Let's Lay Off That Throttle
- Thread starter soxhop411
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Soler is a bad outfielder but he can play there and has occasionally over the last few seasons. He's probably capable of handling the position than JDM was.
Eh let's save the money in case JMont or Snell take something short. Turner was solid but a 114wRC+ isn't blowing anyone away and it's likely to just get worse. Is Soler going to get any more than that for a 126wRC+ 6 years of youth anyway?
Is the budget that constrained that Montgomery and Turner combined would have busted it? If he was looking for a 2 year deal then sure. Again, like Montgomery, he’s a peg that fits the hole better than anyone else.
It really is going to Dalbec…. Wow.
So, the talent gap between the Red Sox and the rest of the AL East is widely known at this point. For all of the talk about how the minor league system is doing well, BA has ranked Boston’s system the 4th best in the division.
https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2024/02/red-sox-farm-system-ranks-near-middle-of-pack-in-bas-2024-talent-rankings.html
Yes, I posted something similar in the Minor League Forum. We've been led to believe they were a top ~5 system. Now all of the rankings have them middle of the pack, despite not graduating or trading anyone.
The only pitcher you can argue took a meaningful step forward last year was Kutter Crawford, and i dont think he's a rookie anymore. Of course it went down.
It's up to Breslow Pitching Factory to make something out of nothing iwth guys like Mata, Murphy, etc. or it will take another cycle to fully rebound on those ratings.
It's up to Breslow Pitching Factory to make something out of nothing iwth guys like Mata, Murphy, etc. or it will take another cycle to fully rebound on those ratings.
I can't say that I have not been disappointed with the Sox lack of spending this off season. As December turned into January I have stopped thinking that the big move is coming. With some top end starters still on the market there is a chance that one may fall to the Sox in a short term deal. One of those I will take the one year deal and return to free agencies next off season. I think that the Sox have come to the conclusion that Baltimore is going to be the top dog in the AL East for the next little while (especially now with the Burns trade) and they would not be able to compete with them by throwing money at their problems. The Oriorles have young controllable players and the Sox believe that they have to go the same route. Now for that to work all of these Sox prospects have to be the real deal!
Holy smokes. There are players to be very excited about and a fair amount at AA.
There are other rankings that think the system is very good…
Fangraphs has the Sox #2 at end of 2023 future value. Lots of value and #6 in count of prospects.
Bleacher Report has a #3 ranking this offseason.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why any Red Sox fan would not be happy about the system. Seems insane that people are looking for ways to crap on it.
Because if the system is only meh, then what have we been doing for the last 4 years? And a couple of at least decently respected rankings views the system as meh.
I don't think the Red Sox are responsible for how other teams minor league prospects fare.
Preseason predictions rankings/judgements are exactly what they are.
It really must take a lot of energy to be so negative.
The system has been consistently ranked higher each year. The system is way better than it was 4 years ago. Fangraphs search -
2020 ending
Downs
Casas
Mata
Dalbec
Potts
Song
2023 ending
Mayer
Anthony
Rafaela
Teel
Yorke
Bleis (was in top 20 prior to injury)
OMG… the system isn’t going anywhere. We’ve been lied to again. Worst system in AL East.
I can understand the complaints about spending but not the state of the farm. It’s an absolute positive and with more pitching development could be a strength.
1) I agree it is better than 2020
2) It is a positive, but that is relative to the major league roster. 3 other teams in the division have better systems - and 4 other teams in the division have better major league teams.
It doesn't take much energy at all to be negative about the Red Sox. I think it takes a ton of energy to be positive about them, because it requires mental gymnastics to get there.
Yeah, lazy people who don't expound much energy thinking seem to find it really easy to be negative, even got a new one saying so, and that he doesn't have time to his own research. Convincing stuff.
Oh, and the move FSG made yesterday will do more for the future of the Red Sox than any on-field move they could make right now. Never mind the over half a billion that is covering the left side of the infield and LF/DH . Never mind that the offseason ain't over. Never mind that money is a guarantee of absolutely nothing.
But keep that low energy negativity going. Such good reading.
I wrote in the Theo thread that it was the best piece of Sox news since the Mookie trade. For the first time in 4 years, I have optimism and hope. I’m not hell bent on being negative. I want to believe it will get better.
