What is wrong with our scouts???

[S720]

It seems as if year after year we've been picking weak-armed pitchers in the draft while other teams are loading up with powerful arms!

 

Why did we skip over Matt Garza or Cesar Carrillo to select Broadway? Matt and Cesar are in AAA, while our very owned is in AA!

 

Once again, in this past 2006 draft, again we selected one more weak-armed pitcher in Kyle McCulloch. Can someone please show me the light to the reason why our scouting team is so afraid of selecting powerful-armed pitchers?

[Guest JimH]

This was covered in great depth and detail in this forum, I would say about a week ago. I think the thread title is 7/25 games, you will find it interesting reading.

 

Just curious though, would you rather Carillo with the sore elbow at this point, or Broadway?

[maggsmaggs]

Broadway is not a weak arm pitcher. He throws in the low 90's with good secondary pitches. He has great control. He has a great pitcher's body as well. Broadway is a good bet to be in the majors for 10 years as a #3 type pitcher. Garza and Carillo both have 1-2 type stuff, but are more injury prone as we have seen already with Carillo. Garza may be stud and then may get injured, you never know. The Sox went the safe way. How come 30 teams missed Mike Piazza 50+ times? It just happens that way.

Also, McCulloch is not a weak armed pitcher either. He throws in the low 90's and can reach as high as 94. He may be a finesse type pitcher, but he certainly does not have a weak arm like Buehrle. Think Brad Radke who can throw the ball hard, but knows when to dial it up and when to bring it down a little for better control.

The one thing that we can complain about our scouts is the piss-poor effort in Latin America. We have next to nothing in terms in Latin American talent that you could see in the majors one day. Francisco Hernandez is about it and he is struggling, we really need to become better in LA scouting, but part of that is JR, KW and DW, not necessarily the scouts. We don't really have a LA budget to sign the top talent like the Sawks or Yankees. But we also haven't found any diamond in the roughs either.

Edited August 1, 2006 by maggsmaggs

[S720]

Broadway is not a weak arm pitcher. He throws in the low 90's with good secondary pitches. He has great control. He has a great pitcher's body as well. Broadway is a good bet to be in the majors for 10 years as a #3 type pitcher. Garza and Carillo both have 1-2 type stuff, but are more injury prone as we have seen already with Carillo. Garza may be stud and then may get injured, you never know. The Sox went the safe way. How come 30 teams missed Mike Piazza 50+ times? It just happens that way.

Also, McCulloch is not a weak armed pitcher either. He throws in the low 90's and can reach as high as 94. He may be a finesse type pitcher, but he certainly does not have a weak arm like Buehrle. Think Brad Radke who can throw the ball hard, but knows when to dial it up and when to bring it down a little for better control.

 

Thank you so much for clearing this matter out for me. I certainly feel much better now with our young pitchers in the minor league. Honestly, no green.

[shawnhillegas]

It seems as if year after year we've been picking weak-armed pitchers in the draft while other teams are loading up with powerful arms!

 

Why did we skip over Matt Garza or Cesar Carrillo to select Broadway? Matt and Cesar are in AAA, while our very owned is in AA!

 

Once again, in this past 2006 draft, again we selected one more weak-armed pitcher in Kyle McCulloch. Can someone please show me the light to the reason why our scouting team is so afraid of selecting powerful-armed pitchers?

 

 

WE NEED MORE NICK LEMONS, WYATT ALLENS AND WES WHISLERS!!!!!!!!!!!

 

but seriously, with the 20th pick or worse, there arent going to be many premier power arms left on the board. Garza seems to be a bit of an anomaly...no one was complaining about him when we selected broadway (although there were some carrillo rumblings)

[whitesoxfan101]

There is a reason beyond the goat why these Cubs pitchers constantly get hurt kids, and there is also a reason that you don't see a whole ton of true power starting pitchers anymore. The power starting pitcher is truly a diamond in the rough these days (Zambrano, Liriano, Johan) simply because most of them end up getting hurt due to the stress throwing that hurt puts on a pitchers arm.

 

Building an organization of starting pitchers around guys that throw in the low 90's, can locate, have good secondary offspeed/breaking stuff, and know how to pitch doesn't bother me in the least. Doesn't matter how hard you can throw if your arm keeps falling off.

Edited August 1, 2006 by whitesoxfan101

[Palehosefan]

I disagree about the lack of power pitchers in baseball. Whether it's Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Oswalt, Verlander, Bonderman, Liriano, Santana(both), Zambrano, Kazmir, Mussina, Harden, Felix Hernandez, Lackey, Carpenter, Peavy, Smoltz, Schmidt, Beckett, Bedard, Cain, Sabathia, Penny, Contreras etc etc, you have plenty of guys that have been healthy in their careers for the most part.

