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BA: 2014 Reds Top 10 Prospects
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JohnU
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Prospects are but one way to measure a team's chances of success. You deal from strength, execute in fundamentals and try to minimize weaknesses.
What has bothered me about the Reds approach under Jocketty is that the good talent waits and waits and waits and waits and gets 12 at-bats in September or 56 at-bats in March. After that, they lose their intensity and waste away in the minors.
St. Louis, meanwhile, is teaching its pitchers to perform at the TOP level, not just the next level. For the Reds, a guy goes from Billings to Dayton to Bakersfield to Pensacola to Louisville and by the time he's 26 years old, he's no longer a prospect or even decent trade bait.
Why did we have to put Cesar Izturis or Jack Hannahan on the big club? Why can't we just ... stop with that?
Our Reds farm system is no worse than anybody else's ... but it doesn't matter if these guys are going to come to spring training and play down to the last week, then get shipped out, never heard from again unless it's Lutz for 34 games, Nefi Soto for a dozen, or Mike WTF Costanzo.
Or Corky Miller.
What has bothered me about the Reds approach under Jocketty is that the good talent waits and waits and waits and waits and gets 12 at-bats in September or 56 at-bats in March. After that, they lose their intensity and waste away in the minors.
St. Louis, meanwhile, is teaching its pitchers to perform at the TOP level, not just the next level. For the Reds, a guy goes from Billings to Dayton to Bakersfield to Pensacola to Louisville and by the time he's 26 years old, he's no longer a prospect or even decent trade bait.
Why did we have to put Cesar Izturis or Jack Hannahan on the big club? Why can't we just ... stop with that?
Our Reds farm system is no worse than anybody else's ... but it doesn't matter if these guys are going to come to spring training and play down to the last week, then get shipped out, never heard from again unless it's Lutz for 34 games, Nefi Soto for a dozen, or Mike WTF Costanzo.
Or Corky Miller.
Redsfan1507
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I think a systems farm is judged too much by the big club, when in fact, most of the farm isn't seen on the hometown MLB field. A lot of players get traded in the minors, who get traded for other minor leaguers who get traded for players that wind up on someone's MLB team. Some just full a double-A roster spot so a future MLB player can actually play the position he winds up occupying in MLB, or proves he can't. The best instructors in the farm can't turn dung into diamonds...so the farm has to draft and trade for talent. They have to stay healthy and progress. There has to be a spot open, or made open when that player is better than a current player. Odds arent in their favor.
In order gor most fans to think a prospect is valuable, they have to have MLB success, which depending in the player, team, role and goals of the team, may mean different things. You may not think that a utility infielder that hits .205 in 50 games is success, but someone has to fill those innings, and since the minimum salary is about like the President of the USA, I'd say his family calls that success. One in a thousand even make it to MLB and it may be more likely to win the lottery than win the NL MVP.
If one of the Reds farmhands winds up being Jay Bruce, on a team that wins, the farm is deemed successful. If the next Jay Bruce comes up on a team without enough talent to win, he's Gary Redus, and the farm sucks. Bruce, Votto, Cozart, Frazier, Mesoraco, Hanigan, Heisey, Cueto, Bailey, Leake, Hamilton...and the farmhands traded for Latos, Arroyo, Broxton, Marshall, Hoover, and Choo, and ones still left like Hamilton, Yorman Rodriguez, etc. tell me the farm has BEEN pretty productive.
It is not a guarantee it always will be, but at least it gives the impression that it wasn't all luck, and can be repeated...as long as they don't dump too much farm for too little help and wind up starving the farm at the same time as the big club bankrupts themselves at the MLB level. Gotta make money, too.. It's a complex equasion, and timing is a pertinent variable.
I think there appears to be insufficient position player coverage right now, but weren't Frazier, Cozart, Mesoraco and Hamilton supposed to be new answers ? They may be. I tend to discredit paying $12 M for a veteran dissapointment like Ludwick, but only because I don't see paying Heisey or Paul a fraction of that for similar production as much of a loss, but a gain in money better spent on another player, or the next Mike Trout. Unfortunately, sometimes that guy you drafted looks like Trout, but winds up just smelling like herring.
There are a few teams that can afford to spend a lot on the farm and a lot in the MLB club, every year, and they usually contend...the Cardinals for example. The Reds may go through periods where they have to choose one. That is why it's important to win, when the talent is there...and why Dusty Baker got fired. I just hope he didnt blow our opportunity. It's up to Jocketty now, to prove he didnt.
In order gor most fans to think a prospect is valuable, they have to have MLB success, which depending in the player, team, role and goals of the team, may mean different things. You may not think that a utility infielder that hits .205 in 50 games is success, but someone has to fill those innings, and since the minimum salary is about like the President of the USA, I'd say his family calls that success. One in a thousand even make it to MLB and it may be more likely to win the lottery than win the NL MVP.
If one of the Reds farmhands winds up being Jay Bruce, on a team that wins, the farm is deemed successful. If the next Jay Bruce comes up on a team without enough talent to win, he's Gary Redus, and the farm sucks. Bruce, Votto, Cozart, Frazier, Mesoraco, Hanigan, Heisey, Cueto, Bailey, Leake, Hamilton...and the farmhands traded for Latos, Arroyo, Broxton, Marshall, Hoover, and Choo, and ones still left like Hamilton, Yorman Rodriguez, etc. tell me the farm has BEEN pretty productive.
It is not a guarantee it always will be, but at least it gives the impression that it wasn't all luck, and can be repeated...as long as they don't dump too much farm for too little help and wind up starving the farm at the same time as the big club bankrupts themselves at the MLB level. Gotta make money, too.. It's a complex equasion, and timing is a pertinent variable.
I think there appears to be insufficient position player coverage right now, but weren't Frazier, Cozart, Mesoraco and Hamilton supposed to be new answers ? They may be. I tend to discredit paying $12 M for a veteran dissapointment like Ludwick, but only because I don't see paying Heisey or Paul a fraction of that for similar production as much of a loss, but a gain in money better spent on another player, or the next Mike Trout. Unfortunately, sometimes that guy you drafted looks like Trout, but winds up just smelling like herring.
There are a few teams that can afford to spend a lot on the farm and a lot in the MLB club, every year, and they usually contend...the Cardinals for example. The Reds may go through periods where they have to choose one. That is why it's important to win, when the talent is there...and why Dusty Baker got fired. I just hope he didnt blow our opportunity. It's up to Jocketty now, to prove he didnt.
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