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Issues Producing home grown Starting pitching
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Post by bosox904 on Sept 9, 2023 16:52:05 GMT -5
Certainly Chaim's draft history is going to be scrutinized, now that we're four years in. In his first draft he took Yu-Welland and Drohan before Spencer St5rider and Bryce Elder--both NL all-stars for the Braves, taken in the 4th and 5th round respectively. There are a bunch of pitchers from that draft year who have made the big leagues. Are there ANY players Chaim has drafted that have made their major league debut? Outside of rule 5's? Not sure of the answer. Chaim isn't making draft picks. Wish everyone would realize this.
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Post by iakovos11 on Sept 9, 2023 17:11:08 GMT -5
29 other teams didn't take those guys. And every team has a site like this, people right now might be complaining on those sites. Taking both would have been amazing. Taking one would have been nice. This year showed more than ever the importance of starting pitching, particularly starters who can go deep into games. If Crawford and Houck are starters, you're unlikely to get more than five innings out of them. Best-case scenario for Gonzalez and Perales seems to be 2025, so they're going to have to go outside the organization to find a good starter or two (perferably two) or punt on next season. Not sure that response was for my comment, but it seems out of context. Anyway, sure next year is potentially a concern. So go sign a top 2-3 pitcher. I'm all in on Yamamoto. Beyond that, Wicker Man, Perales, and Monegro all have TOR (#1-3 upside) and Gambrell and Dobbins have back of the rotation upside as well. They're not all likely to achieve their upside, but I like the pipeline.
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Post by juanpena on Sept 9, 2023 17:40:18 GMT -5
It was a joke about how fans of all the other teams that missed out on them wish they had gotten them. Nothing personal.
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Post by boylstonbarhopper on Sept 9, 2023 17:43:47 GMT -5
Certainly Chaim's draft history is going to be scrutinized, now that we're four years in. In his first draft he took Yu-Welland and Drohan before Spencer St5rider and Bryce Elder--both NL all-stars for the Braves, taken in the 4th and 5th round respectively. There are a bunch of pitchers from that draft year who have made the big leagues. Are there ANY players Chaim has drafted that have made their major league debut? Outside of rule 5's? Not sure of the answer. Chaim isn't making draft picks. Wish everyone would realize this. This is such a weird take. Chaim sets the overall draft strategy, hires and supervises the personnel who implement it, almost certainly approves of the first few picks, and has ultimate authority over the team's board. He is not personally making every single pick, but he is responsible for the team's draft performance, as is every other POBO in the game. Any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous.
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Post by chaimtime on Sept 9, 2023 18:05:30 GMT -5
Chaim isn't making draft picks. Wish everyone would realize this. This is such a weird take. Chaim sets the overall draft strategy, hires and supervises the personnel who implement it, almost certainly approves of the first few picks, and has ultimate authority over the team's board. He is not personally making every single pick, but he is responsible for the team's draft performance, as is every other POBO in the game. Any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous. This is a weirder take. The scouting director has so much more expertise on these guys, since amateur scouting is so far removed from what Bloom has to do on a daily basis. Other than saying “no, I don’t think we should use a first round pick on a guy who already needs Tommy John/strikes out 30% of the time/is addicted to cocaine” or something along those lines, he has very little involvement in the particulars. Virtually every GM leaves the scouting director to pick the players they think are the right picks, because that’s what the scouting director and his large team of support staff are hired to do in the first place. Sure, he’ll probably fire the scouting director if they have a bunch of bad drafts in a row, but the idea that any GM has their hands all over the draft doesn’t even make sense. Why would the GM be wasting his time trying to differentiate between prospects who, let’s be honest, have very little shot at making the majors in the first place? He’s got an MLB team to run.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 10, 2023 6:18:17 GMT -5
Justin Steele and Logan Webb are the only homegrown starting pitchers better than Brayan Bello by bWAR this year. They definitely screwed up their pitcher evaulation system in the first half of the last decade, and they still clearly think the bats available to them in the draft are better than the arms when they end up picking, so their prospect list is hitter heavy. But the home-grown-ness of their staff is good (Crawford and Houck on top of their best pitcher) at this point, and there are interesting prospects on the horizon. This isn't an apt criticism at this point.
