Rebuilding the farm is always the goal and inevitable. Even with a low first round pick you can strike gold, Aaron Judge, and Mike Trout were selected 32nd and 25th overall in the first round. I think the concern, or perhaps a better term the hurdle to cross is rebuilding the system under current CBA rules.
The Sox have done very well over the years to take advantage of loopholes in the draft. In the past, you could receive multiple first-round picks, and spend without much consequence. The MLB draft is a different animal in that you can draft an HS player who can elect to not sign and go to college. Some examples of guys the Sox have drafted out of highschool who didnt' sign and came back into the draft to sign much higher have been
You can't spend more than 5% over your cap without losing draft picks. This system didn't exist until recently. In a year like 2011, the Sox not only had multiple first rounds picks but they had a larger bank. They could draft Swihart, JBJ, Barnes, and Owens in the first round. That's 6.65 million dollars alone in the first round which is more money than they had to spend in 3 of the last 4 drafts overall. On top of all that they still had 750K to throw at Mookie Betts and 4 million overall outside the first round.
That type of playing field to pump talent into your system is just not there for the Sox. That doesn't mean it won't happen, that doesn't mean other big market teams aren't facing the same issue but it does raise the question as to how.....how is this going to happen. The pipeline that has fed the Sox system for years has recently been re-routed to allow smaller market teams more money and access to pump their systems with talent.
The international pool of talent has been one way the Sox had solved this issue in recent years, but they went a little too overboard and lost two years of signing players and the rules for the J2S period have changed as well.
It will be interesting to see what the Sox do going forward, perhaps they try to trade more to build their system up. Perhaps they roll out with 2 DSL teams and try to find/develop talent through numbers instead of QTY. These are 16-year-old kids by the way.
This seems to be the picture me and others have painted in the past when we've talked about a cliff! but perhaps the word cliff is a bit misleading and inappropriate as cliff implies we know what is going to happen. I suppose a better way to illustrate it would be to say we're driving down a road and rather than a cliff coming up ahead, the path has become very foggy.
1) It's a lot harder to rebuild the farm with the new rules, especially when you are winning 4-6 years in a row.
2) 5 years? If we keep every essential player who will become a FA in the next 5 years, our budget will be over $300M.
3) The window looks to be 2-3 more years, unless something happens that is not, at this time, probable.
You said it much better than I could have. NIce job!
Here's a list of players we obtained through supplemental and international picks- something that will not be so easy to do going forward, as you pointed out.
International:
Bogaerts
IGGY & Montas (Peavy > Hembree)
Lin
Margot (Kimbrel)
Moncada & Basabe (Sale)
Espinoza (Pomeranz)
Devers
Velazquez
plus others
Ellsbury (who later got us Kopech as a comp pick)
Hansen
Buchholz
Fife
Brentz
Ranaudo (R Ross)
Workman
Barnes
Swihart
JBJ
Johnson
Light (Abad)
Kopech -- our last comp pick (2014)
Analytics are playing a huge part now. Back in the day, scouts showed up, gushed or poo pooed someone and that was it. Now, theyre grading every pitch on the 20-80 scale. They have velocity, spin rates, exit velocity, launch angle, bat speed, etc. There are far more psychological aspects taken into account as well. The Yanks have been doing this for 3-4 years or so and it has borne serious fruit. I anticipate it will be copied. Also, great organizations scout their own guys more than they scout others, which is the new wave as well. It helps to know who is overhyped and primed for trade and also to identify guys who will be stars who you refuse to deal
Hal sucks
FIRST ENTRY IN ESPN'S STUFF: Keith Law on 15 guys who just missed the Top 100
http://insider.espn.com/mlb/insider/...missed-top-100
Darwinzon Hernandez, LHP, Boston Red Sox: Hernandez really doesn't have the command to start -- or to make the top 100 -- just yet, but he's left-handed, sits 93-96, shows a power breaking ball and occasionally shows an average changeup. I was a little surprised by industry support for him, given his below-average control (he has never had a walk rate below 10 percent at any level), but he's a huge kid who just turned 22 in December and his stuff keeps improving.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/stor...b-farm-systems
Red Sox Org Rank: #24
24. Boston Red Sox
2018 rank: 24
19. New York YankeesThe Red Sox's system had a brutal 2018, with Jay Groome going down with Tommy John surgery, Michael Chavis suspended 80 games for a positive drug test, Alex Scherff missing time with an oblique strain, and more injuries to top guys, while several years of drafting near the end of the first round also caught up to them. Their 2017-18 draft and international classes look strong, however, giving the system more breakout candidates than most orgs down here in the 20s have.
