Too Many Hitters? How the Red Sox Draft Strategy Changed

jose melendez · Feb 13, 2024

I read this as "Hitler-Centric." I guess being hitter-centric is better than that, but maybe not as much as you'd think.

moondog80 · Feb 13, 2024

There has obviously been a focus on hitters in the draft. What's not clear is that this has been a mistake -- they've had a pretty good success rate, at this point in their development. Should they have drafted Jack Leiter or Kumar Rocker instead of Marcelo Mayer, just to be "balanced"? Would we be happy if they did? Which pitcher should they have picked instead of Kyle Teel? If their top picks blossom into top shelf MLB prospects, they can draft nothing but hitters every year as far as I'm concerned. The shortcoming has been not acquiring pitchers via other methods.

thehitcat · Feb 13, 2024

jose melendez said:
I read this as "Hitler-Centric." I guess being hitter-centric is better than that, but maybe not as much as you'd think.

Yeah same had to do a triple take.

To add a little something of substance, I don't think being hitter-centric in the draft and/or even in International FA is necessarily a bad thing but to make it work you need to identify and then deal from the bats you don't want to get pitching and as pitching has gotten more expensive to trade for it became harder. I think potentially some of the inactivity that people killed the last GM over had more to do with the price of pitching than any actual timidity in making deals on his part though to be fair that's pure speculation.

One question for those who have had time to dive into the article. Does Cundall point to teams that have been good at identifying pitching assets in the draft or is it purely a numbers game. Using more draft picks gives you more chances to hit which would recommend a more balanced strategy.

joe dokes · Feb 13, 2024

thehitcat said:
To add a little something of substance, I don't think being hitter-centric in the draft and/or even in International FA is necessarily a bad thing but to make it work you need to identify and then deal from the bats you don't want to get pitching and as pitching has gotten more expensive to trade for it became harder. I think potentially some of the inactivity that people killed the last GM over had more to do with the price of pitching than any actual timidity in making deals on his part though to be fair that's pure speculation.

One question for those who have had time to dive into the article. Does Cundall point to teams that have been good at identifying pitching assets in the draft or is it purely a numbers game. Using more draft picks gives you more chances to hit which would recommend a more balanced strategy.

There seems to be a relatively even distribution throughout the graph of good teams and bad. This suggests to me that the bolded is where the rubber meets the road.

Lose Remerswaal · Feb 13, 2024

jose melendez said:
I read this as "Hitler-Centric." I guess being hitter-centric is better than that, but maybe not as much as you'd think.

Says something about us that so many of us read it the same way.

Red(s)HawksFan · Feb 13, 2024

What would be interesting is to see if there's a correlation between spending draft capital (picks and bonus money) on pitching and having stronger pitching depth in-system. In other words, has spending the most bonus money during that period benefited the Royals and Pirates with better pitching prospects?

philly sox fan · Feb 13, 2024

Excellent article. I have some of the same data, but have been too lazy to post it. For a little context I'll add that historically the MLB percentage of bonus money given to pitchers is ~43% and all of Esptein, Cherington and Dombrowski where right about there. By GM/PoBO it looks like a very dramatic shift under Bloom although it's arguable that the shift really started in the last year or two under Dombrowski, which makes some sense since those decision makers didn't really change in that transition.

You can see it in some of his charts although he didn't emphasize it, but the Cubs during Breslow's time were a heavy spender on pitchers in that era. They are an example of a team that realized they had been terrible at developing pitchers, devoted significant bonus money to pitchers (as well as the infrastructure stuff no one can see) and saw significant success.

But for the Red Sox this has been a long term failure that has driven many of the long term roster problems that have existed over the last dozen years.

The Red Sox have gone from a team that spent on amatuer pitchers and failed to do so successfully which forced them to go to the trade and expensive FA market for MLB pitchers with, uh, mixed success and long term cost problems to a team that did not spend on amatuer pitchers and were forced into the trade and FA markets with minimal and limited successes. Winning some one year Wacha type deals doesn't really get you very far and nobody can sign enough of them to offset not having a pipeline of young pitchers AND pulling out of the expensive FA market to forever avoid the back end of Price and Sale type deals.

Another interesting thing on this topic is that there are teams that have done well with more cheaply acquired pitchers that they develop up. In theory these are the examples of what the Sox have been trying to do. But those teams - your Dodgers, your Guardians, your Mariners, your Rays - have not abandoned spending lots of money at the top of the draft despite being good at developing.

So you can point to the Mariners with Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo in the middle to late rds of the draft, but it's not that impressive without Gilbert and Kirby from the 1st rd.

Same with the Dodgers who developed cheap starters and picked Bobby Miller amongst others in the 1st rd. Or the Guardians who developed Bibee cheaply and drafted Gavin Williams amongst others in the 1st rd.

Expecting to have quality pitching without spending money on high round amatuer pitchers or expensive FA pitchers is virtually unprecedented. What the Sox have tried to do is extremely difficult to the point that I'd say there's enough historical data out there to have expected it to fail, which it has.

