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NL East smack talk

navamind

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Jennings out as manager, replaced with Mattingly. Lol.
 

Tai Chi≈Surfing

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• Barry Bonds will be named Marlins' hitting coach in a day or 2.

Rumor has it new Washington Mgr Dusty Baker wanted him for his team's hitting coach, but the Nats' top brass wanted nothing of the sort.

• Mark McGwire is the SD Padres new bench coach.

• When and where will Sammy Sosa resurface??


:L
 
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Johnnydollaz89

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Nats interested in structuring a cespedes deal over many years, a la scherzer deal. Talks serious.

That is a tweet from Jon Heyman.
 

dredinis21

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Nats trying to buy themselves a Championship. When are they going to figure out that building from within is the way Championships are won. Look at the last 3-4 WS. There is a reason the Dodgers and Yanks haven't sniffed a WS in years.
 

StanMarsh51

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Nats trying to buy themselves a Championship. When are they going to figure out that building from within is the way Championships are won. Look at the last 3-4 WS. There is a reason the Dodgers and Yanks haven't sniffed a WS in years.

You're confusing correlation with causation, especially when playoffs tend to be a crapshoot.

If building from within "is the way championships are won," wouldn't Billy Beane have won at least one?

Using the Yankees as an example doesn't make much sense, since the last time they won a title was right after they splurged in the free agent market to get Sabathia, Burnett, Teixeira. The past couple of years they've gotten old and been banged up...if they had a bunch of homegrown guys who were old and banged up, does that change much? Unlikely.
 
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dredinis21

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You're confusing correlation with causation, especially when playoffs tend to be a crapshoot.

If building from within "is the way championships are won," wouldn't Billy Beane have won at least one?

Using the Yankees as an example doesn't make much sense, since the last time they won a title was right after they splurged in the free agent market to get Sabathia, Burnett, Teixeira. The past couple of years they've gotten old and been banged up...if they had a bunch of homegrown guys who were old and banged up, does that change much? Unlikely.

I got you in order of bolded:

No, because Beane's flipping ML players for other team's minor league crap shoots. He's hasn't developed consistent talent from within since the Hudson/Zito/Mulder days. But when he WAS allowing his own farm to develop players with consistency, he WAS on the cusp of winning WS, he was just up against a Yanks team that grew from within better.

The Yanks have had the biggest payroll in baseball for quite a while now until LA took that over within the last couple seasons. Using the one title they have won in the last decade+, that would strike me as the outlier, not the recipe for success.

If the Yanks didn't buy/trade for their players, their farm system would be more robust and their ability to replace guys who are banged up or old would be greater. If every season, they are going after type A FA, they are losing their 1st/2nd round blue chip stars of tomorrow. I realize there are like 100 rounds in the draft, but the closest thing to surefire is your top draft picks. In today's era of kids' specialization, players in the top couple rounds seem to be more likely to be ML ready sooner. Hell, the Giants had three guys in their rotation who were in the bigs within 2-3 years of being drafted, two of which drafted out of HS.
 

StanMarsh51

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I got you in order of bolded:

No, because Beane's flipping ML players for other team's minor league crap shoots. He's hasn't developed consistent talent from within since the Hudson/Zito/Mulder days. But when he WAS allowing his own farm to develop players with consistency, he WAS on the cusp of winning WS, he was just up against a Yanks team that grew from within better.

The Yanks have had the biggest payroll in baseball for quite a while now until LA took that over within the last couple seasons. Using the one title they have won in the last decade+, that would strike me as the outlier, not the recipe for success.

If the Yanks didn't buy/trade for their players, their farm system would be more robust and their ability to replace guys who are banged up or old would be greater. If every season, they are going after type A FA, they are losing their 1st/2nd round blue chip stars of tomorrow. I realize there are like 100 rounds in the draft, but the closest thing to surefire is your top draft picks. In today's era of kids' specialization, players in the top couple rounds seem to be more likely to be ML ready sooner. Hell, the Giants had three guys in their rotation who were in the bigs within 2-3 years of being drafted, two of which drafted out of HS.


Maybe it's me, but I don't consider a bunch of first round exits for the A's being "on the cusp of winning a WS." Not to mention, they've made the playoffs in 3 of the past 4 years with many non-homegrown players, so if they were on the cusp of winning a WS in the early 2000s with homegrown players, then were on the cusp of winning one in the past few years with many non-homegrown players, which contradicts your argument.