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Post by bojacksoxfan on Sept 10, 2023 6:36:21 GMT -5
Your missing my point. This is not just a Bloom issue. This was and has been an issue over multiple FO’s. Including those who operated during a CBA in which there were no limits on draft spending 29 other teams didn't take those guys. So, not sure how you can put that on the Sox. Even the Braves didn't in rounds 1-3, which means they got lucky. Luck happens. Luck is hugely important and its importance is difficult to define. But if we dismiss other teams' success with low acquisition cost starters like Strider, then don't we have to do the same with the Sox? (Answering my own question - yes!) The Braves were lucky to spend a 4th rd pick and a 6 figure bonus (I assume) on Strider. Otoh, the Sox were smart to spend a 5 figure bonus on Bello and have him develop into a good starter? That doesn't make any sense except as an expression of Red Sox fandom. This whole narrative that the Sox were bad developing pitching, but things are now better largely hinges on Bello going from a 5 figure afterthought signing to a quality starter. Call it luck like you called the Braves and Strider and that completely changes the narrative. The Red Sox were so bad for so long that it probably was more than just bad luck, but thankfully they are now not so bad that they can't get lucky like they did with Bello. That may be true, but it doesn't make for interesting discussions imo.
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Post by chaimtime on Sept 10, 2023 21:04:16 GMT -5
Justin Steele and Logan Webb are the only homegrown starting pitchers better than Brayan Bello by bWAR this year. They definitely screwed up their pitcher evaulation system in the first half of the last decade, and they still clearly think the bats available to them in the draft are better than the arms when they end up picking, so their prospect list is hitter heavy. But the home-grown-ness of their staff is good (Crawford and Houck on top of their best pitcher) at this point, and there are interesting prospects on the horizon. This isn't an apt criticism at this point. Do you have any more details on how they screwed up the evaluation? I remember Chris and Ian mentioning on the podcast that the Sox got obsessed with plane and thought it was the most important thing for pitchers, but I’ve never really understood how the organization would come to that conclusion. Maybe I don’t have a good understanding of what plane means, though.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 11, 2023 8:57:02 GMT -5
So as I understand -- and keep in mind that I am neither scout nor statistician, so I may not be understanding it completely -- is that in the days before we had a great analytical understanding of pitch shape and the things that go into that (extension, spin rate, etc), the Red Sox got into their head that pitcher plane was this skill that had been untapped and undervalued by the market. And there's a reason for that, as release point and arm angle do have a relationship to success. However, when you consider those without controlling for the other shaping outputs, it leads to drafting a lot of tall guys who have great release points but have straight fastballs. The textbook case to me has always been Pat Light (and I hate to make it feel like I'm dumping on Light himself, who was by all accounts a great worker and great teammate and everything you want). Light measured wonderfully in the system they were using in 2012, which is what led to the kinda curious decision to draft him as high as they did and give him a $1 million bonus. Not that Light came out of nowhere - he was rated as something like a third-round pick - but they saw the angle he was coming from and matched with his velocity and thought that he was the type of guy that was underrated. So yeah, when you go back and check out the pitchers they drafted from 2010 to 2013: Ranaudo, Workman, Barnes, Owens, Johnson, Buttrey, Light, Callahan, Ball... all came in at a tough angle, and a few had good enough command and secondaries to have a measure of success, but all with the sometimes-exception of Barnes of them had very, very hittable fastballs. Kopech was arguably in this group as well because his fastball is pretty straight, but when you throw it 103 it's a different category.
This sounds damning in hindsight, but it's also important to remember that this was sort of an in-between time analytically. Everyone had reached that remedial "Moneyball" type of conclusion that K/BB was important, you shouldn't draft a guy with a 7.00 ERA in college because he's got a great arm and the right look, that sort of thing. There wasn't an obviously-undervalued skill to exploit, so every team was digging in to try to find one. The Red Sox had thought they'd gotten ahold of one, but there were omitted variables there. The correlation between plane and success proved to not be causal.