The Gray Eagle · Feb 13, 2024

Wow, a Philly Sox Fan sighting! Glad to see you posting here again.
For people who weren't around here a decade or two ago, PSF has done loads of fascinating work looking at MLB drafts over the years, among other things.

RS2004foreever · Feb 13, 2024

I went back at looked at the Fangraphs top 40 prospects from '19 to '21.
What I learned was the hit rate on pitchers in that group was terrible. A top 21 position prospect has about a 65% chance of becoming a 3 War player, and about a 30% chance of being a 5 war player.
More than half the pitching prospects were complete busts.

nvalvo · Feb 13, 2024

Great posts in a great thread, and a really useful breakdown from Ian Cundall.

In these discussions, I always want to emphasize that we have been perhaps *the* single best team (or very close to it!) at developing position players over the last few decades, so you can see the reasoning behind drafting to our strengths. But as others have noted, that plan depends on being able to swap Hanley for Beckett or Moncada for Sale every now and then: if the cost goes up to Anthony+ for Cease, the strategy doesn’t really work anymore.

But let’s all take a second and reflect on how much value the team got from our two recent number 7 picks, Trey Ball and Andrew Benintendi. That is what motivated this strategy. But if that’s not going to work, we see why Breslow’s been brought in to shake up our scouting and development in the hope that, going forward, drafting pitchers isn’t just throwing draft capital into a wood chipper.

Rovin Romine · Feb 13, 2024

Red(s)HawksFan said:
What would be interesting is to see if there's a correlation between spending draft capital (picks and bonus money) on pitching and having stronger pitching depth in-system. In other words, has spending the most bonus money during that period benefited the Royals and Pirates with better pitching prospects?

KCR's 2017 picks netted a pair of middle relief arms from further down in the draft: https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?team_ID=KCR&year_ID=2017&draft_type=junreg&query_type=franch_year&from_type_jc=0&from_type_hs=0&from_type_4y=0&from_type_unk=0
2018 looks much better; they brought up a lot of arms out of this draft, but only the uneven Brady Singer has enjoyed success.
2019 and 2020 look like busts. They've got a bunch of guys still in the minors, but no fast climbers, nor anyone posting really good looking numbers in the high minors. I just did a quick skim and looked mostly at ERA, so there may be a surprise or two in there as someone figures something out - but nothing eye-catching at the moment. Amusingly, Gant Gambrell (now in our system) looks to have some of the better numbers.

After that - it's far too soon to tell.

tbrown_01923 · Feb 13, 2024

The other side of this is the international players (starting with the period they signed Flores) - but it still looks hitter heavy... But from a count perspectiove looks like lots of investment in "cheap" arms (1/2 the signees but a fraction of the overall budget)

Here are all the pitchers (source: soxprospects):

Player

Pos.

