What the Hell with Our Farm System

[LVSoxFan]

Here's what I don't get. Granted, we don't spend like the Yanks or Boston, but overall we rank #5 in team salary, according to espn.com

 

Link here.

 

Here's how our division ranks:

 

Cleveland: #23

Detroit: #9

Minnesota: #18

Kansas City: #22

 

So we outspend everybody in the division, the closest by $13 million, but have won the division once since 2000. Other teams that spend less than us:

 

Atlanta, Oakland and St. Louis, for example. Anaheim is just ahead of us at #4.

 

So let's take Minny: they rank #18 in spending but yet they're the all-around consumate team who Ozzie rightly calls the piranhas, and after whom we were modeled in 2005. They don't spend the bucks, so obviously they have a great farm system.

 

So how come we don't? We seem stuck in this weird limbo between spend-for-talent teams like Boston/NYY and consistently good teams with tiny payrolls but great systems like Cleveland or Minny.

 

What is our problem? Shouldn't we be one or the other? Or, at best, a balancing act?

 

Yet we seem to flirt with spending some bucks but trying to be smaller-market-minded, but with no farm system that smaller-market-minded teams almost have to have.

 

I don't get it. Or am I missing something?

[sti3]

Link here.

 

bad link.

[striker]

Our scouts suck and our development sucks. So far our top prospects haven't shown us anything: Fields, Sweeney & Anderson.

 

I wouldn't be suprised that if/when we become sellers, we aim high for prospects. Dye, Buehrle and possibly another one of our starters (Contreras?) should give us some decent return.

 

I for one would like to have at least one good OF prospect in return.

[bkmoney]

this link works, yours doesnt the first time sorry

 

http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/salaries

 

i know this is getting old but i think we need to have a firesale and just 'start over', it really couldn't hurt. I mean really how close are we.. 4th in division. not hitting. no bullpen. starting pitching not getting that younger but still doing well.

 

meh dead horse

[watchtower41]

Money doesnt buy happiness....nor winning for that matter. Just ask the good ole Georgie.

[southsideirish71]

Here's what I don't get. Granted, we don't spend like the Yanks or Boston, but overall we rank #5 in team salary, according to espn.com

 

Link here.

 

Here's how our division ranks:

 

Cleveland: #23

Detroit: #9

Minnesota: #18

Kansas City: #22

 

So we outspend everybody in the division, the closest by $13 million, but have won the division once since 2000. Other teams that spend less than us:

 

Atlanta, Oakland and St. Louis, for example. Anaheim is just ahead of us at #4.

 

So let's take Minny: they rank #18 in spending but yet they're the all-around consumate team who Ozzie rightly calls the piranhas, and after whom we were modeled in 2005. They don't spend the bucks, so obviously they have a great farm system.

 

So how come we don't? We seem stuck in this weird limbo between spend-for-talent teams like Boston/NYY and consistently good teams with tiny payrolls but great systems like Cleveland or Minny.

 

What is our problem? Shouldn't we be one or the other? Or, at best, a balancing act?

 

Yet we seem to flirt with spending some bucks but trying to be smaller-market-minded, but with no farm system that smaller-market-minded teams almost have to have.

 

I don't get it. Or am I missing something?

 

Dont get them all in a bunch over this. We are very very new to this whole big market team thing. We have been for a while a team that drafts to maximize its value, and then to use it to get vets. Now we are trying to change this into a hybrid model of mixing home grown talent with some FA talent. Which is what we will be, however after decimating our minors for years it will take a bit to repopulate it. My biggest concern is that we draft the best talent, and that our instructors teach them correctly.

Edited June 12, 2007 by southsideirish71

[RibbieRubarb]

See how far Cleveland jumps when their young players start entering Arbitration years.

[striker]

sad.... very very sad....

 

BASEBALL AMERICA TOP DRAFT PICKS OF THE DECADE

Year Player, Position 2006

1997 Jason Dellaero, ss Out of baseball

1998 Kip Wells, rhp Rangers

1999 Jason Sturmm, rhp Out of baseball

2000 Joe Borchard, of Marlins

2001 Kris Honel, rhp White Sox

2002 Royce Ring, lhp Mets

2003 Brian Anderson, of White Sox

2004 Josh Fields, 3b White Sox

2005 Lance Broadway, rhp White Sox

2006 Kyle McCulloch, rhp White Sox

[RME JICO]

See how far Cleveland jumps when their young players start entering Arbitration years.