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Post by Guidas on Sept 11, 2023 10:02:59 GMT -5
This is such a weird take. Chaim sets the overall draft strategy, hires and supervises the personnel who implement it, almost certainly approves of the first few picks, and has ultimate authority over the team's board. He is not personally making every single pick, but he is responsible for the team's draft performance, as is every other POBO in the game. Any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous. This is a weirder take. The scouting director has so much more expertise on these guys, since amateur scouting is so far removed from what Bloom has to do on a daily basis. Other than saying “no, I don’t think we should use a first round pick on a guy who already needs Tommy John/strikes out 30% of the time/is addicted to cocaine” or something along those lines, he has very little involvement in the particulars. Virtually every GM leaves the scouting director to pick the players they think are the right picks, because that’s what the scouting director and his large team of support staff are hired to do in the first place. Sure, he’ll probably fire the scouting director if they have a bunch of bad drafts in a row, but the idea that any GM has their hands all over the draft doesn’t even make sense. Why would the GM be wasting his time trying to differentiate between prospects who, let’s be honest, have very little shot at making the majors in the first place? He’s got an MLB team to run. So, by this logic, the scouting director, not Mr. Bloom, has rebuilt the farm. So, then, uh, his greatest achievement so far has been...? ADDED: And I'm being mostly facetious here. The CEO creates an organizational philosophy and installs a variety of protocols for execution of his/her philosophy. Some CEOs are much more involved than others. The honest answer here is we don't know how directly or indirectly Mr. Bloom is with draft choices. He might micromanage the process (like Cherington reportedly did) or he might just be involved in the first round and let the philosophy and personnel guide the rest. Then again, if people really think Mr. Bloom's not involved directly with the draft, then it reminds me from a part of Elmore Leonard's book Get Shorty when Chili Palmer is trying to figure out the process of creating a movie script. Another character, Bo, who wants in on a hot script tells him: Bo: "You don't even need to write it! You just come up with the idea and then you pay someone else to write it and put in the comas and shit. Get to the end and write FADE OUT and that's it." Chili: "That's it?" Bo: "Yup." Chili: "Then why do I need you?"
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Post by chaimtime on Sept 11, 2023 11:15:42 GMT -5
This is a weirder take. The scouting director has so much more expertise on these guys, since amateur scouting is so far removed from what Bloom has to do on a daily basis. Other than saying “no, I don’t think we should use a first round pick on a guy who already needs Tommy John/strikes out 30% of the time/is addicted to cocaine” or something along those lines, he has very little involvement in the particulars. Virtually every GM leaves the scouting director to pick the players they think are the right picks, because that’s what the scouting director and his large team of support staff are hired to do in the first place. Sure, he’ll probably fire the scouting director if they have a bunch of bad drafts in a row, but the idea that any GM has their hands all over the draft doesn’t even make sense. Why would the GM be wasting his time trying to differentiate between prospects who, let’s be honest, have very little shot at making the majors in the first place? He’s got an MLB team to run. So, by this logic, the scouting director, not Mr. Bloom, has rebuilt the farm. So, then, uh, his greatest achievement so far has been...? ADDED: And I'm being mostly facetious here. The CEO creates an organizational philosophy and installs a variety of protocols for execution of his/her philosophy. Some CEOs are much more involved than others. The honest answer here is we don't know how directly or indirectly Mr. Bloom is with draft choices. He might micromanage the process (like Cherington reportedly did) or he might just be involved in the first round and let the philosophy and personnel guide the rest. Then again, if people really think Mr. Bloom's not involved directly with the draft, then it reminds me from a part of Elmore Leonard's book Get Shorty when Chili Palmer is trying to figure out the process of creating a movie script. Another character, Bo, who wants in on a hot script tells him: Bo: "You don't even need to write it! You just come up with the idea and then you pay someone else to write it and put in the comas and shit. Get to the end and write FADE OUT and that's it." Chili: "That's it?" Bo: "Yup." Chili: "Then why do I need you?" I’m 99% sure we’ve had this conversation before in multiple other threads, but I’ll just reiterate here—when I give Bloom credit for rebuilding the farm, I don’t give him credit for lucking into Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony. I give him credit for the much less visible infrastructure-building he’s done that has made it possible for the organization to help unheralded guys like Luis Guerrero and Ryan Fernandez go up a velo grade upon turning pro. To extend the farm metaphor, a lot more than getting good seeds goes into a successful harvest. A farmer can control some stuff—is the soil being cared for? Is the irrigation good enough? Is he using the right fertilizers?—but they also need a bit of luck with the the weather, too. If it all comes together, they have a banner year.
