2015 Farm System Rankings (Law 6th/Fangraphs 6th)

There are others that aren't quite as rosy on Fried as I've seen some projections that top him out as a 2/3 starter.

But, in the position of the Braves once they decided that competing for the playoffs was no fun and it was time to try and win 60 games per year, upside is king. All trades should be judged on trying to get as much upside as possible. A wide variety of middling potential league average players is essentially useless. Fried was the highest upside guy they acquired all off season. The issue is they had to give up a pretty good player and Fried is a long ways away from ever stepping on a Major League mound and is going through an arm surgery. So while the upside is great, he's at an age and level where guys are more likely to fail than to become a top of the rotation starter.
 
gilesfan said:
There are others that aren't quite as rosy on Fried as I've seen some projections that top him out as a 2/3 starter.

But, in the position of the Braves once they decided that competing for the playoffs was no fun and it was time to try and win 60 games per year, upside is king. All trades should be judged on trying to get as much upside as possible. A wide variety of middling potential league average players is essentially useless. Fried was the highest upside guy they acquired all off season. The issue is they had to give up a pretty good player and Fried is a long ways away from ever stepping on a Major League mound and is going through an arm surgery. So while the upside is great, he's at an age and level where guys are more likely to fail than to become a top of the rotation starter.
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Yes, last year's roster was obviously going to compete for the playoffs over and over *rolls eyes*... oh wait, they already had a losing record...
 
zbhargrove said:
Yes, last year's roster was obviously going to compete for the playoffs over and over *rolls eyes*... oh wait, they already had a losing record...
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We wouldn't have had a losing record with a competent manager. Not saying our team was something special. But any team with Heyward, Jason, Justin, Gattis, Kimbrel, Julio, and Wood is off to a fantastic start.
 
zitothebrave said:
We wouldn't have had a losing record with a competent manager. Not saying our team was something special. But any team with Heyward, Jason, Justin, Gattis, Kimbrel, Julio, and Wood is off to a fantastic start.
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Are you blaming last year completely on FG?
 
Tapate50 said:
Are you blaming last year completely on FG?
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No. Losing Medlen and Beachy and having total tank seasons from Johnson, Simmons, and others.

BUT

Fredi could have made adjustments to limit some of those sucking. When Johnson sucked, why not put Gosselin at 3B? Why instead bench TLS? Why did we not move Jason to CF and lets Joey T try out the OF? Or Cunningham? We could have done other things to play around. Fredi tanked the team when we had players palying well.
 
zitothebrave said:
No. Losing Medlen and Beachy and having total tank seasons from Johnson, Simmons, and others.

BUT

Fredi could have made adjustments to limit some of those sucking. When Johnson sucked, why not put Gosselin at 3B? Why instead bench TLS? Why did we not move Jason to CF and lets Joey T try out the OF? Or Cunningham? We could have done other things to play around. Fredi tanked the team when we had players palying well.
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Any moves made may have gotten us a couple wins at most. You realize you're advocating for Gosselin, La Stella, Terdoslavich, or Cunningham to have received more playing time. Those guys aren't going to make much of a difference one way or another. Last year's team was doomed because nobody hit. Those guys would have compounded the problem.
 
A couple wins at the right time of the year can change the team's mental outlook. We fielded a good enough team to win.

Our NL ranks for fWAR positionally was 10th and for pitching was 3rd. We weren't the Dodgers or Nationals, but we were right on par with the Cardinals, Giants, etc. our hitting did suck, but our pitching was fantastic. How do we handle that? Let's trade all our best hitters but Freeman and get one guy who may be a long term MLB position starter. It's OK though, our minors is filled with quality depth at RF and LF.
 
zitothebrave said:
A couple wins at the right time of the year can change the team's mental outlook. We fielded a good enough team to win.

Our NL ranks for fWAR positionally was 10th and for pitching was 3rd. We weren't the Dodgers or Nationals, but we were right on par with the Cardinals, Giants, etc. our hitting did suck, but our pitching was fantastic. How do we handle that? Let's trade all our best hitters but Freeman and get one guy who may be a long term MLB position starter. It's OK though, our minors is filled with quality depth at RF and LF.
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This has been hashed and rehashed, but the moves made after the season have nothing to do with how many wins we could have had last year.

