Developing hitters

The inability to produce solid major league hitters has been a concern of mine for a while. There are obvious examples where we've succeeded (Freeman, Heyward, Escobar, etc.), but I also think about guys like Brandon Drury, who had a decent year in Danville and then did not perform well the next season in Rome. He gets traded to the D-Backs and makes a steady ascent through their system, hitting well at each stop and now looks to be a decent major league hitter.. I know the Braves have consistently had young hitters who are very aggressive. I don't know if they urge the hitters to be aggressive or if that is the innate quality of the player, but contact issues seem to crop up with those guys (thinking Cumberland and others here).

We have a decent set of hitters coming up through the minors and we'll have to see how they fare. One of my concerns with the aggressive promotion pattern is that they are sometimes throwing guys into a level where they can't consistently apply their skills, which leads them to making faulty (and perhaps too many) adjustments. I don't know if that's the case or not. I'm not a scout or player development guy, so I will let those in charge make those decisions. But I do think the "they are doing so well, let's challenge them" mentality can stunt a player's development. Their skills base is more important than their stat line when it comes to promotions. The skills base (not tools) has to be solid or guys are bound to struggle.
 
Hitters are born IMO. I don't think you can teach someone how to hit.

Developing pitchers is definitely a fair discussion to have though.
 
thewupk said:
Ranked 18th by Baseball America in 2003. Traded before 2004 season. He was highly regarded.
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Agreed - I distinctly remember complaining about trading him for Drew on the scout forums. What an awful trade.
 
thethe said:
Agreed - I distinctly remember complaining about trading him for Drew on the scout forums. What an awful trade.
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I didn't think the trade in and of itself was too bad, but the decision not to sign Drew after his monster season with us and get no draft pick compensation due to Schuerholz' disdain for the "economics of baseball" made it a total travesty. For all his physical and mental fragility, Drew was a very good offensive player even after he left the Braves.
 
Carp said:
Hanson and Minor weren't busts. They got injured. Before injury they were pretty great pitchers. Particularly Hanson.
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correct....

I do think development matters. I think, like managing, you can do more harm than you can do good. People mess with individuals to make their components more traditional and break things.

The other thing is that development is not linear. People assume everything goes up and up and up. We all the time where people develop late or develop in plateaus. Not everyone is Trout. Most are not.

The braves have a lot of other farm hands that have been good other places. The braves generate a lot of long term major league guys.

Simmons hitting is something that can happen. He can get better. I think he has a good hit tool. He sometimes gets homer happy and he doesn't walk. Maybe that has changed this year with his patience. But I always saw him as a guy who would have to babip and avg driven. That is tough. And the company line, for what's that worth, is that the Braves were concerned his D would go down with age. I don't buy that b/c his D isn't built off of great athletic ability IMO it's built of instincts and a cannon. IF he hurt his arm he could destroy all of his value.
 
50PoundHead said:
The inability to produce solid major league hitters has been a concern of mine for a while. There are obvious examples where we've succeeded (Freeman, Heyward, Escobar, etc.), but I also think about guys like Brandon Drury, who had a decent year in Danville and then did not perform well the next season in Rome. He gets traded to the D-Backs and makes a steady ascent through their system, hitting well at each stop and now looks to be a decent major league hitter.. I know the Braves have consistently had young hitters who are very aggressive. I don't know if they urge the hitters to be aggressive or if that is the innate quality of the player, but contact issues seem to crop up with those guys (thinking Cumberland and others here).

We have a decent set of hitters coming up through the minors and we'll have to see how they fare. One of my concerns with the aggressive promotion pattern is that they are sometimes throwing guys into a level where they can't consistently apply their skills, which leads them to making faulty (and perhaps too many) adjustments. I don't know if that's the case or not. I'm not a scout or player development guy, so I will let those in charge make those decisions. But I do think the "they are doing so well, let's challenge them" mentality can stunt a player's development. Their skills base is more important than their stat line when it comes to promotions. The skills base (not tools) has to be solid or guys are bound to struggle.
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There is no way to prove this, but we were a bit more patient with Freeman than some of the others and I think he benefited from that. He spent almost a full season in AAA. Btw Albies has spent a year and a half in AA and AAA. That's a good amount of time in the upper levels. There are service-time related arguments about whether he should have been called up now or sometime next year. But in terms of readiness I have no issues with him being called up now.
 