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Post by bosox904 on Sept 11, 2023 16:30:07 GMT -5
Chaim isn't making draft picks. Wish everyone would realize this. This is such a weird take. Chaim sets the overall draft strategy, hires and supervises the personnel who implement it, almost certainly approves of the first few picks, and has ultimate authority over the team's board. He is not personally making every single pick, but he is responsible for the team's draft performance, as is every other POBO in the game. Any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous. Google "gms role in the MLB draft", it's a bit old, but I doubt it's changed much. This was Theo Epsteins response when he was with the Sox. "Theo Epstein -- Boston Red Sox: In some years, he will scout as few as five to 10 players. Other years, when they have multiple picks, he might see as many as 20. He has input on the first couple of rounds, but he doesn’t overrule the picks the scouts feel strongly about. Epstein will participate in the meeting and is part of the process and that is where his influence is heard. He has always viewed it as the scouting director's call, but the Red Sox usually somehow get consensus, and as GM he maintains veto power that he rarely uses. The Sox will take the best player available unless that player is simply not going to sign." Actually here's the link insider.espn.com/blog/the-gms-office/insider/post/_/id/185
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Post by jchang on Sept 11, 2023 16:33:36 GMT -5
my best stab at this. of the players we drafted and signed (per baseball-reference) between 02 to 19. ______ pitchers / position _ number 143 / 153 (Kelly is listed as SS) Bonuses: 58M / 67M ___ bWar 143 / 302
11 pitchers have produced more than bWar 4, of course, the 3 studs were drafted in 02/03/05. the rest drafted 06 and later. Of these, the best is Ryan Pressly at 10.2 (unfortunately not for us), Justin at 10.1 there were 5 position players drafted in 02-05 who produced more than bWar 4, 9 were drafted after 05.
Of the bonus babies, 1M+ (not year adjusted) 9 pitchers either bWar 1.3 (Buttrey) or less or did not make majors. 15 position players were either bWar 0.3 or less.
so, we can view this a failing to draft pitching studs after 05, or did great in drafting position stud both before and after 05. either way, lets just do the best we can drafting regardless of position, trade excess, and fill in the gaps with free agent, international etc
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Post by scottysmalls on Sept 11, 2023 17:20:17 GMT -5
This is such a weird take. Chaim sets the overall draft strategy, hires and supervises the personnel who implement it, almost certainly approves of the first few picks, and has ultimate authority over the team's board. He is not personally making every single pick, but he is responsible for the team's draft performance, as is every other POBO in the game. Any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous. Google "gms role in the MLB draft", it's a bit old, but I doubt it's changed much. This was Theo Epsteins response when he was with the Sox. "Theo Epstein -- Boston Red Sox: In some years, he will scout as few as five to 10 players. Other years, when they have multiple picks, he might see as many as 20. He has input on the first couple of rounds, but he doesn’t overrule the picks the scouts feel strongly about. Epstein will participate in the meeting and is part of the process and that is where his influence is heard. He has always viewed it as the scouting director's call, but the Red Sox usually somehow get consensus, and as GM he maintains veto power that he rarely uses. The Sox will take the best player available unless that player is simply not going to sign." Actually here's the link insider.espn.com/blog/the-gms-office/insider/post/_/id/185I generally agree but a sort of nuance is teams can't necessarily just go BPA any more given the bonus pools. So there presumably should be some input from the GM in how they allocate the bonus pool (not specific players but cases like Yorke where they were willing to go underslot and went over later). Also would add the GM has some say on the overall strategy (like James' example above of going after pitchers with a certain plane is probably something the GM would need to approve of) and we can evaluate whether the strategy itself is sound.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 12, 2023 10:00:37 GMT -5
I don't think your assumption that the GM/PBOps/CBO must be the one who sets that strategy and not the amateur scouting director is necessarily correct.
Think about it. The draft is DURING THE SEASON. The GM is paying attention to the MLB club. I'm sure he's getting reports and having meetings with these folks and setting, to some degree, general philosophies, but their job is to put people in place who will implement those philosophies. Yes, the buck stops with the top person. But Chaim Bloom isn't the one picking Kyle Teel over Arjun Nimmala or something.