Country

Bonus

Month

Jesus Lopez

RHP

Venezuela

Voided

May-21

Aldo Ramirez

RHP

Mexico

N/A**

Apr-18

Felix Belisario

RHP

Venezuela

N/A

Jan-24

Jose Golindano

LHP

Venezuela

N/A

Jan-24

Hansel Viola

RHP

Dominican

N/A

May-18


Erison Medina

RHP

Dominican

N/A

Jun-18

Hirokazu Sawamura

RHP

Japan

*$0

Feb-21

Chih-Jung Liu

RHP

Taiwan

$750,000

Oct-19

Dalvinson Reyes

RHP

Dominican

$450,000

Jan-24

Jedixson Paez

RHP

Venezuela

$450,000

Jan-21

Gabriel Jackson

RHP

Dominican

$350,000

Jul-18

Chansol Lee

RHP

S. Korea

$300,000

Jul-23

Alvaro Mejias

RHP

Venezuela

$300,000

Jan-21

Wikelman Gonzalez

RHP

Venezuela

$250,000

Jul-18

Adam Bates

RHP

Australia

$200,000

Sep-23

Nathanael Cruz

RHP

Dominican

$200,000

Jul-19

Cesar Ruiz

RHP

Venezuela

$200,000

Jul-19

Jean Carlos Reyes

RHP

Dominican

$195,000

Jan-21

Carlos Reyes

RHP

Dominican

$180,000

Jul-18

Shnaider Rojas

RHP

Venezuela

$175,000

Jan-24

Angel Lopez

RHP

Venezuela

$150,000

Jan-21

Francis Hernandez

RHP

Dominican

$142,000

Sep-19

Juan Medina

RHP

Venezuela

$140,000

Jan-24

Jesus Garcia

RHP

Venezuela

$130,000

Jan-23

Willian Colmenares

RHP

Venezuela

$125,000

Jan-22

Yizreel Burnet

RHP

Curacao

$125,000

Jan-21

Luis Talavera

RHP

Venezuela

$100,000

Jul-18

Brayan Aquino

RHP

Dominican

$100,000

Jul-17

Nicolas De La Cruz

LHP

Dominican

$75,000

Jan-23

Luis Perales

RHP

Venezuela

$75,000

Jul-19

Claudio Ochoa

RHP

Venezuela

$75,000

Jul-18

Charlie Zink

RHP

Curacao

$70,000

Dec-23

Argeny Sanchez

RHP

Dominican

$60,000

Jan-23

Irving Medina

RHP

Mexico

$60,000

Jul-19

Geiser Figueroa

RHP

Dominican

$55,000

Jan-23

Tejahari Trent Wilson

RHP

Bahamas

$50,000

Jan-24

Ricardo Rodriguez

RHP

Venezuela

$50,000

Jan-23

Wuilliams Rodriguez

RHP

Venezuela

$50,000

Jan-23

Stijn Van Der Schaaf

RHP

Netherlands

$50,000

Jan-23

Daniel Nunez

LHP

Venezuela

$50,000

Jul-21

Eybersson Polanco

RHP

Venezuela

$50,000

Jul-21

Stiwar Adames

LHP

Dominican

$50,000

Feb-20

Andres Ortuno

RHP

Venezuela

$50,000

Jul-18

Juan Valera

RHP

Dominican

$45,000

Apr-23

Wilfre Hernandez

RHP

Venezuela

$40,000

Jan-24

Juan D. Encarnación

RHP

Dominican

$40,000

Sep-18

Felix Cepeda

RHP

Dominican

$40,000

Jul-17

Jose Ramirez

RHP

Dominican

$40,000

May-18

Alejandro Crisostomo

RHP

Dominican

$40,000

Jul-17

Jorge Rodriguez

LHP

Mexico

$37,500

Nov-17

Dariel Morillo

RHP

Dominican

$35,000

Oct-23

Yordanny Monegro

RHP

Dominican

$35,000

Feb-20

Barbaro Pinero

RHP

Cuba

$35,000

Sep-19

Angel Bastardo

RHP

Venezuela

$35,000

Jul-18

Frailyn Sanchez

RHP

Dominican

$35,000

Aug-18

Yoandys Veraza

RHP

Venezuela

$30,000

Jan-24

Juan Henriquez

RHP

Dominican

$30,000

Jun-23

Dani Richar

LHP

Dominican

$30,000

Sep-23

Jack Bowins

RHP

Australia

$30,000

Mar-19

Nixson Munoz

LHP

Nicaragua

$30,000

Jul-17


Brayan Bello

RHP

Dominican

$28,000

Jul-17

Jomar Fernandez

RHP

Dominican

$25,000

Jan-24

Yander Bonaci

LHP

Venezuela

$25,000

Jan-24

Yodrian Beltre

RHP

Dominican

$25,000

Jul-23

Ovis Portes

RHP

Antigua & Barbuda

$25,000

Mar-22

Starlin Santos

LHP

Dominican

$25,000

Dec-19

Cesar Soto

RHP

Dominican

$25,000

Jul-19


Moises Castellanos

RHP

Venezuela

$25,000

Sep-18

Irvin Villarroel

RHP

Venezuela

$25,000

Feb-18

Smil Guzman

RHP

Dominican

$22,500

Oct-21

Efren Diaz

RHP

Venezuela

$22,500

Jul-18

Abis Prado

LHP

Venezuela

$20,000

Jan-24

Gilbel Galvan

RHP

Dominican

$20,000

Jan-24

Obed Balderas

RHP

Mexico

$20,000

Jan-23

Brahian Rijo

RHP

Dominican

$20,000

Mar-23

Luis Cabrera

RHP

Mexico

$20,000

Nov-23

Jogly Brayan Garcia

RHP

Venezuela

$20,000

Mar-21

Cristian Nunez

RHP

Dominican

$20,000

Nov-21

Carlos Velez

LHP

Dominican

$20,000

Sep-17

Luis Jerez

RHP

Cuba

$18,000

Dec-22

Madinson Frias

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jan-24

Yohandry Gonzalez

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jan-24

Jesus Travieso

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jan-24

Cesar Muzziotti

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jan-24

Marcos Almanzar

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jan-23

Yoelvin Chirino

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Apr-23

Jose Martinez

RHP

Cuba

$10,000

Jun-23

Deybi Salcedo

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-23

William Reynoso

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-23

Greider Colina

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jul-23

Yermain Ruiz

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Aug-23

Merlin Bido

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Oct-23

Jeremy Pena

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Nov-23

Jeison Payano

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Nov-23

Luis Cohen

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jan-22

Inmer Lobo

LHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jan-22

Denis Reguillo

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jan-22

Denison Sanchez

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jan-22

Ruben De La Cruz

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Mar-22

Andres Jimenez

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Apr-22

Carlos Mendoza

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

May-22

Elvis Soto

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jun-22

Cristofer Soriano

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-22

Gilberto Batista

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Nov-22