The combination of an ~8th to ~12th ranked system and a lousy major league roster to me indicates that in order to build a team that can compete, they will need to spend real free agent dollars. They can’t only rely on the system. With Theo back in the fold, I am hopeful this will happen. And I also recognize that it is unlikely to happen this year. So be it.
I guess we’ll see what happens over the next ~12 months. Personally, my optimism for the future doesn’t come from the minor league system, it comes from Theo being back.
Edit: said differently, yesterday’s news was the first time my attitude toward the team shifted in quite some time.
The combination of an ~8th to ~12th ranked system and a lousy major league roster to me indicates that in order to build a team that can compete, they will need to spend real free agent dollars. They can’t only rely on the system. With Theo back in the fold, I am hopeful this will happen. And I also recognize that it is unlikely to happen this year. So be it.
I guess we’ll see what happens over the next ~12 months. Personally, my optimism for the future doesn’t come from the minor league system, it comes from Theo being back.
Edit: said differently, yesterday’s news was the first time my attitude toward the team shifted in quite some time.
FWIW, Keith Law's evaluations of the Sox farm have been consistently among the lowest. Law has made it clear that his downgrading of the Sox system has been because of the lack of pitching.
Keith Law has one opinion. I can read through it and add that to other opinions that think differently.
My conclusion is the farm is much better but unbalanced in favor of hitters. I can also find evidence out there that Breslow made very good improvements to the Cubs pitching development. I can also see prior rankings that have Casas and Bello rated low… sometimes good things happen when a prospect finds a new grip, approach or pitch sequence.
No mental gymnastics required to think the Sox farm can become more balanced and even better. End of day the Sox are where and what they are - competitive team around .500 with issues.
It’s a choice to be a slightly positive or negative fan. I don’t think anyone who visits this site has blind faith in the team. It’s work to be a doomsday fan who feels cheated and pokes holes in anything positive.
This isn’t just Keith Law. Outside of Fangraphs, all of the major outlets have the Sox system as being a bit better than average, but not elite. Law, MLB, ESPN, Baseball America - none of them think they’re top 5 and many don’t think they’re top ten. ESPN is at 13, BA is at 13, MLB midseason ‘23 was 16, Law hasn’t released for 2024, but given where he was last year hard to believe he’s going to come in much different.
Basically Fangraphs is a serious outlier here and is heavily dependent on volume rather than top end guys. That all makes sense given there is significant depth in the system, but there are really only 4-5 legitimate top guys (Mayer, Anthony, Teel, Rafaela) and no truly elite (say 60+ FV) guys and only really two guys (Mayer and Anthony) who are clear 50+ guys.
They’ve made progress over the past ~5 years no doubt, but its a bit unreasonable to look at the system and see one that is at the absolute top given the lack of true top elite guys and no real advantage even in the top 100 (3-4 is what you would expect).
Also someone here might know the specifics better than me, but Fangraphs lost some writers early in 2023 (?) and has been way behind in terms of keeping up with prospect writeups since. So while BA has already done new top lists for each team and ESPN has their team lists coming soon, Fangraphs has only done 4 of the 30 teams so far. Their last BOS team update is from last June, they are way behind the other outlets.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. not arguing the rank. I’m just observing the farm is way better over the last 4 years. There are a few guys that “could” contribute in a big way. Mayer, Anthony and Teel are highly regarded.
No truly elite or 50+ …. What was Casas ranked? Bello? The scores don’t mean anything if the player isn’t developed.
Anybody arguing the Sox haven’t made progress over the past 4 years is straight up full of it. As a Sox fan forever, M, A and T are exciting projects.
No truly elite or 50+ …. What was Casas ranked? Bello? The scores don’t mean anything if the player isn’t developed.
Anybody arguing the Sox haven’t made progress over the past 4 years is straight up full of it. As a Sox fan forever, M, A and T are exciting projects.
No one is arguing they have not made progress. Personally I am arguing that the progress has been overstated and the minor league system will not likely be enough to get this team back to contention by itself. They will need outside help.
Also keep in mind that outside of Abreu (and possibly Rafaela but I hope they give him plenty of AAA time), they are most likely not graduating any of their other top 20 prospects. So if the prospects keep developing, there is a good chance the Sox will be ranked higher next year.
I agree they will need outside help. But they have made excellent progress in the last three tyears.
