Klesko - 5th Round (1989)
Houston - 1st Round 27 career AB with Braves, bust (1989)
Chipper - 1st Round #1 pick (1990)
Lopez - International Signing (1987)
Mike Kelly - 1st round, 200 career AB with Braves, bust (1991)
Mitchell -- Keith? 4th round, 66 career AB with Braves, bust (1987)
Nieves, ---Melvin? Int'l signing 19 AB with Braves, (1988)
Williams - Glenn? Int'l free agent - never had an AB with Braves, BUST (1993)
Andruw Jones - Int'l signing (1993)
Jermaine Dye - 17th rounder (1993)
Damon Hollins - 4th round, 37 career ab (1992)
Bobby Smith - 11th round (1992)
So, first your lists includes players acquired between 1987 and 1993, which is quite a long while.
Second, a lot of these guys are listed in a given year because they were recent high draft picks, not because they were stars.
Third, the contributors were Klesko (5th round), Chipper (1st Round, #1) Lopez (int'l), Andruw (int'l), Dye (17th). It's unclear how you can conclude that the Braves are really taking a different approach here. They haven't had the opportunity to draft the best player in the draft. They have in fact spent money in the international money. And its not clear what might come from the later rounds of the organizations first couple of drafts.
you just don't seem to realize or care that you are comparing a large period of rebuilding and drafting to a very short, concentrated period. And before you realistically can expect the younger assets to have seasoned.
It is not remotely apples to apples.
Two things.
1) The positional talent in the early 90's was better than what we have now. Someone said it wasn't and I was countering that point.
2) I'm aware that it can several years to get to that kind of talent stream in the minors. And you should be aware that to do that you have to target high end hitters. The Braves did that with Matian and Swanson and hopefully it continues with the draft this year.
As to point #1, you concede and I already indicated that you include seven or eight years of player acquisition in your list as opposed to two years in the current regime. That seems to negate whatever criticism might be implied in saying the Braves had better position prospects then than now. Moreover, it's not clear right now whether that is in fact true.
another conclusion one might draw from my added information would be that targeting position players high in the draft had very little correlation in the late 80s/early 90s with the Braves producing great position players.
Of the guys on your list only Chipper was a high draft pick that particularly contributed to the Braves run.
Judging from this list, you could conclude that drafting hitters in the first round was a fairly bad strategy for the Braves as the only success was the time they had their pick of any player. In fact, Between 1980 and 2001, Chipper was the ONLY first round hitter that panned out for the Braves.
Could Adam's be Kemp's replacement "if" they trade him at the deadline?
He was playing some in left for the Cardinals at the start of the year(could he be any worse than Kemp?).
He definitely covers some of the power and is a cheap option and is controlled through next year.
The actual Braves competency over that period of time seems to have been international scouting and domestic talent identification and development deeper in the draft.
Adams is remarkable.... let's trade Freddie when he's healthy
The problem with having a bad team the last few years is that there is a panic to find an every day job for a players that would be awesome bench players.
I like Adams and I like the idea of him in the Hinske role on this team.
I was pointing out yearly rankings. If you want to be technical about it of the Swanson/Albies/Acuna/Matian group then it spans 4 years not 2 as Albies was signed in 2013. If you want to include just what this FO has done then you are down to 2 players in Swanson and Matian. From
And yes Chipper was the only one that panned out. Also should be noted that Mike Kelly was their only other high draft pick from 90 onwards. Braves were generally picking last after that which does make a difference. So do you disagree that position players are better to build your team around or not? Do you agree or disagree that the Braves had better results with position players than pitchers being developed during their 90's run?
I don't really take a side as to which is the better method of building a club. I think they are equally valid approaches and clubs have succeeded both ways.
It's true the Braves farm system having produced more position players than pitchers during their run. that was not a revelation to me, having lived through that time.
It's not however true that the Braves produced those position players by emphasizing the acquisition of high round hitters or making it a priority.
I am totally content to say that we don't have near enough data to compare the 80s/90s Braves to this current rebuild. We are two years in and we have pretty much none of the results. It's pretty foolish to try and compare them right now.
the Braves very may well have more position talent in the organization right now than they did during the period you discuss despite having less time to assemble it. there just isn't really any way to say one way or the other. Probably not, but again we are talking about a decade or two of talent in comparison to three or four years and we have the benefit of hindsight on one and conventional wisdom about very young players we've never seen for the other.
So I guess nobody is missing Yepez at this point?
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Haha!! I had this feeling with Adams. I didn't want to say anything until I saw him play a few games, but I thought with all of his work loosing weight...he was ready to have a break out season. All he needed was was chance.
How funny would it be, if we gave up Yepez and Adams ended up being way more than anyone thought.