Breilin Arredondo

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Nov-22

Yeferson Vargas

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Dec-22

Yonfi Rodriguez

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-21

Anddy Flores

LHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jul-21

Ali Ascanio

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Oct-21

Junior Delanda

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Oct-21

Kawan Silva

RHP

Brazil

$10,000

Jul-19

Victor De Leon

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Dec-19

Faysel Gregorio

RHP

Curacao

$10,000

Aug-18

Adrian Hernandez

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Oct-18

Railin Perez

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Nov-18

Reidis Sena

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Dec-18

Armando Acosta

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-18


Miguel Suero

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Sep-17

Alexander Montero

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-17

Yasel Santana

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-17

Gregori Segovia

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jul-17

Jesus Rosillo

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jul-17

Robinson Parra

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Feb-18

Johan Martinez

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Jul-17

Robinson Montero

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jul-17

Angel Sosa

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Jul-17

Juan Crisostomo

RHP

Dominican

$10,000

Dec-17

Argenis Batista

LHP

Dominican

$10,000

Oct-17

Yoelvis Guedez

RHP

Venezuela

$10,000

Nov-17

Darlyn De La Cruz

RHP

Dominican

$8,000

Jan-22

Juan Morillo

RHP

Dominican

$7,500

Jul-17

Kelvin Sanchez

LHP

Dominican

$7,500

Jul-17

Aaron Liranzo

RHP

Dominican

$7,000

Jun-23

Michael Valera

RHP

Dominican

$7,000

Jul-19

Royman Blanco

RHP

Venezuela

$7,000

Dec-17

Oscar Sanchez

LHP

Dominican

$5,000

Apr-23

Enrique Carta

RHP

Venezuela

$5,000

May-23

Simon Pacheco

RHP

Venezuela

$5,000

Sep-19

Yorberto Mejicano

RHP

Dominican

$5,000

Jan-19

Bryan Lucas

RHP

Dominican

$5,000

Jul-17

Jeison Pena

RHP

Dominican

$5,000

Jul-17

Emerson Ortiz

RHP

Dominican

$5,000

Jul-17

Alberto Franco

RHP

Dominican

$5,000

Jul-17

Felix Gomez

LHP

Venezuela

$5,000

Sep-17

Cristofe Tineo

RHP

Dominican

$5,000

Dec-17

Isaias Ozoria

LHP

Dominican

$5,000

Mar-18

Eduardo Diaz

LHP

Venezuela

$3,000

Oct-19

Jose Larez

RHP

Venezuela

$3,000

Jul-17

Daury Pena

RHP

Dominican

$2,000

Jul-23

Jhon Alcantara

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Jan-24

Hanssel De Los Santos

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Mar-23

Emmanuel Polo

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Apr-23

Wandy Abreu

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Nov-21

Osvaldo De La Rosa

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Mar-18

Alvaro Leal

LHP

Venezuela

$1,000

Mar-18

Beiker Pineda

RHP

Venezuela

$1,000

Nov-17

Isaac Pinales

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Jul-17

Jose Bens

RHP

Dominican

$1,000

Aug-17

Here are the 100k+ SS (as we know they like)


Player	Pos.	Country	Bonus	Month
Edwin Darville	SS	Bahamas	N/A	Jan-24
Danny Diaz	SS	Venezuela	$1,600,000	Jul-17
Yoeilin Cespedes	SS	Dominican	$1,400,000	Jan-23
Antoni Flores	SS	Venezuela	$1,400,000	Jul-17
Fraymi De Leon	SS	Dominican	$1,200,000	Jan-22
Freili Encarnacion	SS	Dominican	$1,100,000	Jan-22
Jancel Santana	SS	Dominican	$600,000	Jan-22
Carlos Carrasquel	3B/SS	Venezuela	$590,000	Jan-24
Luis Ravelo	SS	Dominican	$545,000	Jan-21
Franklin Arias	SS	Venezuela	$525,000	Jan-23
Yoiber Ruiz	SS	Venezuela	$500,000	Jan-23
Nelfy Abreu	SS	Dominican	$450,000	Jul-17
Anderson Fermin	SS/CF	Dominican	$400,000	Jan-24
Johnfrank Salazar	SS	Venezuela	$400,000	Aug-19
Jhostynxon Garcia	SS	Venezuela	$350,000	Jul-19
Kelvin Diaz	SS	Dominican	$300,000	Jul-19
Brainer Bonaci	SS	Venezuela	$290,000	Jul-18
Noelberth Romero	SS	Venezuela	$275,000	Jul-18
Franyer Noria	SS	Venezuela	$265,000	Jan-22
Denny Daza	SS	Venezuela	$250,000	Jul-17
Eddinson Paulino	SS	Dominican	$205,000	Jul-18
Jose Mendez	SS	Venezuela	$200,000	Jul-19
Wilker Vargas	SS	Venezuela	$175,000	Jul-17
Josue Castillo	SS	Dominican	$150,000	Jan-21
Christopher Alvarado	SS	Venezuela	$135,000	Jan-24
Luis Arredondo	SS	Venezuela	$125,000	Jan-23
Kenyon Simmons	SS	Nicaragua	$100,000	Jan-24
Jhiancarlos Diaz	SS	Venezuela	$100,000	Jan-24
Allan Castro	SS	Dominican	$100,000	Jul-19

jon abbey · Feb 13, 2024

A cursory look at that chart makes me think that BOS is doing the right thing by not allocating much money towards pitchers, because teams like HOU and MIL and NYY haven't either, and they've done very well producing pitching. I think it is almost completely about development, and targeting less expensive pitchers who have the potential to be developed.

johnlos · Feb 13, 2024

moondog80 said:
There has obviously been a focus on hitters in the draft. What's not clear is that this has been a mistake -- they've had a pretty good success rate, at this point in their development. Should they have drafted Jack Leiter or Kumar Rocker instead of Marcelo Mayer, just to be "balanced"? Would we be happy if they did? Which pitcher should they have picked instead of Kyle Teel? If their top picks blossom into top shelf MLB prospects, they can draft nothing but hitters every year as far as I'm concerned. The shortcoming has been not acquiring pitchers via other methods.