How many years does it take to rebuild a barren system?
While I have high hopes for Mayer, Anthony and Teel, I don’t think it’s reasonable to think they will all turn in to stars. They along with Devers, Casas and Bello are a great base to build off. And the guys outside the top 10 will have another year of development….
Unsure on expected development time. But the Sox will be longer than the norm, because of the lack of pitching in the system. That's where they need outside help. Obviously they are somewhat passing on this year's market. I say somewhat because they probably wanted YY, and they did sign Giolito, and it's still possible that one of Snell or JM will fall to them on a bargain deal.
Even if the system progresses and they graduate some guys next year, they still have very little pitching. At some point they're going to need to add if they want to contend.
The Sox’ fangraphs rankings are higher because their methodology takes the opinion that high-end position player prospects are more valuable than high-end pitching prospects (i.e., of the same future value score). This sounds oxymoronic, but the rankings are based on past outcomes; injury risk presumably has a lot to do with this.
We have a bunch of the former and not a ton of the latter, so it likes our system. If one of our top prospects, Anthony say, were an equivalently talented pitcher, the rest of the ranking systems would rank us higher and the fangraphs system *would rank us lower.*
We have a bunch of the former and not a ton of the latter, so it likes our system. If one of our top prospects, Anthony say, were an equivalently talented pitcher, the rest of the ranking systems would rank us higher and the fangraphs system *would rank us lower.*
You’re not taking crazy pills, no. You’re just doing what you do in every thread. You don’t actually read what a post is saying but you jump in with the positivity hall monitor thing to make sure that the original poster can be shamed for being too negative!
The original post said that the system wasn’t top 5 which we were led to believe…then you jumped in to shame him…and now you’ve completely moved the goalposts twice…which ends up explicitly agreeing with what Baseball America said.
That the system is better than it was 4 years ago, no shit Sherlock no one has ever argued against this, and that it’s bereft of high end pitching talent and heavily favors hitters.
BA covered all of that and rated us 4th in the division. So, for a portion of us, thays disappointing as we thought it would be higher
Baseball America ranked us 5 overall mid-season last year and then dropped us to 13 without having anyone fall off or graduate, so if we were led to believe that it's partially on them. I don't have a sub to see if they gave an explanation for what's changed in the last 6 months, but my guess is it's mostly that these rankings are hugely subjective and influenced by who their scouts have been getting excited about most recently. We had Bleis out all year and Mayer gone for the fall so got dinged, not because of a performance drop-off but because they weren't out there playing every day.
Injuries to some top prospects.
Mayer’s value has gone down. Bleis. Mata. If those 3 rebound from injury then you’ve got an incredibly deep system again.
Add in Yorke and Rafaela.
Mata and Rafaela are likely off the mL system but Winkleman made some pretty impressive progress too.
Anyhow- I think it’s the injuries to Mayer and Bleis that is keeping the general system lower
Correct. I think Bleis and then Mayer kind of underperforming were the biggest reasons.
Additionally, as @Sandy Leon Trotsky pointed out, there have been injuries as well which also took some of the air out of the system
The rating of a farm system is pretty subjective and fairly irrelevant, there’s no prize for being first or penalty for being last. The point of a farm system is to help the big league club, either by graduating players or having players to be used as capital to convert into major leaguers via trades. Seems like we are on the cusp of some of that happening a bit, which is great, but it’s obviously just one part of building a good major league team.
Bleis and Mayer weren't under performing is the thing, they weren't playing at all or were playing injured. Mayer looked fantastic until his injury in May: View: https://twitter.com/IanCundall/status/1700151630136541219
The people I trust most on the Red Sox farm system are the folks at SoxProspects. They go to games at the minor-leage affiliates and make a trip to spring training to scout players themselves, talks to scouts from opposing teams. They update the rankings regularly. For that I--and I'm sure others here--donate to their site for all the great work.
And according to SoxProspects, the highest-ranking pitching prospect brought into the system under Bloom's watch is Yordanny Monegro, who has "the ceiling of a back-end starter." Luis Perales (No. 7 in the system), Wikelman Gonzalez (No. 9) and Richard Fitts (No. 11) all are guys who COULD be starters in the majors but also might be better off in the bullpen. I hope they all take a step forward this year and show they can be major-league starters, but it's easy to see why some prospect evaluators are bearish on a system with such a dearth of starting pitching prospects.
