This right here is pretty good evidence to the contrary of your position. No, my notion that veterans were favored happened right around the time I was subjected to Juan friggin Castro over Jason Bartlett. And that tendency happened time and again, some more egregious than others. We know from studies that the team promotes more slowly than any other team for the last decade as well. And lastly, citing only Correia seems a bit silly since I shouldn't have to list the names of the bottom feeders we threw before Gibson or Meyer or May the last few years. Only one of that laundry list of awful pitchers was named Kevin Correia, the other dozen or so not as much. If you could demonstrate, for example, that the team promotes players similarly to the rest of the league or is perfectly average in their promotion tendencies you might have a point. I'd agree that it may be observer bias in that scenario. But, instead, we have evidence that they are slower than everyone else. It's not perfect evidence, of course, but it's far closer to justifying my stance than yours. Also, I never called this "inept". I would call it inexplicable, however. And it's a tendency that appears to happen only to pitchers once they reach the high minors. It appears to be an organizational philosophy that I don't understand.