Echoing this point, the plot shows KC as the team spending the most, and they hardly have more success than BOS. In fact Ragans looks better than anyone they’ve developed and they got him from TEX in a deadline deal

johnlos · Feb 13, 2024

jon abbey said:
A cursory look at that chart makes me think that BOS is doing the right thing by not allocating much money towards pitchers, because teams like HOU and MIL and NYY haven't either, and they've done very well producing pitching. I think it is almost completely about development, and targeting less expensive pitchers who have the potential to be developed.

Definitely getting a litmus test of this as of 2024 with all the resources they’ve put towards pitching development (Breslow, Bailey, Boddy, etc).

Does make me slightly optimistic for 1-2 of Houck/Whitlock/Winck figuring it out (and maybe Bello and Kutter even moreso), which would make all of our supposed skew kind of moot

Scoops Bolling · Feb 13, 2024

RS2004foreever said:
I went back at looked at the Fangraphs top 40 prospects from '19 to '21.
What I learned was the hit rate on pitchers in that group was terrible. A top 21 position prospect has about a 65% chance of becoming a 3 War player, and about a 30% chance of being a 5 war player.
More than half the pitching prospects were complete busts.

This is in line with past studies that have found that hitting prospects are much safer/more valuable than pitching prospects. The team may look to add more college arms in future drafts, but generally speaking I think the Sox have prioritized the right kinds of players in the draft.

Jimbodandy · Feb 13, 2024

jon abbey said:
A cursory look at that chart makes me think that BOS is doing the right thing by not allocating much money towards pitchers, because teams like HOU and MIL and NYY haven't either, and they've done very well producing pitching. I think it is almost completely about development, and targeting less expensive pitchers who have the potential to be developed.

Yeah that chart isn't demonstrating that the teams at the top haven't invested enough draft cash in pitching. Baltimore is also up there among the low-spenders on pitching and is universally regarded as having a top system and won 100 games last year.

TomRicardo · Feb 13, 2024

nvalvo said:
Great posts in a great thread, and a really useful breakdown from Ian Cundall.

In these discussions, I always want to emphasize that we have been perhaps *the* single best team (or very close to it!) at developing position players over the last few decades, so you can see the reasoning behind drafting to our strengths. But as others have noted, that plan depends on being able to swap Hanley for Beckett or Moncada for Sale every now and then: if the cost goes up to Anthony+ for Cease, the strategy doesn’t really work anymore.

But let’s all take a second and reflect on how much value the team got from our two recent number 7 picks, Trey Ball and Andrew Benintendi. That is what motivated this strategy. But if that’s not going to work, we see why Breslow’s been brought in to shake up our scouting and development in the hope that, going forward, drafting pitchers isn’t just throwing draft capital into a wood chipper.

What metric are you using to say that? I am not saying you are wrong but this Baseball America article has us towards the bottom. Also:

The Red Sox have the second worst pitching and a bottom half operation around hitting when Baseball America looked at it.

gammoseditor · Feb 13, 2024

TomRicardo said:
What metric are you using to say that? I am not saying you are wrong but this Baseball America article has us towards the bottom. Also:

The Red Sox have the second worst pitching and a bottom half operation around hitting when Baseball America looked at it.

The BA study uses 2012 as a starting point. Which is the year after Mookie was drafted.

But it hits on the real problem. The rules changed in 2012. Strict slotting was instituted. We can no longer spend extra in the draft like we used to.

ShaneTrot · Feb 13, 2024

I was hoping when Bloom came that he would be able to replicate the Tampa model of fixing pitchers and pitcher development. Hatfield and Cundall in the last Sox prospects podcast discussed how Worcester was a tire fire last year when it came to pitching development, every pitcher who was promoted seemed to get worse, notably Drohan. Bello and Crawford are penciled into the 2024 rotation, did they beat the Sox's poor pitching development odds?

TomRicardo · Feb 13, 2024

ShaneTrot said:
I was hoping when Bloom came that he would be able to replicate the Tampa model of fixing pitchers and pitcher development. Hatfield and Cundall in the last Sox prospects podcast discussed how Worcester was a tire fire last year when it came to pitching development, every pitcher who was promoted seemed to get worse, notably Drohan. Bello and Crawford are penciled into the 2024 rotation, did they beat the Sox's poor pitching development odds?