And according to SoxProspects, the highest-ranking pitching prospect brought into the system under Bloom's watch is Yordanny Monegro, who has "the ceiling of a back-end starter." Luis Perales (No. 7 in the system), Wikelman Gonzalez (No. 9) and Richard Fitts (No. 11) all are guys who COULD be starters in the majors but also might be better off in the bullpen. I hope they all take a step forward this year and show they can be major-league starters, but it's easy to see why some prospect evaluators are bearish on a system with such a dearth of starting pitching prospects.
It’s not a huge deal. They don’t raise banners for minor league system rankings. It’s ok to be positive or negative on the system. I don’t like people providing absolutely nothing, quoting bleacher report and acting like you have to be positive because of straw man’s. But I might be in the minority
They do great work but their evaluations of Crawford and Bello were both back-of-rotation guys. I’ve found that since the mid teens when they really whiffed on some of the pitchers (Webster mostly but others) they’ve turned down on some of their more optimistic projections for pitching.
Winkleman for instance is almost exactly the same pitcher as Jon Lester at their respective spots in AA- great strikeout stuff with a problem with BB’s.
I am not saying they haven't made progress. They have. But the organization is pointing to the minor league system as the way they're going to get out of this rut. The problem is that their direct competition in the division all have as good or better systems than they do. It's going to make them trying to improve that much harder if the Orioles/Rays/Yankees are churning out young talent in the future at a better rate than they are. It speaks to trying to build the team in all possible ways and not just wait for their prospects to hit. Baltimore is an outlier in this.
In defense of the SP folks, projecting pitchers is pretty difficult. I don’t think they were on an island with their evaluations of Bello or Crawford as I don’t remember any other publications being particularly high on them (at least initially with Bello and tbh Crawford needs to show a little more before I would declare him anything more than a back of rotation starter). In fact, I distinctly remember Bello being rated a full 3 grades below Luis Medina at Fangraphs despite similar stats/ages/levels. Towards the latter part of Bello’s mL career, I think all publications including SP were pretty high on him.
I also feel like prospect writers have taken a more conservative approach when rating pitching prospects in recent years. For example, looking back at Fangraphs top 100 list from 2017, there were 44 pitching prospects. Last year, it was 33. The year before, it was 29. MLB’s list shows a similar trend. And I spot checked 2014 just in case 2017 was a good pitching prospect year and nope, there was like 47 pitching prospects.
*Note: added those all manually but I’m probably within +/- 2 prospects.
I also feel like prospect writers have taken a more conservative approach when rating pitching prospects in recent years. For example, looking back at Fangraphs top 100 list from 2017, there were 44 pitching prospects. Last year, it was 33. The year before, it was 29. MLB’s list shows a similar trend. And I spot checked 2014 just in case 2017 was a good pitching prospect year and nope, there was like 47 pitching prospects.
*Note: added those all manually but I’m probably within +/- 2 prospects.
I'm also not sure what the relevance of Casas and Bello were, but they were both 50 or above FV guys (Bello was a 50 and Casas a 55). Casas specifically is a strange guy if the point was to make an example of a development of a guy who was somehow under scouted or valued - he had a top line pedigree since like his sophomore year of high school, was a first round pick, and a top 100 guy every year after his first season in the minors.
It's very difficult, and I hope a number of pitchers in the system exceed their SP projections. My point is that if even the SP guys--who are Red Sox fans--have trouble seeing starting pitchers in the system, it's understandable why other sites aren't raving about the system as a whole.
One of the interesting things that will unfold in 2024 is how the new Sox arms consortium will alter the present Red Sox minor leaguers into better prospects so that the system might be ranked higher a year from now because of the changes in pitching staffing and philosophy.
And also because of age and maturity. If Bloom’s philosophy was to add young international arms in volume, we might start to see the survivors who were signed out of Venezuela or the DR at age 16 or 17 hit the part of their development arc where they become more than lottery tickets.
I think that this is a pretty good point. With so many of the hopeful arms being in the lower minors, a couple of these "survivors" as you called them, reaching a certain age and level of maturity will hopefully bear some fruit.
