Reloading and Punting: Is there a Distinction?

I actually agree with the farm system being deeper because of the trades Hart made. But to me 80 maybe 90 percent of a farm system's value is tied to its elite prospects. And when I list the guys who I think are elite, they are overwhelmingly guys we drafted or signed as international free agents. Wisler is the only prospect we traded for that I think has a decent chance to be an impact player.
 
To those who think Heyward and Upton would have helped us push for the playoffs this year, can you please point me to the pitching that would have gotten us there? Assuming we were not punting, we would have likely kept Shreve and Carpenter as well, so no Banuelos, Wisler or Miller on this hypothetical roster. As inconsistent as Wisler and Banuelos have been, can you imagine who we'd be trotting out instead?
 
I always do both at the same time. That way they don't get up and try to run away.
 
Julio3000 said:
You've said on a couple of occasions that we have the deepest farm system around. Can you tell me particularly why you feel that way? Not necessarily disagreeing, just want to understand exactly what you mean.
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All I mean is that we have more guys in our system with a legitimate chance to be solid or better at the major league level than any other organization in baseball. The average farm system starts fading after the top 5 or so and has little outside the top 10 to get excited about. Our system goes at least 20 deep in guys who have a chance to be everyday MLB guys (when counting guys who have graduated this year):

Albies
Touki
Allard
Davidson
Mallex
Ruiz
Peterson
Jenkins
Banuelos
Wisler
Folty
Soroka
Riley
Yepez
Herbert
Sims
Sanchez
Fried
Bird

That's 19 names before I have to start naming anybody I don't feel 100% about putting in that group. That's crazy. Put Olivera in, and it's 20. Then throw in guys like Thurman, Hursh, Lien, Gant, Acuna, Grosser, Camargo, Castro, Salazar, Janas, Sobotka, Winkler, even Briceno, which would be a very good group of guys outside the top 10 in any system, and it's pretty nuts. We don't have the top-end guys that some others have yet, but we could easily be there in 1-2 years.

I both agree and disagree that 80-90% of a system's value is in the top few guys. While it's true that having an elite guy is better than having a good 10-20 in a system, and those are likely the guys who will provide you the most value by far, because of the bust rate of even very good prospects, it's important to have as many of those guys as you can have.

So no, we don't have several top-end guys. But we do have several guys with the talent to get there, and we have enough prospects with legitimate talent that it's likely we have a few emerge as serious impact guys.

I think it's likely we're the top system in baseball in 1-2 years.

ETA: If you add Wisler, Folty, and Olivera, MLB.com has Todd Cunningham as our 30th best prospect...a guy who put up 0.4 WAR in 27 games this year.
 
mqt said:
To those who think Heyward and Upton would have helped us push for the playoffs this year, can you please point me to the pitching that would have gotten us there?
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We made a choice to accumulate assets that we believe would help us in 2017 and beyond. If we had decided on fielding a competitive team in 2015, there were more than a few pitchers available. Just off the top of my head the following starting pitchers were traded last off-season: Eovaldi, Samardzija, Gallardo, Estrada, Haren, Heaney. Others were available. I recall the Mets trying to move one or two of Colon, Gee and Niese. The Reds made a number of their starting pitchers available. There was also the usual assortment of free agent starters, some cheaper than others and quite a few available deep into the off-season.

If we had picked up a couple of starting pitchers, we could have done so without affecting our ability to accumulate high end young talent like Albies, Allard, Soroka, Yepez and Acuna.

I'm sure someone like Peraza (to pull a completely random name out of a hat) would have fetched us a more than decent major league pitcher if we had made him available last off-season. We also had the option of trading one of Heyward, Upton and Gattis for major league pitching rather than all three for assets that for the most part were not major league ready.
 
nsacpi said:
We made a choice to accumulate assets that we believe would help us in 2017 and beyond. If we had decided on fielding a competitive team in 2015, there were more than a few pitchers available. Just off the top of my head the following starting pitchers were traded last off-season: Eovaldi, Samardzija, Gallardo, Estrada, Haren. Others were available. I recall the Mets trying to move one or two of Colon, Gee and Niese. The Reds made a number of their starting pitchers available. There was also the usual assortment of free agent starters, some cheaper than others and quite a few available deep into the off-season.

If we had picked up a couple of starting pitchers, we could have done some without affecting our ability to accumulate high end young talent like Albies, Allard, Soroka, Yepez and Acuna.

I'm sure someone like Peraza (to pull a completely random name out of a hat) would have fetched us a more than decent major league pitcher if we had made him available last off-season. We also had the option of trading one of Heyward, Upton and Gattis for major league pitching rather than all three for assets that for the most part were not major league ready.
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First, we did trade Heyward for major league pitching. Very good major league pitching. And even still, we would have had to add a pretty significant SP piece in order to field a decent rotation.

