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2022-2023 National Rankings (offseason)
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Post by incandenza on Mar 23, 2023 14:13:23 GMT -5
BoSox are ranked 16th in MLB Pipeline's Farm System Rankings. "16. Boston Red Sox Top 100 Prospects: Marcelo Mayer, SS (No. 9); Triston Casas, 1B (No. 23); Ceddanne Rafaela, OF/SS (No. 86); Miguel Bleis, OF (No. 93) The Red Sox have an exciting group of Top 100 Prospects. Mayer, Casas and Rafaela all could be starting in Boston by mid-2024, while Bleis is a potential five-tool center fielder who's further away. But there's not a lot of depth behind them, especially in terms of pitching. Boston's two best mound prospects are right-hander Bryan Mata, who had Tommy John surgery in 2021, and left-hander Brandon Walter, who missed half of last season with a bulging disc in his back." Yankees: 13th Bluejays: 20th Rays: 6th Orioles: 1st www.mlb.com/news/farm-system-rankings-2023-preseason?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage A middling, top-heavy farm system with a dearth of legit starting pitching sounds about right. There are a few guys with present (Casas) and near-term - i.e. 2023/2024 (Rafaela, maybe Mayer) opportunity, but everyone else is a few years away. Also, I love my prospects, but high profile names like Kelenic and Torkleson offer some sobering examples of "can't miss ROY" candidates falling flat on their faces. They may improve in their second full year, but I'd hate to know that the Front Office is banking on certain guys to become 3.0+ WAR players more or less instantly. We'd all love it if it happens but, it doesn't always, even with the best MiLB profiles and skill sets. The pitching remains an issue and it's frustrating. Bello is a lone and very welcome success story. Everyone else in AAA/AA profiles as a 4/5/6 or reliever and the rest are just too far away to know right now. I wonder if they start following Cleveland's lead in drafting 3-5th round college pitchers with profiles that lends themselves to certain metrics that they've been able to leverage to rapid improvement. The same-old-same-old shouldn't be acceptable. I see you've shifted your complaint from "the team is too focused on adding non-top tier prospects" to "the farm system is too top-heavy."
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Post by wcsoxfan on Mar 23, 2023 15:27:40 GMT -5
A middling, top-heavy farm system with a dearth of legit starting pitching sounds about right. There are a few guys with present (Casas) and near-term - i.e. 2023/2024 (Rafaela, maybe Mayer) opportunity, but everyone else is a few years away. Also, I love my prospects, but high profile names like Kelenic and Torkleson offer some sobering examples of "can't miss ROY" candidates falling flat on their faces. They may improve in their second full year, but I'd hate to know that the Front Office is banking on certain guys to become 3.0+ WAR players more or less instantly. We'd all love it if it happens but, it doesn't always, even with the best MiLB profiles and skill sets. The pitching remains an issue and it's frustrating. Bello is a lone and very welcome success story. Everyone else in AAA/AA profiles as a 4/5/6 or reliever and the rest are just too far away to know right now. I wonder if they start following Cleveland's lead in drafting 3-5th round college pitchers with profiles that lends themselves to certain metrics that they've been able to leverage to rapid improvement. The same-old-same-old shouldn't be acceptable. Let's say Bello is a #2 starter, does that immediately make developing pitching no longer an issue? That plus Houck, plus a couple backend guys per your estimation and relievers, in short order seems pretty good for a farm system. How often should they be expected to produce a top of the rotation guy? Someone could do the math on the number of those guys in baseball and therefore the odds of any one farm producing one in any given year but it can't be common. Obviously I know with the Red Sox as a franchise it's been quite a long time since they have produced any real MLB caliber starter so it's certainly been an issue (I guess Houck is still a possibility), but I don't think the current young pitching situation is so bleak. In very simplistic terms, if a top-of-the-rotation pitcher is a top-2 pitcher on an given team (on average) and if we assume the average career is 6 years (estimates of average MLB career are 5.6 years, or less, depending on methodology), then a team should be expected to produce a top of the rotation pitcher every 3 years. How we define a top-of-the-rotation pitcher, whether a high-payroll team should be expected to be average in this endeavor (low payroll teams should have superior prospects; in theory) and how the average MLB career should be measured are all debatable. But given that players usually have 6 years of pre-free agency service and that a new pitcher every 3 years would keep 2 of these pitchers on a staff at any given time (in the hypothetical that all pitchers careers ended at exactly 6 years and pitchers' arrival is perfectly spaced) I think the nice round number of 3 is a solid rule-of-thumb. For anyone wondering, the cut-off for the #60/61 starting pitcher in baseball oscillates between 2 and 2.5 fWAR.