Regarding your second point on drafting, isn't that a crapshoot often as well? Plenty of teams have top recurring top draft picks who end up being busts.

Look at the top rated prospects each year, and how many of them didn't pan out (which is easily the majority). Drafting is a skill, as merely having top draft picks doesn't mean you automatically will make great choices.
BaseballAmerica.com: Prospects: All-Time Top 100 Prospects



There's so much involved with building a championship caliber team that you can't merely say it's a function of developing homegrown talent. I mean, Boston has 3 titles in the past dozen years with many non-homegrown players. Is that an outlier as well, cause there seems to be quite of a bit of outliers.
 
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dredinis21

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Maybe it's me, but I don't consider a bunch of first round exits for the A's being "on the cusp of winning a WS." Not to mention, they've made the playoffs in 3 of the past 4 years with many non-homegrown players, so if they were on the cusp of winning a WS in the early 2000s with homegrown players, then were on the cusp of winning one in the past few years with many non-homegrown players, which contradicts your argument.

Regarding your second point on drafting, isn't that a crapshoot often as well? Plenty of teams have top recurring top draft picks who end up being busts.

Look at the top rated prospects each year, and how many of them didn't pan out (which is easily the majority). Drafting is a skill, as merely having top draft picks doesn't mean you automatically will make great choices.
BaseballAmerica.com: Prospects: All-Time Top 100 Prospects



There's so much involved with building a championship caliber team that you can't merely say it's a function of developing homegrown talent. I mean, Boston has 3 titles in the past dozen years with many non-homegrown players. Is that an outlier as well, cause there seems to be quite of a bit of outliers.

Point(s) taken. You see the A's 1st rd exits, I see them exiting having to play another home grown team backed with more money in the Yanks that won the WS. It was the inability to re-sign their own that led to the dismantling of that team.

Obviously some teams draft better then others. There are some teams that tend to see better success with their 1st/2nd round picks then others. Many factors to that, like KC was fucking terrible for so long, it's easier to find "can't miss" prospects when you are drafting from the top 5 every season. But it certainly is a skill and the best teams in baseball have that similarity in common.

I am not making the case for all or nothing. I believe that the most consistent winners have a solid core of homegrown players and supplement their roster with FA/trades. My point was that the Nats IMO were tipping the scales towards buying a Championship as opposed to developing one.
 

StanMarsh51

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Point(s) taken. You see the A's 1st rd exits, I see them exiting having to play another home grown team backed with more money in the Yanks that won the WS. It was the inability to re-sign their own that led to the dismantling of that team.

Obviously some teams draft better then others. There are some teams that tend to see better success with their 1st/2nd round picks then others. Many factors to that, like KC was fucking terrible for so long, it's easier to find "can't miss" prospects when you are drafting from the top 5 every season. But it certainly is a skill and the best teams in baseball have that similarity in common.

I am not making the case for all or nothing. I believe that the most consistent winners have a solid core of homegrown players and supplement their roster with FA/trades. My point was that the Nats IMO were tipping the scales towards buying a Championship as opposed to developing one.


Well I think part of the consistency relates to age, as many/most of the top players nowadays are signing extensions early in their career and becoming free agents later than usual, often when they're nearing the end of their primes (either age-wise or talent-wise), so the teams that acquire them aren't getting much mileage out of them.

Looking at some notable examples over recent years (Pujols, Teixeira, Ellsbury, Hamilton, Crawford, etc), these guys were signed around age 30 to long-term deals, so realistically one shouldn't be expecting too many years of production. But if they all became free agents a few years earlier, the teams obviously could've gotten more years of productivity.


So I think the main issues isn't signing guys vs bringing them up from within, but rather their age/state of their career. I mean, if a team has a homegrown guy who was in the minors for years and didn't become MLB caliber till age 29, the contribution to the team might not be any different than signing a guy with comparable skills at the same age (a guy like Vogelsong might fit this description). But if that homegrown guy is 24, signing a 30 year old guy as an alternative would make a difference because the 24 year old guy potentially has more years in him.
 

mike hunt

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A Festivus with Cespedes welcome back..
NL has some really good teams at the top and some really bad at the bottom, this should make for a great post season scramble in the NL..
 

DirtDirtDirt

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Someone tell Mets fans they lost the WS
 

navamind

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It's February 21st and the Braves and Phillies are already out of contention.
 
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