And a system of Albies, Davidson, Allard, Soroka, Yepez, Sims, and Acuna would still not be a very good one. You're completely discounting our ridiculous depth, which is mostly because of the trades we made and is the best thing about our system right now.
 
smootness said:
:

Albies
Touki
Allard
Davidson
Mallex
Ruiz
Peterson
Jenkins
Banuelos
Wisler
Folty
Soroka
Riley
Yepez
Herbert
Sims
Sanchez
Fried
Bird
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Thanks for the list. I guess I see it differently. Among the players we traded for, the only one I that I think will play a significant role in accelerating the rebuild is Wisler. I could be wrong about the others. And I'm sure you have a different take on them. That's what makes the discussion interesting. But imo the guys who will carry the rebuild forward are the draftees and guys we signed in the international market the last few years. The guys we traded for might accelerate it, but only slightly in my estimation.
 
smootness said:
You're completely discounting our ridiculous depth, which is mostly because of the trades we made and is the best thing about our system right now.
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I'm not completely discounting it, but I do appear to be giving it much less weight than you do.
 
nsacpi said:
Thanks for the list. I guess I see it differently. Among the players we traded for, the only one I that I think will play a significant role in accelerating the rebuild is Wisler. I could be wrong about the others. And I'm sure you have a different take on them. That's what makes the discussion interesting. But imo the guys who will carry the rebuild forward are the draftees and guys we signed in the international market the last few years. The guys we traded for might accelerate it, but only slightly in my estimation.
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Eh, we'll see. I love Albies, Allard, and Soroka. But I also love Touki, Riley, Fried, and Wisler. And you never know when a guy like Jenkins, Ruiz, Folty, or Peterson, with tons of talent, will put it together and take off.
 
smootness said:
All I mean is that we have more guys in our system with a legitimate chance to be solid or better at the major league level than any other organization in baseball. The average farm system starts fading after the top 5 or so and has little outside the top 10 to get excited about. Our system goes at least 20 deep in guys who have a chance to be everyday MLB guys (when counting guys who have graduated this year):

Albies
Touki
Allard
Davidson
Mallex
Ruiz
Peterson
Jenkins
Banuelos
Wisler
Folty
Soroka
Riley
Yepez
Herbert
Sims
Sanchez
Fried
Bird

That's 19 names before I have to start naming anybody I don't feel 100% about putting in that group. That's crazy. Put Olivera in, and it's 20. Then throw in guys like Thurman, Hursh, Lien, Gant, Acuna, Grosser, Camargo, Castro, Salazar, Janas, Sobotka, Winkler, even Briceno, which would be a very good group of guys outside the top 10 in any system, and it's pretty nuts. We don't have the top-end guys that some others have yet, but we could easily be there in 1-2 years.

I both agree and disagree that 80-90% of a system's value is in the top few guys. While it's true that having an elite guy is better than having a good 10-20 in a system, and those are likely the guys who will provide you the most value by far, because of the bust rate of even very good prospects, it's important to have as many of those guys as you can have.

So no, we don't have several top-end guys. But we do have several guys with the talent to get there, and we have enough prospects with legitimate talent that it's likely we have a few emerge as serious impact guys.

I think it's likely we're the top system in baseball in 1-2 years.

ETA: If you add Wisler, Folty, and Olivera, MLB.com has Todd Cunningham as our 30th best prospect...a guy who put up 0.4 WAR in 27 games this year.
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Hey, thank you for elaborating. I appreciate the list and while I see things a little differently, I agree with Sacpi that it's ultimately subjective at this point and the diversity of opinion is what makes for good discussion.

FWIW I'm excited about what we have in the low minors, but I'm a little more bearish about the frog-to-prince ratio than you seem to be. Even if you assume a higher ceiling for our MLB-ready guys, there's quite a gap before you get to anyone who may be a big-league contributor in the near future, particularly among the position players. After Mallex, there isn't much. We have high hopes for D Peterson and Rio, but they have a lot to prove before getting the mantle of potential solid big leaguers.

As for the use of the superlatives about our depth, I don't really have enough knowledge of other systems to ultimately judge, but I don't know that it passes the smell test. I know the BoSox system pretty well, since they have an affiliate in my town, and they seem to have a system that is both better at the top AND deeper than ours . . . by a big margin, if you're including recent graduates.
 
My thoughts on our system mirrors many others. I don't see a "stud" anywhere other than the lower minors. No Heyward's or Freeman's are coming.

I would have liked to seen more from the pitchers this year. They really disappointed. Doesn't mean their doomed, but I didn't see much raw stuff that made me feel confident going forward.

