The big issue to me with this type of analysis is that it only really covers the "nature" part of the equation and ignores the "nurture".
This is a fair (and I think true) point. But a comprehensive analysis of the MiL system wasn't what I was getting at.
The point is the talent gap.
The Cherrington years 2012-2015 saw a number of Epstein graduates break into MLB - Boegarts, JBJ, Iglesias, Workman, Middlebrooks, Mookie, Vazquez, Barnes, Swihart, Travis Shaw. Many of those guys would feature in the 2018 club.
In the DD years, 2015-2019 you can add Benintendi, Devers, and E-Rod as Cherrington contributors. But not really much more than that. In
2015, these guys were all on the ML club at age 25 and younger: JBJ, Barnes, Vazquez, Swihart, Bogaerts, Betts, E-Rod. (And with the exception of the last they're all Epstein guys.)
DD traded Moncada and Kopesh (selling high on both) for Sale. Same with Espinosa for Pomeranz. And Margot (Esptein) for Kimbrel. (I think those are the kinds of moves that weren't seen from Cherrington or Bloom (Schwarber excepted.))
All well and good and 2018 was glorious. But check out how the MiL talent rolls in.
2016: Benintendi.
2017: Devers.
2018: Nobody (call ups include the likes of Sam Travis and Tzu-Wei-Lin)
2019: Nobody (Chavis and Travis)
2020: Houck, Verdugo, Dalbec, (and Chavis still). At this point the FA clock is starting to tick on the Epstein talents. DD is out, and Bloom is in. Bloom is starting to harvest the top of the DD classes, but it's thin and there's been a general dearth of talent in the system since 2016.
Did we have any decent Cherrington pitching at all come up from 2016 - 2019? (Owens and Johnson were Epstein guys.) I can only think of guys like Darwinzon, Bobby Poyner and Jalen Beeks. In fact, by October of 2018, the farm was looking pretty bare. These were the top prospects via soxprospects: Chavis, Casas, Groome, Dalbec, Hernandez, Houck, Mata, Flores, Chatham, Feltman. The good ones are DD picks.
So the point is this. Cherrington's MiL system didn't seem to stop the development of good players, but his drafting, even with high picks, sucked. DD flipped some fundamentally flawed players for talent needed to win in 2018-19, plus he restocked the system. And his MiL system developed good players.
But that talent gap was felt hardest between 2018-2020. Personally, I don't think that's on DD. Nobody's lamenting Moncada, Kopech, or Anderson as "the ones who got away" - or even as "well, talent costs talent, and we did win the WS." They were relative train-robberies. I think it's on Cherrington.
Bloom rode the talent-wave that was in DD's MiL system by not trading them: Casas, Dalbec, Duran, Houck, Murphy. So he wasn't quite starting from scratch, in that there were pieces there. But his drafts look very very promising.