I'll finish off with some observations on the overall state of the farm system. My first and most important point is that we do not have a surplus of pitching. There is a tendency to underestimate what is normal attrition for pitchers and pitching prospects. In planning for the future, the front office has to proceed from the assumption that attrition will be normal. If our luck in that regard turns out to be better or worse than normal, it can then adjust to those developments. But the basic plan has to be based upon normal attrition or the most likely outcome. And under normal attrition (where one bona fide starting pitching prospect gets eliminated per level each year) we do not have a surplus of starting pitching prospects. As an aside, I will note that our luck in recent years has been worse than normal. If just two of Hanson, Jurrjens, Medlen, Beachy and Minor had gone through their arb years without injury, there would have been no consideration of punting on 2015 and 2016. And I won't even mention the relievers: Venters, Simmons, Viz.
Moving on from pitching, there is one area we have a significant surplus. Middle infield. We have Simmons and Peterson in the majors (and a bench guy in Gosselin who I think is generally undervalued around here). Then Peraza, Albies, Castro, Reyes, Obregon, Camargo and some others who didn't make my top thirty: Ray-Patrick Didder, Luke Dysktra and Alejandro Salazar. I might add that normal attrition for middle infield prospects is a lot lower than for pitchers. So if there is one area where we have some trade chips it is middle infielders. We also have the option of moving some of these guys to other positions, notably third and center.
The weakest position in our system is catcher. I know you can't draft based on need, but it would be nice to pick up a bona fide catching prospect in this year's draft.
We also have an obvious need for power and more specifically right-handed power in our system. The path to the majors for that type of player would appear to be at third or a corner outfield spot. Maybe Dustin Peterson turns out to be that type of player, but I'm not sold yet.
There will be some financial flexbility at the major league level to use payroll to fill in the areas where the farm is not producing what the team needs. The obvious areas where we could spend some dinero over the next two years are catcher, left, and third. We are also likely to make a couple moves to pick up veteran relievers like we did with Grilli and Joe Johnson this past off-season.