This all eventually comes back to the same argument - the Coaches/instructors/etc. can't hit or pitch for these kids. They've ALL got talent, no matter how raw that talent is. All the "teachers" can do is show them how - if they don't have the ability to turn that instruction into results, it's more than a little shortsighted to want to hang the failures on the instructors. The game is always going to be about who struggles the least and for the shortest periods - not someone who completely dominates, that just doesn't happen. Even the great Aaron Judge is human - how's he done since the break? Is it time to start firing Yankees' coaches?

That's certainly not to say that there's only one way, and the kids are idiots for not "getting it" - there are obviously Coaches who have track-records of getting better results, but that's often because people tend to gravitate to and listen more actively to someone who's had more recent success. While the message will always need tweaking from player to player, the ball and bat are still round, the plate is 60' 6" from the pitching rubber, yada yada yada.
 
Russ2dollas said:
correct....

I do think development matters. I think, like managing, you can do more harm than you can do good. People mess with individuals to make their components more traditional and break things.

The other thing is that development is not linear. People assume everything goes up and up and up. We all the time where people develop late or develop in plateaus. Not everyone is Trout. Most are not.

The braves have a lot of other farm hands that have been good other places. The braves generate a lot of long term major league guys.

Simmons hitting is something that can happen. He can get better. I think he has a good hit tool. He sometimes gets homer happy and he doesn't walk. Maybe that has changed this year with his patience. But I always saw him as a guy who would have to babip and avg driven. That is tough. And the company line, for what's that worth, is that the Braves were concerned his D would go down with age. I don't buy that b/c his D isn't built off of great athletic ability IMO it's built of instincts and a cannon. IF he hurt his arm he could destroy all of his value.
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I think its probably wise to start with the thought every organization has a baseline of competence in teaching players how to play baseball. I think for the most part players probably are who they are. Maybe some organizations are better at certain things or have particular instructors who are better than others, but I'm not sure major league teams really have the control over whether a player succeeds or fails.

I don't think many of the players in the Braves system who have come up recently really say much about the Braves ability to develop players aside from the fact that most of them have not really been Braves farmhands recently and that says something about the depletion in the system.

But Dansby Swanson struggling says very little about the Braves because he's a college kid who spent most of his short minors career with Arizona. I suspect he was a big overdraft by the D-Backs and they realized it -- which is why they were willing to move him. The Braves chose to make him a centerpiece and that may well have been a bad decision. I have always though promoting him when he was struggling in AA was a bad decision and to be honest I've never quite seen him as a star. IF he has Stephen Drew's career he should probably feel fortunate, IMO.

Folty, Newcomb, Banuelos, Wisler, Blair? These guys don't really say much about Atlanta's minor league development. The guys that they drafted and move through the org say something more, IMO. But those guys are a good ways away, IMO.
 
nsacpi said:
There is no way to prove this, but we were a bit more patient with Freeman than some of the others and I think he benefited from that. He spent almost a full season in AAA. Btw Albies has spent a year and a half in AA and AAA. That's a good amount of time in the upper levels. There are service-time related arguments about whether he should have been called up now or sometime next year. But in terms of readiness I have no issues with him being called up now.
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It's impossible to prove the negative so we just don't know if it's lack of talent or faulty instruction (or a combination). My issue isn't with Albies. Given his skill set and the fact he had over 1,700 minor league plate appearances leads one to believe that we know what we have in him. Acuna looks to be a natural, so maybe we throw the book out on him. I guess where I start to question is when Austin Riley is moved up to AA without really knocking them dead at High A. I see it more in the low minors, although they held Herbert back (rightfully).
 
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