 

I can't think of a good power pitcher that we have developed in our system in almost 10 years. Even guys that don't throw real hard get hurt quite often in our system, and in baseball in general. We select guys that throw 90-92 mph but know how to pitch and put up good minor league numbers and become solid trade assets, or 3-4 type starters for us. We have found other ways to acquire aces like Bartolo and Jose, which is ok with me, I just would like to see us take a flyer on a big arm in the 1st-3rd round and actually develop them once in a while. Our scouts seem to have a tendency to miss on the 1-5 round type talents, and develop a gem or two later on in the draft. I'm not quite sure what that says about us, but I do know they do solid scouting of a tremendous amount of players, we just seem to have a problem choosing or developing the correct "can't miss" type talents.

[CWSGuy406]

Palehosefan, an honest question here: what would you have done differently w/r/t this year's draft? Do you like the McCulloch pick? It seemed like, on draft day, as we were all sitting around here, Bard kept on falling and falling and falling. And we all know what eventually happened when Bard was taken.

 

But McCulloch didn't seem like a bad pick. Baseball America had him rated as a mid-first round talent, so I think we did pretty good.

 

I personally would've liked to have seen the Sox grab Pedro Beato. He's got a real nice frame, at 6"5 210, and from the scouting report, he throws 1-2 MPH harder than McCulloch. But he's already had TJ surgery, so there are durability concerns.

 

I guess you could also make an argument for Chris Perez, although I'm weary of taking closers so high, as their ceiling is extremely limited.

[whitesoxfan101]

I disagree about the lack of power pitchers in baseball. Whether it's Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Oswalt, Verlander, Bonderman, Liriano, Santana(both), Zambrano, Kazmir, Mussina, Harden, Felix Hernandez, Lackey, Carpenter, Peavy, Smoltz, Schmidt, Beckett, Bedard, Cain, Sabathia, Penny, Contreras etc etc, you have plenty of guys that have been healthy in their careers for the most part.

 

Through your list.......

 

Randy Johnson is atrocious now, and wasn't much better last year

 

Sabathia most certainly has injury issues

 

King Felix is 9-9 with an era not too far south of 5 this season

 

Penny has had all kinds of injury issues, and has been AWFUL since the break

 

Mussina a power pitcher?? He can barely even hit 90

 

Clemens is a 5 to 6 inning pitcher in his last year

 

Pedro also can barely hit 90 anymore

 

Cain has proven nothing as of now

 

Harden is constantly injured

 

Peavy is what, 4-10 this year??

 

Schmidt has had injury/consistency issues for 2 or 3 years now

 

Contreras isn't a power pitcher IMO. He can throw hard, but he's all about getting ahead in the count and using the forkball and arm angle changes to get easy outs. He's not a k machine at all either.

 

Beckett was amazing in the 2003 playoffs, but has yet to put together any sort of really good regular season, and his ERA also blows (and he's give up like 25 homers already).

 

Bedard is healthy and on fire right now, but he hasn't been a stallion who throws up QS's every 5 days in his career yet either.

 

There are still some power pitchers in the game obviously, but WAY less than there were 2 decades ago. Also, the power pitchers we DO have now are either very young, or very old for the most part, and most have had significant injury issues.

[GoodAsGould]

Well Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens are both in their early 40's... thats more than long enough career anyone can wish for. King Felix is only what 20 years old he is going to be great dont worry about that. Pedro can hit 90 a lot he just has trouble with the upper 90's but still can throw a heater every so often. Schmidt has actually gotten better late in his career than he was early on. And Peavy is still young just an off year... he was the era leader at what 23 years old?

[Hatchetman]

rich gossage was the last power arm we developed.

[GoodAsGould]

overall im satisfied with our scouting though.... Most of our minors dont make the big leagues with us but they are a big part of how we make our team.

 

Garcia, Vazquez, MacDougal, Riske, Thornton, Sandy, Uribe, and Cintron all on the team from trading away prospects.

[Hatchetman]

kyle kane, johnny ruffin, jason bere, danny wright were power guys we drafted. royce ring i guess. i'll never know why the hell we drafted him.

[GoodAsGould]

kyle kane, johnny ruffin, jason bere, danny wright were power guys we drafted. royce ring i guess. i'll never know why the hell we drafted him.

 

I still think Wright could of been great.... 2 bad he got hurt or something really messed him up.

[Hatchetman]

obviously he was hurt when he was pitching for us. especially his last year. wonder how his rehab is going. seemed like a nice guy...

[Palehosefan]

Randy Johnson is atrocious now, and wasn't much better last year

 

Sabathia most certainly has injury issues

 

King Felix is 9-9 with an era not too far south of 5 this season

 

Penny has had all kinds of injury issues, and has been AWFUL since the break

 

Mussina a power pitcher?? He can barely even hit 90

 

Clemens is a 5 to 6 inning pitcher in his last year

 

Pedro also can barely hit 90 anymore

 

Cain has proven nothing as of now

 

Harden is constantly injured

 

Peavy is what, 4-10 this year??

 

Schmidt has had injury/consistency issues for 2 or 3 years now

 

Contreras isn't a power pitcher IMO. He can throw hard, but he's all about getting ahead in the count and using the forkball and arm angle changes to get easy outs. He's not a k machine at all either.

 

Beckett was amazing in the 2003 playoffs, but has yet to put together any sort of really good regular season, and his ERA also blows (and he's give up like 25 homers already).