2018 rank: 2
The Yankees' top end has thinned out significantly, but from low-A down they at least have a strong collection of guys who show enough to grab your attention -- elite speed or power, big velocity, huge spin rates -- and create some potential trade value. Other than their top prospect, Deivi Garcia, however, just about all of their starter prospects were either hurt last year or struggled to throw strikes, and three of their best position player prospects had injury troubles too.
They will have to resort to the old "spend money they are rolling around in" strategy for a bit ... see if the IFAs hit. Obviously Casas and Gilberto Jimenez are super interesting. As I note a lot, every team faces this ... it is at least good to know there is talent coming in and the team has not gotten cheap in the IFA market. His blurb on the Brewers (#25) gets to my feelings
25. Milwaukee Brewers
2018 rank: 8
.The Brewers traded away several prospects to boost the major league roster in the past 13 months and promoted several more, which got them within a game of the World Series. As much as some fans like to dismiss prospects as "just prospects" or some sort of unknown quantity, a strong farm system has real value, and the Brewers used their farm system last year in the two best ways you can. The result, of course, is a system that's as thin as it's been in several years, with a few former top prospects still here but losing value quickly due to nonperformance
Last edited by sk7326; 02-04-2019 at 01:20 PM.
Yes, I get it, but the league rules have become harder and harder for rich and good teams to rebuild their farms. Draft slot penalties, draft slot money, Int'l signing restrictions and just plain poor draft choices due to never being bad enough to get a high round pick from time to time (like Beni).
We do have some promising prospects, but to me, most are far away.
I don't agree that Chavis is our best prospect, and although I like D Hernandez and Dalbec, they are not top 100 prospects. Houck and Chatham look like role players, at best.
Our best prospects, IMO, are these by age:
19 Casas
19 Mata
21 Feltman
20 Groome
18 Flores, Jimenez & Danny Diaz
19 Decker, Northcut & Howlett
17 Eduardo Lopez
.
Theo and Ben were able to play the "departing free agent" lottery and gain significant advantages in the draft, which is why the rules have changed. Back in Theo's Boston time, you lost a level A free agent, you got the receiving team's first rounder and a supp pick. Theo used that to his advantage. Damon, Ellsbury, etc all brought back big returns in the prospect department. The most recent CBA iteration pounds a team like the sox and for next year, the Yankees. The sox are looking likely to lose Kimbrel. Instead of getting the #31 pick in the draft (or thereabouts) for losing Kimbrel, the sox are poised to get pick #133 for losing Kimbrel. How much easier would it be to rebuild if losing Sale, Porcello and JD netted you 6 picks in the top 40 plus your own? Instead, the sox are likely to cross the final threshold, moving them out of the top 30 again and then the 3 departing players will return picks #133, 134, and 135 because the sox are over the first threshold. Rebuilding becomes very hard at that point.
What the rule changes have done is make it really hard to rebuild during a window. The sox are feeling that right now. The Yanks will feel that too, although the new CBA may bail them out.
Hal sucks
Well said, but I'm not expecting the new CBA to help the well-to-do teams. It may give players a bigger share, but that might not translate to much higher tax lines. It may focus on giving incentives for smaller teams to spend. It may greatly raise the minimum wage, restructure the pay for yo-yo players (ML-minor league back and forth players), shorten the wait for the first arb year (huge plus for every player who sticks around long enough), expand the roster to 26 players and not raise the luxury tax line at all. This would help more players than raising the luxury line by $25M. I'm not even sure raising the luxury tax line would make a big difference in salaries anyways, except for maybe 2-3 teams and 2-3 FAs per year.
That's 5 or 6 teams driving up the prices on a handful of FAs every season. Sure, they pay some mid range deals, too, but the vast majority of players never see those big paydays. Sure, when one FA gets $25M, one who is almost as good tries to get $22M and on and on, but when only 5-7 teams are spending big, the well is not deep enough to satisfy maybe 90% of the players in MLB.
Yes, the owners have "wised up," but maybe the players have (will) too.
Think of it this way, if the highest spending 5 teams all spend $30M more due to smaller or no taxes, that's $150M more. If the lower 25 teams all spend just $6M more, it's equal, but the vast majority of players get a significant raise. Going from $550K to $1.1M is a 100% raise for hundreds of players. If the players "wise up" they push for paying the bottom players much more and not touch the luxury tax limit much at all. Raising the lower spending team's budget's by $12M or more would be a windfall.
Higher minimum wage
Higher pay to yo-yo players
Arbs moved up 2 years
Free agency moved up 1 year
Possible incentives given to small market teams only if they spend more on arbs and free agency.
In the long run, most major sports leagues see the value of more parity. It's not easy to structure it to obtain it, but this may just be a side effect of evening up the pay for the lower and middle paid players in MLB.