Crawford immediately got a ton better coming to Boston as they got him to work on a slider/sweeper to go along with his cutter. That is not the kind of work that should be happening when you GET to the majors. This is something that should have been worked on in the minors. I am not saying these pitches can't be picked up in the majors but you are hoping that the development of secondary pitches are happening in the minors.

Yo La Tengo · Feb 13, 2024

Some additional notes from the Cundall article. Notably, the majority of "valuable" (3fwar or higher) pitchers the last two seasons were not selected in the first round and the $1million threshold for signing bonuses seems like a relatively low bar to clear (and only half had a bonus of over $1 million). I suspect that the Sox focus on drafting hitters is a logical approach for all the reasons discussed above, teams are now placing an extremely high value on cost-controlled pitching to the point that trades are difficult. Which is a long way of saying that the Sox will need to sign some free agents.

EDIT: Based on this summary, it looks like drafting pitchers in the Fourth Round should be the plan moving forward, while making sure to avoid pitchers in the second round?

In 2023, there were only 28 pitchers that achieved three or more fWAR:

23 of the 28 entered baseball through the amateur draft.
11 were first-round picks (including supplemental round), one was a second-round pick, two were third-round picks, five were fourth-round picks and one each came from the fifth through eighth rounds.
Four were originally signed as international prospects (Pablo Lopez, Framber Valdez, Luis Castillo, and Freddy Peralta) and Kodai Senga was signed as a professional international free agent.

With how the draft is structured right now, bonus amounts are just as important as where these pitchers were drafted.

14 of 23 received at least $1 million in bonus money.
An additional four received between $500,000 and $750,000.
Only 5 of the 23 received a bonus of less than $500,000 (Spencer Strider $449,300, Jordan Montgomery $424,000, Kyle Bradish $397,500, Merrill Kelly $125,000, Miles Mikolas $125,000)

Looking at the pitchers with greater than 3 fWAR in 2022 reveals similar trends:

19 of 26 entered baseball through the amateur draft.
12 were first-round picks (including supplemental round), one was a third-round pick, four were fourth-round picks and one each in the sixth and eighth rounds.
12 of 19 received at least $1,400,000
An additional four received between $500,000 and $750,000.
Only 3 received less than $500,000 (Shane Bieber $420,000, Corey Kluber $200,000, Merrill Kelly $125,000)

Petagine in a Bottle · Feb 13, 2024

It’s interesting, but the fact they didn’t protect Drohan suggests they didn’t think his lack of development was completely the fault of the coaching staff or catchers. Paul Abbott, dismissed as pitching coach of the WooSox, was with the org for thirteen years - that’s a lot of different regimes so it’s kind of a weird guy to scapegoat.

Rovin Romine · Feb 13, 2024

Petagine in a Bottle said:
It’s interesting, but the fact they didn’t protect Drohan suggests they didn’t think his lack of development was completely the fault of the coaching staff or catchers. Paul Abbott, dismissed as pitching coach of the WooSox, was with the org for thirteen years - that’s a lot of different regimes so it’s kind of a weird guy to scapegoat.

What were Abbott's recent notable successes?

nighthob · Feb 13, 2024

jon abbey said:
A cursory look at that chart makes me think that BOS is doing the right thing by not allocating much money towards pitchers, because teams like HOU and MIL and NYY haven't either, and they've done very well producing pitching. I think it is almost completely about development, and targeting less expensive pitchers who have the potential to be developed.

The Yankees are always the organization that I look at when it comes to pitching. They churn out effective pitchers at a high rate without expending vast financial resources. In these days of the 20 round draft and restrictive draft pool money that’s more important than ever.

Eddie Romero’s staff has done a great job at identifying arms for Boston, but the development infrastructure has seriously lagged in Boston. I understand that part of that was the attirition of the Dombrowski years. But Bloom had four years to rebuild that infrastructure and did a mediocre job. The one really hopeful note of the new regime is how much attention that Breslow’s given to building out the pitching developmental infrastructure. I’m hopeful that the live arms they find will produce much better results now.

voidfunkt · Feb 13, 2024

nighthob said:
Eddie Romero’s staff has done a great job at identifying arms for Boston, but the development infrastructure has seriously lagged in Boston. I understand that part of that was the attirition of the Dombrowski years. But Bloom had four years to rebuild that infrastructure and did a mediocre job. The one really hopeful note of the new regime is how much attention that Breslow’s given to building out the pitching developmental infrastructure. I’m hopeful that the live arms they find will produce much better results now.

The Cherington-era didn't produce too much pitching either that I can recall... of course BC was also all in on mediocre lefties as a market inefficiency.

There's been a pretty big gap in useful pitching talent between the late 2010's and 2023... that's bad.

Jed Zeppelin · Feb 13, 2024

nighthob said:
The Yankees are always the organization that I look at when it comes to pitching. They churn out effective pitchers at a high rate without expending vast financial resources. In these days of the 20 round draft and restrictive draft pool money that’s more important than ever.

Eddie Romero’s staff has done a great job at identifying arms for Boston, but the development infrastructure has seriously lagged in Boston. I understand that part of that was the attirition of the Dombrowski years. But Bloom had four years to rebuild that infrastructure and did a mediocre job. The one really hopeful note of the new regime is how much attention that Breslow’s given to building out the pitching developmental infrastructure. I’m hopeful that the live arms they find will produce much better results now.