 

Bedard is healthy and on fire right now, but he hasn't been a stallion who throws up QS's every 5 days in his career yet either.

 

To expand on what Soxfan1 said, Randy has been a HOF for almost 20 years now. CC is averaging about 190 innings a year in his career, and is on a similar pace this season. Felix has very nice numbers for a 20 year old and filthy stuff. Penny is averaging over 156 IP every year and is on pace for more than that this year with a career ERA below 4. Mussina is 37 years old and during his 10 year tenure in Baltimore his fastball sat at 94-95 consistently, late in his career he has become a great control pitcher. Both Clemens and Pedro were the ultimate power pitchers for 10+ years.

 

Cain has a very good arm and nice numbers as a 21 year old. Harden is a great power pitcher with over 420 IP as a 24 year old, he has plenty of time to turn it around. Peavy is having a down year, but still has the great arm and the great career numbers as a 25 year old. Schmidt has a career 8 K/9IP, and an era under 3.9, while averaging 197 IP his last 4 seasons, and is on pace for over 200 IP this year with a 3.18 ERA. Contreras has a career 7.2 K/9IP ratio with a 93+mph fastball, if you don't consider him a power pitcher, so be it. Beckett at 26 years old has a 8.7 K/9IP ratio and a career ERA under 3.7, and his IP have been improving each year. Bedard is a very solid 27 year old lefty with a 7.83 K/9IP in his career with an ERA that is dropping each year and less hits than IP.

[Palehosefan]

Palehosefan, an honest question here: what would you have done differently w/r/t this year's draft? Do you like the McCulloch pick? It seemed like, on draft day, as we were all sitting around here, Bard kept on falling and falling and falling. And we all know what eventually happened when Bard was taken.

 

I can't disagree too much with McCullough this year, due to our draft position and relative lack of power arms in this years draft. We ALMOST got Bard, which would have been great, but McCullough was clearly the best arm available to us at that point. Beato would have been decent, but he was a little too risky for my taste as a 1st round pick. Was a much better deal when he was a draft and follow that you could take a chance with.

[beck72]

Flame throwers with very good command are hard to find. Not to mention the injury risks involved and what losing an ace can do to a club's chances of making the playoffs.

 

The sox are better off getting sure things in the 1st few rounds and then taking chances on hard throwers shortly thereafter. They are building their starting rotation around durable, guys who can go deep into games, who may not have overpowering stuff but are less injury risks. The Sox did take risks in the 2003 draft with Gio, Lumsden, Whisler and Liotta. Only Liotta could be considered a "safe" pick. [And Gio, Tyler and Wes have been injured]. The sox have steered away from project pitchers the last few yrs after getting burned in the early 2000's with the "great stuff, no control" type pitchers who can throw in the mid to upper 90's. Esp. in the first few rounds. The sox could to a better job of finding these types after the 5th round or so--which are good talent guys but need work.

 

The Twins the last decade or so have been terrible with their 1st round picks. Few have helped them or are in the bigs now. Having top talent not make an impact on the big league club [wither through trades or coming up through the system] can wreck a club.

 

The sox are going after flame throwers for the bullpen. But those are high risk guys as well, who are hard to depend on from yr to yr.

[harfman77]

The last big power prospect that we had was Kip Wells, I think after that the front office got tired of the under producing power pitchers that they were continually drafting with no success and had a change of philosophy to grab guys that can hit the strike zone consisitently.

 

I really think that KW and crew has done a good job at the top of the draft recently, I think Broadway and McCulloch will develop into middle of the rotation starters.

 

Later in the draft is a good place to grab those power guys, I think Oswalt was drafted in like the 21st round. Also it seems most of the dominant power pitchers now are not available in the draft - Liriano, Pedro, Santana, Zumaya, all have been signed as free agents from other countries. That is the area where I think the Sox need to devote the most resources. Who is the last foreign player that we have signed as a kid and made an impact in the majors? Iguchi doesnt count as he was never in the system and the Sox did nothing to develop him into what he is.

[danman31]

Who is the last foreign player that we have signed as a kid and made an impact in the majors? Iguchi doesnt count as he was never in the system and the Sox did nothing to develop him into what he is.

Maggs and Carlos Lee. It's pretty absurd to include hitters though. The system's ability to produce hitters shouldn't be in question. Maggs, Carlos, Crede, Rowand, and I'll throw in Anderson as guys that have turned into good Major Leaguers. That's a solid crop with a few more on the way possibly.

[Misplaced_Sox]

I thought Jason Bere was the last real power pitcher, then I think Alex Fernandez after him.

[Rex Hudler]

Some of this has been mentioned, but here goes anyway....

 

The Sox have gone to drafting more pitchers than throwers in recent years because the former was not working well.

 

Guys like Brian West, Wyatt Allen, Jason Stumm, Dan Wright, Rob Purvis, and Kris Honel never panned out for one reason or another.

 

Sometimes you draft what works best for you. Other times you see what other teams are trending towards and do the opposite to get more value.