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Post by Guidas on Mar 23, 2023 16:22:13 GMT -5
A middling, top-heavy farm system with a dearth of legit starting pitching sounds about right. There are a few guys with present (Casas) and near-term - i.e. 2023/2024 (Rafaela, maybe Mayer) opportunity, but everyone else is a few years away. Also, I love my prospects, but high profile names like Kelenic and Torkleson offer some sobering examples of "can't miss ROY" candidates falling flat on their faces. They may improve in their second full year, but I'd hate to know that the Front Office is banking on certain guys to become 3.0+ WAR players more or less instantly. We'd all love it if it happens but, it doesn't always, even with the best MiLB profiles and skill sets. The pitching remains an issue and it's frustrating. Bello is a lone and very welcome success story. Everyone else in AAA/AA profiles as a 4/5/6 or reliever and the rest are just too far away to know right now. I wonder if they start following Cleveland's lead in drafting 3-5th round college pitchers with profiles that lends themselves to certain metrics that they've been able to leverage to rapid improvement. The same-old-same-old shouldn't be acceptable. I see you've shifted your complaint from "the team is too focused on adding non-top tier prospects" to "the farm system is too top-heavy." We already had this discussion. My contention was/is the farm is in the middle of the pack, neither great nor bad, just average (much like our Prez of Baseball Ops so far). This was Law's complaint, I believe, as well. Although he leaned more toward bottom 1/3 of the pack, which I think is a bit too low. Your top-heavy component is Casas, Mayer and Rafaela - although I still have hopes for Duran, he's not a top 100 guy here. All the other weight is below AA and subject to high volatility because of it. And, yes, I would love it if they added more than middling talent in this year's draft. MLB really blowing it by not letting teams trade picks, esp for high minors and MLB-level talent.
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Post by scottysmalls on Mar 23, 2023 17:24:29 GMT -5
Let's say Bello is a #2 starter, does that immediately make developing pitching no longer an issue? That plus Houck, plus a couple backend guys per your estimation and relievers, in short order seems pretty good for a farm system. How often should they be expected to produce a top of the rotation guy? Someone could do the math on the number of those guys in baseball and therefore the odds of any one farm producing one in any given year but it can't be common. Obviously I know with the Red Sox as a franchise it's been quite a long time since they have produced any real MLB caliber starter so it's certainly been an issue (I guess Houck is still a possibility), but I don't think the current young pitching situation is so bleak. In very simplistic terms, if a top-of-the-rotation pitcher is a top-2 pitcher on an given team (on average) and if we assume the average career is 6 years (estimates of average MLB career are 5.6 years, or less, depending on methodology), then a team should be expected to produce a top of the rotation pitcher every 3 years. How we define a top-of-the-rotation pitcher, whether a high-payroll team should be expected to be average in this endeavor (low payroll teams should have superior prospects; in theory) and how the average MLB career should be measured are all debatable. But given that players usually have 6 years of pre-free agency service and that a new pitcher every 3 years would keep 2 of these pitchers on a staff at any given time (in the hypothetical that all pitchers careers ended at exactly 6 years and pitchers' arrival is perfectly spaced) I think the nice round number of 3 is a solid rule-of-thumb. For anyone wondering, the cut-off for the #60/61 starting pitcher in baseball oscillates between 2 and 2.5 fWAR. Thanks for doing the math! I'd quibble with the idea that the average MLB career of a top 60 pitcher is 6 years though, it's probably longer than the typical average because we're selecting the good players here, but overall appreciate the effort.
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