I’ve been on record here arguing mostly in favor of Bloom’s drafting strategy given all it takes for a pitcher to successfully turn into something at the ML level. There’s a lot you can do with a pitcher that seems to turn many from “some guy” into elite late inning options or even a legit starter. Be it mechanical, a new pitch, etc.

But even as someone fully on board with the thought process, it’s hard not to have lost faith in the ability of the previous braintrust to turn the Isaac Coffeys of the system into something real. That’s where Breslow and co. will earn their pay.

And ideally none of that improvement has to come at the expense of continuing to develop offense.

nvalvo · Feb 13, 2024

TomRicardo said:
What metric are you using to say that? I am not saying you are wrong but this Baseball America article has us towards the bottom. Also:

The Red Sox have the second worst pitching and a bottom half operation around hitting when Baseball America looked at it.

They cut that off one year after what may have been the best single draft by any team since the draft’s inception, so that will make a difference. I’m talking about since this ownership group took over.

For a long, long time, active players initially signed/drafted by Boston had the most career WAR. This has fallen off some as some key guys like Hanley and Pedroia have retired, but I think the point remains. For a long time, we were supplying more good position players than we were using ourselves, filling MLB rosters with all manner of Jeds Lowrie, Anthonies Rizzo, Santiagos Espinal, Manuels Margot, and Joshes Reddick. You look around the league, and there are a lot of Boston draftees on rosters.

We may have had a bit of a hiccup with the poor 2016 and 2017 drafts, and we were also banned from a season of international signings around that time, but 2018 draftees Casas and Duran could be the start of a new wave of drafts with big league regulars.

Petagine in a Bottle · Feb 13, 2024

There’s a reason to cut that year off though, the rules changed.

nighthob · Feb 13, 2024

Jed Zeppelin said:
But even as someone fully on board with the thought process, it’s hard not to have lost faith in the ability of the previous braintrust to turn the Isaac Coffeys of the system into something real. That’s where Breslow and co. will earn their pay.

Yeah, this is where I’m at. Boston has some quality arms in their system, but they’re way too underdeveloped. Given the amount of developmental infrastructure they’ve added in the last four months I’m hoping they can salvage the arms they have already.

Niastri · Feb 13, 2024

jon abbey said:
A cursory look at that chart makes me think that BOS is doing the right thing by not allocating much money towards pitchers, because teams like HOU and MIL and NYY haven't either, and they've done very well producing pitching. I think it is almost completely about development, and targeting less expensive pitchers who have the potential to be developed.

For lower round pitchers there seems to be two schools of thought:

Group A: Draft a guy with great raw stuff and teach him how to pitch.

And

Group B: Draft a guy who really knows how to pitch and see if you can improve his stuff.

Looking at Red Sox drafts, it felt like we were mostly drafting group A type players, while Breslow seems to want to get the some of the other kind?

Either way, if he can continue his excellence at developing pitching, and keep the success at developing hitting, the future looks bright.

JBJ_HOF · Feb 13, 2024

Group A: Draft a guy with great raw stuff and teach him how to pitch.
And
Group B: Draft a guy who really knows how to pitch and see if you can improve his stuff.

Looking at Red Sox drafts, it felt like we were mostly drafting group A type players, while Breslow seems to want to get the some of the other kind?

You have this reversed. This is how the Sox ended up with low ceiling guys like Matt Duffy and Connelly Early in the 4th and 5th rounds this year.

ehaz · Feb 13, 2024

jon abbey said:
A cursory look at that chart makes me think that BOS is doing the right thing by not allocating much money towards pitchers, because teams like HOU and MIL and NYY haven't either, and they've done very well producing pitching. I think it is almost completely about development, and targeting less expensive pitchers who have the potential to be developed.

Those are the success stories with the approach, yes. But they've been nowhere near as extreme as Boston has and the pure dollars are misleading because HOU, MIL, and NYY are not finishing in last place every year so they have less total dollars to spend on the draft in the first place.

And then you have the pitching factories like Atlanta and Cleveland pacing the field.

Leaning towards first round hitters seems like a good strategy due to the bad hit rate for pitchers. But Bloom wasn't even spending on mid tier draft guys in the $500k bonus range like Woo, Miller, Strider, Montgomery, etc. where there seems to be a ton of value. He pretty much just signed Dobbins at that range and the rest of his picks were 24 year old college relievers.

nighthob · Feb 14, 2024

JBJ_HOF said:
You have this reversed. This is how the Sox ended up with low ceiling guys like Matt Duffy and Connelly Early in the 4th and 5th rounds this year.

It’s a little of column A and a little of column B. Because they also take guys that throw harder like Dalton Rogers and Noah Dean in ‘22. Or ‘21 where they picked up guys like Hunter Dobbins, Chris Troye, and Luis Guerrero.

