nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Of course I'm presuming you draft reasonably well.
2019 Trade Deadline Thread:
- Thread starter Southcack77
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Of course I'm presuming you draft reasonably well.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
True. We started the rebuild with a front office having very fresh memories of an entire generation of promising starting pitchers (Jurrjens, Hanson, Minor, Medlen, Beachy) reaching the majors but suffering from injury and other issues that prevented them from realizing their potential. So maybe there was a bit of over compensation from that. And I think they believed their own spin about the Braves Way and the Braves being a factory for developing pitchers. So they overinvested in pitching.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
I choose the "enhanced Pittsburgh" option.
But you're banking on otherworldly player evaluation/development as if thats assured?
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Not really. Even with the bust rate for pitchers, it should give us 2 from the early rounds every six years and 1 from the later rounds. I think in terms of 6 year cycles because those are the years before free agency. So in the "model" I have in mind we need to generate 4 starters every six years, with the fifth starter coming in the form of an external acquisition. Plus you need to generate 2-3 more replacement level guys who can fill in as needed when there is an injury.
Roughly you generate a top guy (4 WAR or better), 1 #2 (3 WAR), a couple mid rotation types (2 WAR) every six years. Plus some filler type guys. It is not an aggressive demand and if we are efficient with our drafting we can do it as I outlined.
Southcack77
Well-known member
I was referring to the complete lack of major league caliber starting pitching in their minor league system, but maybe some of what you said might be true and relevant somehow.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
The lack of pitching in the upper minors would not have been such a big deal if the attrition for that generation wasn't so high. If three of them had been available to go with Wood and Teheran, I think the front office would have been a bit more relaxed about not having a strong pipeline in the upper minors.
Can you provide any organization that has had that type of success rate using the investment startegy that you outlined for starting pitchers?
I'm not even trying to argue that you are wrong since you are typically meticulous in all your thoughts. My gut tells me that there won't be any teams that have that type of strategy yields so much fruit. Its possible that they hit randomly on a later pick but there are so many busts and the draft is such a crapshoot that I don't believe a 'stingy' pitching strategy approach will end up providing success on an average basis.
Horsehide Harry
<B>Mr. Free Trade</B>
Probably right. But Jurrjens was a relative unknown as an international signee IIRC, signed by the Tigers originally in 2003 then traded to the Braves for Edgar Renteria. Hanson was a 22nd round pick in the 2005 draft. Medlen was a 10th round pick in the 2006 draft. Beachy wasn't drafted but was signed in 2008. Only Minor was a high draft pick at #7 overall in 2009 and most in the industry thought it was a massive reach. Also, all but Jurrjens were college guys. In 2005 the Braves drafted Joey Devine in the first round at 27 and Beau Jones at 41. In 2006 they drafted Cody Johnson at 24 then Cory Rasmus at 38 and Steve Evarts at 43. In 2008 they drafted Brett DeVall at 40.
If they were self evaluating at all, I think there were more important data points than injury.
Maybe the Braves way is " when we pick pitching early, we fall on our face. But we're pretty good at finding diamonds in the rough given enough chances."
I can't really disagree too strongly with this portion of your post.
I don't think the Braves targeted pitchers. I think they weren't correctly weighing the riskiness of pitchers when assigning value to players, and that caused them to overvalue pitchers by some non-trivial degree. That overvaluation led to them acquiring more arms than was probably optimal.
The Braves are very fortunate that almost all their top position prospects have hit. Have they even had a single top position prospect flop?
It's unrealistic to expect an organization to draft so few pitchers and still have a rotation that is almost completely homegrown.
The strategy around acquiring safer position players is so you can trade them for pitchers who are finished products to help fill the holes in the roster. Let other organizations suffer through pitcher attrition, and then give them surplus position prospects when they sell the last 1-2 years of their arms.
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Horsehide Harry
<B>Mr. Free Trade</B>
Hector Olivera (ducks)
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Our success rate has tended to be average when taking pitchers in the first round (picks 1-30), well below average after that in the early rounds (from pick 31 to end of third round) and we have done pretty well with the late round and NDFA diamonds in the rough.
The area we have really lagged the industry is HS pitchers taken from pick 31 to end of the third round. Long after most other teams figured out this is a very risky part of the draft for HS pitchers we continued to take them in large numbers.
Horsehide Harry
<B>Mr. Free Trade</B>
agreed
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Here is a little more detail on what the yield has to be (and I present the numbers on an every 6 years basis)
1. Take 2 pitchers in the first round every six years. The historical yield for us and other teams is about 50%. So getting 1 starting pitcher here is realistic.
2. Take 4 starting pitchers from picks 31 to end of the third round every six years. Our yield has been poor with this group. We would have to improve in these rounds.
3. Generate 1 starting pitcher from rounds 4 onward ever six years. Over the years we have done ok here with Beachy, Medlen, Bryse Wilson, Weigel taken in this rounds.
4. Generate 1 starting pitcher from the international market every six years. Doable, but would require an improvement on our part.
We may come up a bit short. In which case I am ok with trading some position prospects to fill the shortfall. Because our yield on drafting position prospects (especially picks 31 to end of third round) has been very good. So I'd rather draft the position prospects and trade some of them.
Southcack77
Well-known member
The front office lived in the world where that attrition actually did happen though.
I'm sure they would have behaved differently if circumstances had been different.
But whatever strategy the previous front office had banked on --- perhaps only needing 2-3 starting pitching prospects to hit every 6 years -- crapped out on them.
this is a far more nuanced and seemingly accurate assessment of what happened than what is usually said around here, so bravo.
as to your question...i guess you'd have to technically throw Maitan in there, but he was gone quickly. looking back at lists, there weren't a ton in the top-10. Maitan, Olivera, Bethancourt, Davidson, Kubitza...but with those guys, especially the last two, we're getting to the point where the farm was really bad and they weren't super recent so I'll stop there.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
I think strategy should not be based upon worst case assumptions when it comes to attrition. Which is pretty much what happened with that group of pitchers.