I distinctly recall a war room video from the 2013 draft and Cherington is in there basically saying if Ball is the guy the staff had at the top of the board, draft him. When the amateur scouting director gets interviewed after the draft he talks about seeing guys hit, maybe with crosscheckers or relevant VPs (Pearson mentioned him and Toboni going to see Zanetello I think, this year). They're not talking about Bloom going.
Different guys may get more or less involved but just like how Bloom isn't teaching pitchers the cutter, he's not scouting 200 guys either.
Edit: and back on the cap point, it's the same thing. Bloom isn't determining what it's going to take to sign a given guy. Pearson referred to prepping for the draft with Toboni, running through scenarios, etc. Those are the guys prepped for the cap mechanations.
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Post by scottysmalls on Sept 12, 2023 11:14:47 GMT -5
I don't think your assumption that the GM/PBOps/CBO must be the one who sets that strategy and not the amateur scouting director is necessarily correct. Think about it. The draft is DURING THE SEASON. The GM is paying attention to the MLB club. I'm sure he's getting reports and having meetings with these folks and setting, to some degree, general philosophies, but their job is to put people in place who will implement those philosophies. Yes, the buck stops with the top person. But Chaim Bloom isn't the one picking Kyle Teel over Arjun Nimmala or something. I distinctly recall a war room video from the 2013 draft and Cherington is in there basically saying if Ball is the guy the staff had at the top of the board, draft him. When the amateur scouting director gets interviewed after the draft he talks about seeing guys hit, maybe with crosscheckers or relevant VPs (Pearson mentioned him and Toboni going to see Zanetello I think, this year). They're not talking about Bloom going. Different guys may get more or less involved but just like how Bloom isn't teaching pitchers the cutter, he's not scouting 200 guys either. Edit: and back on the cap point, it's the same thing. Bloom isn't determining what it's going to take to sign a given guy. Pearson referred to prepping for the draft with Toboni, running through scenarios, etc. Those are the guys prepped for the cap mechanations. I don’t think this disagrees at all with what I said. I said “has some say” on the strategy not determines it. If the head of baseball ops isn’t involved at all in strategy discussions on the draft I’d be really shocked. But it’s fair to emphasize the scouting departments primacy again. Add: picking prospects is specifically what I said they wouldn’t do. But signing off on a new trend they want to pick for might be (like the plane example or if say they identified that 6’6 guys might be a market inefficiency)
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 12, 2023 12:35:23 GMT -5
Yeah regarding your point I was originally thinking more about "how to assign the bonus pool." I think it might just be a semantic point but I'm not sure even that is what I'd say. I definitely drifted away from responding to you though!
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Post by Soxfansince1971 on Sept 12, 2023 19:10:57 GMT -5
When is the last time / has there ever been a time……when there were only 4 pitchers in the top 20 prospect list?
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Sept 12, 2023 19:26:18 GMT -5
When is the last time / has there ever been a time……when there were only 4 pitchers in the top 20 prospect list? But there are 3-4 young guys on the big club with more total promise than I can remember them having. They may not have a Clemens or Schilling, but Bello, Crawford, Houck, Whitlock… pretty good.
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Post by incandenza on Oct 14, 2023 16:50:44 GMT -5
I was just going through the 2017 draft history and was struck by the Red Sox' record from that draft:
- Tanner Houck has, to date, the highest WAR total of any first rounder from that draft, 5.7. He's fourth overall (after Daulton Varsho, Chas McCormack, and Taylor Walls). - 18th rounder Garrett Whitlock (4.9) and 16th rounder Kutter Crawford (2.3) have two of the four highest WAR totals of anyone drafted after the 13th round (the Astros have nos. 1 and 3 with 21st rounder McCormack at 7.2 and 26th rounder Josh Rojas at 3.8). Both are in the top 25 of all 2017 draft picks.
Bello was a 2017 IFA signee as well.
I don't know if you'd say the Red Sox "developed" Whitlock. But regardless, I wonder if this is the first cohort where we can say the pitching development machine has really started to have some success following the long fallow period. Buchholz was drafted in 2005 and Masterson in '06, so I think it makes sense to say that it was a nice round decade of futility: 2007-2016.
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