WAR is a good formula but is in no way exact. Our pitching was very good. Our hitting was very bad. You're not getting much better than a .500 team with that kind of equation, no matter what you do. Terdoslavich, Gosselin, etc. are simply not difference-makers. In fact, we probably got as much value out of La Stella as we could have gotten last year.

I'm as critical of Fredi as anyone, but what we needed last year was for guys to hit the way they were capable of hitting and not to count on guys like Chris Johnson as big pieces of our lineup. There's not much Fredi can do about those.

As for the moves this offseason, what would give you confidence, bringing back Heyward, Upton, and Gattis, that we would be a playoff team? Keep in mind, you're fielding the same team we fielded last year except without Santana and Harang? We weren't getting Beachy or Medlen back, we weren't getting O'Flaherty or Venters back. I think best-case scenario for that team would be about 85 wins.

Then at best, you re-sign Heyward and don't have all that much to spend elsewhere for 2016, yet still with big holes in LF, CF, 3B, and possibly 2B, and two SP spots.

Sometimes tough choices have to be made for the long-term health of the franchise. You can't keep patching things up on a yearly basis. That's how teams like the Phillies (the Angels will be there soon) collapse.
 
As bad as we hit last year we were right there for the second wild card till another Sept. collapse. But this time we didn't have a huge cushion entering Sept. but with Fredi managing it likely doesn't matter, it sure didn't in 2011.
 
smootness said:
This has been hashed and rehashed, but the moves made after the season have nothing to do with how many wins we could have had last year.

WAR is a good formula but is in no way exact. Our pitching was very good. Our hitting was very bad. You're not getting much better than a .500 team with that kind of equation, no matter what you do. Terdoslavich, Gosselin, etc. are simply not difference-makers. In fact, we probably got as much value out of La Stella as we could have gotten last year.

I'm as critical of Fredi as anyone, but what we needed last year was for guys to hit the way they were capable of hitting and not to count on guys like Chris Johnson as big pieces of our lineup. There's not much Fredi can do about those.

As for the moves this offseason, what would give you confidence, bringing back Heyward, Upton, and Gattis, that we would be a playoff team? Keep in mind, you're fielding the same team we fielded last year except without Santana and Harang? We weren't getting Beachy or Medlen back, we weren't getting O'Flaherty or Venters back. I think best-case scenario for that team would be about 85 wins.

Then at best, you re-sign Heyward and don't have all that much to spend elsewhere for 2016, yet still with big holes in LF, CF, 3B, and possibly 2B, and two SP spots.

Sometimes tough choices have to be made for the long-term health of the franchise. You can't keep patching things up on a yearly basis. That's how teams like the Phillies (the Angels will be there soon) collapse.
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\\Posibrave high five!
 
Here's a different take on prospect lists for those interested. It uses the KATOH system to predict a player's future MLB value based only on minor league stats. Not as useful as the scouting-based lists, but an interesting take.

Here are the Braves in the top 200:

Rank Name
9 Ozhaino Albies
17 Jose Peraza
96 Christian Bethancourt
106 Jace Peterson
112 Mike Foltynewicz
152 Rio Ruiz
172 Eury Perez

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/katohs-top-200-prospect-list/
 
dak said:
Here's a different take on prospect lists for those interested. It uses the KATOH system to predict a player's future MLB value based only on minor league stats. Not as useful as the scouting-based lists, but an interesting take.

Here are the Braves in the top 200:

Rank Name
9 Ozhaino Albies
17 Jose Peraza
96 Christian Bethancourt
106 Jace Peterson
112 Mike Foltynewicz
152 Rio Ruiz
172 Eury Perez

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/katohs-top-200-prospect-list/
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It's interesting but not extremely useful to me. It's naturally going to be very conservative, and guys who have good defense/speed will always skew higher in projections like that, thus why Albies, Peraza, and Bethancourt are our top 3.
 
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