There has been a pretty significant readjustment of the major publications rankings of the Red Sox system and its almost universally qualitative. I think pipeline was first to say out loud that their ranking dropped significantly because of the lack of pitching prospects and it looks like Kiley and BA have followed suit. Mayer and Bleis getting hurt early in the year also hurt, of course. I'm not sure the same judgement has been applied to the other teams in the AL east, frankly. The orioles have 1 pitcher in their top 10, who baseball america cites as a #4 ceiling. He's also 25. The Yankees have 4, Hampton, who has a #3 ceiling, 2 guys making their full season debuts, and a guy whose ceiling is a #5. The Rays have 1, Shane Baz, who is recovering from Tommy John. The Blue Jays have the best pitching prospect in the division (Tiedeman), who keeps getting sidelined with arm trouble. The idea that there are high upside arms all over the systems in the division is just false. Only the orioles have the mid-high minors ceiling position prospects that the red sox have in their system.
Another thing that is being lost in this discussion is something I've pointed out a number of times this offseason is that the state of pitching in the minors, in general, is very thin. most of the top pitching prospects are flawed and MLB does not have a lot of young (<25) pitchers doing really anything at all. The Red Sox pitching pipeline has a ton of arms that are early in their development cycle who could become something or more likely, not. That is the case for all of these systems. Pitching development is long and non linear and fraught with injury concerns. You're much less likely to get a return on your investment.
Frankly, I don't think "system rankings" mean much of anything. When I look at the Red Sox system I see 4 position players with star upside and about 30 guys on both sides of the ball that could be something. I think the latter is pretty normal. The former is special. The handwringing in this thread seems to lack any of the above context and just adds to the negativity. It's a much more interesting conversation to talk about what they are and are not doing from a development standpoint that other organizations are doing than it is to lament that there aren't any 25 year old dudes ready to emerge.
Another thing that is being lost in this discussion is something I've pointed out a number of times this offseason is that the state of pitching in the minors, in general, is very thin. most of the top pitching prospects are flawed and MLB does not have a lot of young (<25) pitchers doing really anything at all. The Red Sox pitching pipeline has a ton of arms that are early in their development cycle who could become something or more likely, not. That is the case for all of these systems. Pitching development is long and non linear and fraught with injury concerns. You're much less likely to get a return on your investment.
Frankly, I don't think "system rankings" mean much of anything. When I look at the Red Sox system I see 4 position players with star upside and about 30 guys on both sides of the ball that could be something. I think the latter is pretty normal. The former is special. The handwringing in this thread seems to lack any of the above context and just adds to the negativity. It's a much more interesting conversation to talk about what they are and are not doing from a development standpoint that other organizations are doing than it is to lament that there aren't any 25 year old dudes ready to emerge.
This is a fixed point in time interpretation, though. I obviously follow the Yankees primarily and they have been cranking out pitchers so quickly that it's hard for them to fully register in the prospect rankings. They have traded/lost something like 30 pitchers since the 2022 deadline, including four they sent this winter for Juan Soto, and have been turning around guys so quickly that you have examples like Drew Thorpe and Chase Hampton, both 2022 draft picks who didn't throw a professional pitch until 2023 and now both top 100 guys already.
I might be remembering wrong, this NY Post article says the number is 20, although they leave out Jordan Montgomery and maybe others. 20 is still an incredible amount of pitchers to trade in an 18 month period when you're simultaneously trying to contend, though.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/09/sports/yankees-pitching-program-paid-dividends-again-in-juan-soto-deal/
Yanks have definitely done a better job at evaluating pitchers, to me they seem to of had a whole different approach in general when it comes to their farm system. In that they haven’t been obsessed with middle infielders and have taken pitchers early in the draft. They’ve also seem more inclined to go after big ticket international signings as opposed to Bloom’s (seems like Breslow also) approach of spreading out the money. Breslow still has about a mill left after signing forty five international prospects! The most frustrating difference I’ve seen though has been NY’s ability to flip veteran talent for prospects the years they haven’t been in it, which Bloom had failed to do. I do like the Verdugo trade however, I’m more confident Breslow can do a better job evaluating and acquiring pitching.
Is that really true? I think we all wish Bloom had done more of it, but the Vasquez return was good, and the JBJ trade obviously turned out poorly but at least he was trying to buy some prospects there. In the same time span, what veteran have the Yankees traded away, Gallo? I think a lot of their fans have been wondering for years now why they aren't trading Gleyber.