The lower minor do seem stacked, but I don't see any impact from them til maybe 2018 at the earliest.

I think we made a bunch of trades that gave us a lot of "depth." But I would have gladly trade some of that depth to get a stud player instead. As of said, I'm annoyed that Heyward, Upton, Gattis, Kimbrel, and Wood could not get us one top 50 prospect.
 
smootness said:
Eh, we'll see. I love Albies, Allard, and Soroka. But I also love Touki, Riley, Fried, and Wisler. And you never know when a guy like Jenkins, Ruiz, Folty, or Peterson, with tons of talent, will put it together and take off.
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I agree with this. There's a pretty high attrition rate on prospects. The goal was to accumulate as many as possible. If we were still "going for it" things would've been a lot different. There's a good chance we would have had to choose between Pache or Cruz. We may not have acquired Paroubeck, Kurcz, or made the Lastella trade to garner more slot money. Maybe we had to trade Martin and Fulenchek for complimentary parts to keep being "competitive" instead of more slot money.

I think if you do it, you do it. Trying to rebuild while still being a 1st round quality playoff team is what put us in a bad spot.
 
sturg33 said:
My thoughts on our system mirrors many others. I don't see a "stud" anywhere other than the lower minors. No Heyward's or Freeman's are coming.

I would have liked to seen more from the pitchers this year. They really disappointed. Doesn't mean their doomed, but I didn't see much raw stuff that made me feel confident going forward.

The lower minor do seem stacked, but I don't see any impact from them til maybe 2018 at the earliest.

I think we made a bunch of trades that gave us a lot of "depth." But I would have gladly trade some of that depth to get a stud player instead. As of said, I'm annoyed that Heyward, Upton, Gattis, Kimbrel, and Wood could not get us one top 50 prospect.
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Wisler was a Top 50. And Olivera. And we shipped out Peraza. So we have netted one Top 50. Plus Miller who will have significant surplus value in his arb years. But then you have to net out Wood. It really is hard to say that the trades accelerated the rebuild much.
 
nsacpi said:
Wisler was a Top 50. And Olivera. And we shipped out Peraza. So we have netted one Top 50. Plus Miller who will have significant surplus value in his arb years. But then you have to net out Wood. It really is hard to say that the trades accelerated the rebuild much.
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I recall only seeing Wisler on one top 50 list... Though you may be right.

Olivera - I can't consider a 30 year old a top prospect... just can't do it.
 
Chico said:
BA would have had him ranked at about #20 if he was eligible
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I'm aware... but I'm guessing that's based on his immediate impact. When I think of top prospects, I think of a solid 6-10 years of good production. We're simply not going to get it from Olivera. We'd be lucky to get 3, I'd guess
 
nsacpi said:
We made a choice to accumulate assets that we believe would help us in 2017 and beyond. If we had decided on fielding a competitive team in 2015, there were more than a few pitchers available. Just off the top of my head the following starting pitchers were traded last off-season: Eovaldi, Samardzija, Gallardo, Estrada, Haren, Heaney. Others were available. I recall the Mets trying to move one or two of Colon, Gee and Niese. The Reds made a number of their starting pitchers available. There was also the usual assortment of free agent starters, some cheaper than others and quite a few available deep into the off-season.

If we had picked up a couple of starting pitchers, we could have done so without affecting our ability to accumulate high end young talent like Albies, Allard, Soroka, Yepez and Acuna.

I'm sure someone like Peraza (to pull a completely random name out of a hat) would have fetched us a more than decent major league pitcher if we had made him available last off-season. We also had the option of trading one of Heyward, Upton and Gattis for major league pitching rather than all three for assets that for the most part were not major league ready.
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That's the problem - exactly who could we have traded to land those guys? Todd Cunningham?

Our Preseason BA Top 10 (before trades):

1.) Peraza

2.) Sims

3.) Bethancourt

4.) Hursh

5.) Albies

6.) Davidson

8.) Camargo

9.) Fulenchek

10.) Kubitza

Jenkins was #7 since the Heyward deal had already been made.

I think most people forget just how bad our system was. If you really wanted a board meltdown, go for it in 2015 by trading Peraza and Sims for one year of Samardzija and you'd have had it.
 
clvclv said:
That's the problem - exactly who could we have traded to land those guys?
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I offer the following scenario for your contemplation:

1) Peraza for a major league pitcher. I think that would have netted us a good one.

2) One Gattis, Justin Upton, Heyward for a pitcher. Say maybe Shelby Miller.

Btw I loved the Kimbrel trade. It netted us Wisler, who is the best of the prospects we traded for imo. It netted us the draft pick we used to get Austin Riley. It got us Maybin. And it allowed us to dump Melvin and his contract. It was an amazingly good trade.
 
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