Sox farm system competitive with producing pitchers?

All I know is not developing home grown starting pitching and then having to go out and acquire it, is expensive in every sense of the word.

Good point about Bannister. He seems to be changing the narrative at the MLB level. And he is just the tip of the spear (or maybe the feathers of the arrow guiding the pointy end) as by this time his influence is likely felt at all levels of the minors. There are some very good arms developing down there.

BTW, the NYFY, Astros, Nats and other contenders got SPs and RPs from other teams too. Who developed Scherzer, Sabbathia, Verlander, Greinke, Paxton, Chapman for example. Detroit was a star in this regard, under DDo, which is interesting.

A few thoughts that probably deserve to be flushed out a little bit more but I wanted to just put out there.

1. About 30 months ago, the Red Sox had Anderson Espinoza, Jay Groome, and Michael Kopech, who I'd have ranked in that order at the time. All were univerally well regarded, and all have gotten hurt. My guess is that's mostly bad luck. We've also speculated that maybe the Red Sox had an inkling that Espinoza was an injury risk, and that's why they dealt him when they did.

2. The Red Sox deserve a lot more credit than they get for developing Eduardo Rodriguez. He's not an ace, and he wasn't developed entirely in the system. But he was kind of going sideways in Baltimore (natch), and he was clearly an arm they had good reports on and thought they could get on track. And they did. He's a highly valuable mid-rotation starter that they traded for as a Double-A pitcher who was off track.

3. The willingness to include additional prospects in packages has hurt. This has kind of been discussed to death, but I think it's worth noting again. Maybe if they keep Carlos Asuaje, they don't need to trade Shaun Anderson. If they keep Logan Allen, maybe they can build a Pomeranz package around him.

4. The over-empahsis on tall pitchers in the draft was misguided.

FWIW it seems like the teams that develop the most SP also commit the most resources to it. The Braves have had a dozen or more highly drafted pitchers come through Rome (low-A) in recent years. The 2016 team had 4 #1 picks in their rotation. Soroka, Touki, Fried, Allard... The Yankees have 25 right handed fire ballers right now in their low minors. The Padres have a ton of arms too. The Red Sox tend to have 1 or maybe 2 high upside arms in the low minors at the same time (Espinoza and Kopech).

They developed Kopech, they just didn't keep him.

I'm not sure that I agree with either of these points really. Did we have a problem prioritizing pitcher height over other attributes when drafting? I don't really see much evidence of this in our drafting history this decade. Trey Ball comes to mind but aside from that, I don't really see it. Even with Trey Ball, you could argue that being from a cold weather state was as much of a factor (and a bad one) of him being drafted as his height.

As for relievers, Craig Hansen comes to mind, but again I don't recall this being an organizational issue. In recent years, I've actually liked the strategy to pounce a college reliever type on Draft Day 2 (Feltman, Schellenger, Nogosek).

Gotcha. I admittedly only began paying close attention to the farm system toward the end of that college reliever run.

Regarding the height thing though, I do recall some of that philosophy being talked about although I'm not entirely convinced they prioritized these guys over others who would have had been better outcomes in the majors if they had disregarded height/frame. There have been rumblings that the Sox would have drafted Sonny Gray had he been available at Matt Barnes' pick. Of the guys you listed, I actually think that is a perfectly reasonable hit/success rate among pitchers drafted late in the 1st round, 2nd round, or on Day 2 (with the exception of Ball which was clearly just a bad pick). Its hard to do these evaluations without comparing to other team's hit rates, but I'd imagine that success rate looks pretty average (and not below average).

I think where the Sox are picking has a lot to do with that (along with some bad luck). After picks 10-15 in the first round, the hit rate on quality (avg or better) players drops precipitously. Beyond that, pitchers (and particularly HS pitchers) wash out more frequently that collegiate guys. So late first/2nd round pitchers are much less likely successes than top-1st, which aren’t all that great to begin with. As for the current Sox crop, I think the “reliever profile” has to do with the overall talent level in the system. There are some high-upside guys, but their risk is also high due to major flaws (like Hernandez’s control/command, Houck’s funky delivery and lack of a real third pitch, etc.) If they were more complete, they’d be seen as top-100 guys, as likely mid-rotation starters. Groome was the exception but he got hurt, delaying his development and increasing his risk level. He has the stuff, build, mix, and command to start. Most of the “likely reliever” guys were available to the Sox because they DID have flaws that made them less projectable as starters.

Do they? Going through their pitchers who have succeeded, I don't know.
-Snell they deserve a ton of credit for finding, drafting and developing. He was a supplemental pick in 2011 (which was a deep draft, as we know), and he took a long time and a lot of coaching to get those parts in order.
-Cobb, similarly - he was a fourth round pick in 2006 who wasn't really established until 2012. But if they get credit for Cobb, the Red Sox get credit for Justin Masterson, who was drafted the same year and basically had the same career value, just truncated. It's crazy to me that Masterson never got a real shot at a relief role after washing out in '15, but maybe he didn't really want one? I digress.
-Archer was traded for in the Garza deal after reaching (and succeeding at) Double-A with the Cubs organization.
-Yarbrough came from Seatlle in the Smyly deal.
-Odorizzi had already reached the majors with the Royals before he came over in the Myers/Shields deal.
-Matt Moore has really never been good. His only 2.0+ bWAR season was 2013. He's barely better than Brian Johnson.
-Nate Karns reached the majors with the Nats before coming over in the Paulino/Lobaton deal.
-Matt Garza came in a trade for Delmon Young.

Then we're getting back to Jeremy Hellickson, a 2005 draftee (goes back to when the Red Sox were developing starting pitchers too), David Price (first overall pick in the draft back in 2007), James Shields (drafted two years before Jon Lester, in the same draft the Red Sox took Phil Dumatrait, Manny Delcarmen, and Freddy Sanchez--hard to give the current organization credit for that one).

It seems as though their success is being so cheap that they are always trading their valuable players, which generates valuable players in return. If the Red Sox were being cheap I'm sure they could get a hell of a haul of pitchers for Bogaerts and Bradley. Their major league scouting has also been good and created a lot of value - The Garza/Archer, Young/Garza, Yarbrough/Smyly, and Karns/Paulino deals were all wins, and Odorizzi arguably ended up the best player in the Shields/Myers blockbuster, though it's hard to argue the Royals lost that given the context.

I can't see why it wouldn't be doable to do some sort of statistical analysis by someone with too much time on their hands. You would need to get all the players who appeared in the major leagues over whatever time spans you want, the drafting team (or free agent team if that's your desire, the draft year and then use a baseline stat like total accumulated WAR to compare all 30 teams.

Have fun.