Rovin Romine · Feb 14, 2024

nighthob said:
Yeah, this is where I’m at. Boston has some quality arms in their system, but they’re way too underdeveloped. Given the amount of developmental infrastructure they’ve added in the last four months I’m hoping they can salvage the arms they have already.

Yep. It's really input/output stuff. If you have to stuff the "development" system with top-quality already polished arms to get anything out of it. . .perhaps you'd be better off changing the development system to maximize the assets you already possess.

I used to say they ought to spend a million or two headhunting a guy from the Braves. But Breslow/Bailey seem a decent bet to improve the org in the same way. (Fingers crossed.)

Fishercat · Feb 14, 2024

For reference, here are the WAR leaders among drafted pitchers from the 2018-2023 drafts and what their signing bonus was - stopping at players with 2+ WAR. I'm excluding Michael Harris Jr. who is listed as a pitcher in the draft dcontent but made his bones as a hitter)

Shane McLanahan (8.7 WAR, 2.23m)
Alek Manoah (7.8 WAR, 4.54m)
Logan Gilbert (7.1 WAR, 3.88m)
Spencer Strider (7.1 WAR, 449k)
Drew Rasmussen (5.9 WAR, 135k)
Brady Singer (5.8 WAR, 4.25m)
Kyle Bradish (5.4 WAR, 397k)
George Kirby (5.3 WAR, 3.24m)
Tarik Skubal (4.9 WAR, 350k)
Reid Detmers (4.3 WAR, 4.67m)
Joe Ryan (3.8 WAR, 147k)
Bryce Elder (3.8 WAR, 847k)
Tanner Bibee (3.6 WAR, 259k)
Graham Ashcraft (3.4 WAR, 248k)
Josiah Grey (3.3WAR, 772k)
Tyler Holton (3.1WAR, 144k)
Casey Mize (2.8 WAR, 7.5m)
Andrew Abbott (2.7 WAR, 1.3m)
Nick Lodolo (2.7 WAR, 5.43m)
Bobby Miller (2.1 WAR, 2..2m)
Drey Jameson (2.0 WAR, 1.4m)

Obviously this list will grow a lot as notable players from all of these classes as still working their way up - even the 2018 has someone like Grayson Rodriguez which you can reasonably assume will be a guy who breaks that arbitrary barrier in 2024, or Kris Bubic who is at 1.7 WAR, never mind the 2022 and 2023 classes, but my takeaways and maybe...points of caution surrounding the Sox prospect evaluations

A lot of the "spend' value will be weighted by first round picks and where a team is choosing. For instance, the Pirates' bonus for Paul Skenes was around 9m - the Sox picked 13 slots lower and spent that much on bonus money for Teel, Zenetello, Anderson, and Duffy combined (their first four picks). To put it differently, lets say the Sox chose an SP in the first round from 2018-2023 (they had five picks in that range), they would have spent 18m on pitchers for those five picks, putting them...7th from the bottom. Obviously other picks could have gone there but those first rounders can represent a TON of the pool for teams picking high.
At least in this sample, you seemingly do need to spend a bit to get pitching in the draft unless you have a great development team (Cleveland, Atlanta) or get fortunate. Given the spike in cost for pitching in the FA and Trade Markets (which underlies all of this), that matters a ton.
For the Sox, this really does feel like a development/talent scouting issue to me.
- 2018: 6 pitchers got a bonus over 100k, only Thaddeus Ward made the majors and is below replacement level (The Sox drafted Duran and Casas as hitters)
- 2019: 6 pitchers got a bonus over 100k (weird year, no first rounder gave more money to spread around) ,only Chris Murphy made the majors of those and was replacement level, That entire draft was a disaster.
- 2020:There were only four picks, two were pitchers both got 200k+ bonuses, neither are high end.
- 2021: 6 pitchers got a bonus over 100k, two of them have a prospect pulse (IMO)
It is absolutely a real concern that there is a lack of pitching depth and higher end talent in the system.

My thought is, that ultimately, this comes down to either being willing to sacrifice some of the higher end system talent to draft pitchers in those spots and hope it works out, or they needed to retool their pitching development pipeline, coaching, etc. to really extract value out of those 3rd-6th round arms they and every other team is taking. If it's the former, finding those right names might be a bit more challenging. For instance, the Sox took Kyle Teel 14th - which most people agreed was a major steal - the next pitcher taken was 23 (if you don't case Bryce Eldridge as a two way guy), and next was ten picks after that. An arm like Charlee Soto or Ty Floyd are both exciting but also would be a major reach. In 2022 they took Romero 24th, Noah Schultz (HS Arm) followed two picks later and the rest were in the compensatory round - Noah's been great but is still in A ball. The Sox took Mayer 4th so there were a ton of choices, but a lot of the pitchers after him are far worse outcomes already - Jackson Jobe who went 3rd is very well regarded. Several went after Yorke in 2020 and I'm sure we'd probably like Cavalli or Bobby Miller, but we'd hate a bunch of others.

I do think the Sox need to invest more strongly in pitching, the system is not developing pitching to be a competitive major league squad, but there's some nuance to it.

Too Many Hitters? How the Red Sox Draft Strategy Changed

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