisions from other contributing factors to the failings. It is my opinion, based among other things on a detailed analysis of the talent originally acquired by each team and either retained on their own 40-man roster or otherwise now occupying a spot on another team's 40-man roster, that Falvey will conclude that the organization is actually pretty good at identifying and procuring talent. He'll quickly turn his attention to the actual problems.

You are incorrect in isolating the risk decision regarding international signings to Smith's desk. If it had been entirely up to Smith, Sano would not have happened..

Oh my. You are a dead ended aren't you?

I doubt Ryan would've spent that money on Sano while Smith did. But in the end who cares? Both deserved to be fired and hopefully they both never come back.