I was thinking the same thing. How much longer will Cleveland and Minnesota be able to keep their payrolls that low once their players hit arbitration?

[BigSqwert]

I was thinking the same thing. How much longer will Cleveland and Minnesota be able to keep their payrolls that low once their players hit arbitration?

Yeah but Minnesota has a history of plugging in guys from their farm system. They had some great players leave in the past few years.

[LVSoxFan]

Yeah but Minnesota has a history of plugging in guys from their farm system. They had some great players leave in the past few years.

 

And that's my point. They also always seem to have a backup when somebody gets hurt who can step right in.

 

We seem to have nothing of the sort. If our first-line starters go down or are ineffective, we have no recourse. Nobody to bring up. We have to buy a veteran, if we can.

 

I'm starting to wonder if 2005 was our "Space Cowboys" year where we took a chance on some players who time may have seemed over (Pods, Dye, Contreras) or had yet to arrive (Crede, Iguchi) and everybody pushed and had that one Big Year and then faded back to where they were anyway...

[RME JICO]

Yeah but Minnesota has a history of plugging in guys from their farm system. They had some great players leave in the past few years.

Who have they lost that was All-Star caliber in the last 5 years?

 

Ortiz and AJ?

 

The only other bigger names were fringe guys like Stewart, Jones, and Mientkiewicz.

[Kalapse]

See how far Cleveland jumps when their young players start entering Arbitration years.

That's why Cleveland locks up their young players in their 3rd full year giving them long term contracts that buyout all arbitration years as well as their first year or two of free agency. It's a risky move since you're giving a lot of money to young players who have yet to really establish themselves in the league but if these guys do continue to be studs they have them locked up long term for a below market value price.

[iamshack]

That's why Cleveland locks up their young players in their 3rd full year giving them long term contracts that buyout all arbitration years as well as their first year or two of free agency. It's a risky move since you're giving a lot of money to young players who have yet to really establish themselves in the league but if these guys do continue to be studs they have them locked up long term for a below market value price.

 

Hafner seems to be the first one of the Cleveland studs to be unwilling to trade security for below-market value, probably due to the fact that he's a bit older than the others.

 

Looks like the money was definitelty worth it for VMart and Sizemore...the jury is still out on Peralta.

[Chisoxfn]

The Sox haven't spent a ton of money on draft picks so you can't really correlate the money to the farm system.

 

The Angels on the other hand spend an absolute fortune on draft picks and other guys and because of it have a fantastic system. Albeit, they also have done a good job developing and scouting.

[dasox24]

The Sox haven't spent a ton of money on draft picks so you can't really correlate the money to the farm system.

 

The Angels on the other hand spend an absolute fortune on draft picks and other guys and because of it have a fantastic system. Albeit, they also have done a good job developing and scouting.

Yep, when I began reading this thread, the team I first thought of when I thought about who I wanted the Sox to be like is the Angels. They spend a lot on both the big league club and the minor league system, which is why they'll be set for a long time.

[LVSoxFan]

And that's the answer I was looking for. Sounds like Minny and Cleveland know how to stock their farm club and lock in young talent, and Anaheim has achieved the balancing act of spending and grooming.

 

We, on the other hand, seem to do neither. And that's what concerns me. It concerns me that every single dude we bring up doesn't seem ready for the big leagues (with a few exceptions). And obviously we're not getting a blank check like the Yankees.

 

So now what? Which is part II of my question: now what? How do we fix this?

 

Thanks for the responses BTW guys, I was looking for this kind of info.

[dasox24]

So now what? Which is part II of my question: now what? How do we fix this?

Well, it will take time. As Flash will tell you, we need to improve out scouting in Latin America by a lot. Our presence there is pretty much non-existent, except for the Dominican Republic. And yet, still, we've only signed a handful of guys out of there that have been worth anything past the rookie leagues. De Los Santos and Hernandez are the only 2 off the top of my head that have amounted to much in terms of prospect status.

 

We also don't need to be worried about giving out big bucks to guys in the draft who fall b/c of signability issues. The Tigers, for example snatched up Andrew Miller and Cameron Maybin, who fell a little b/c teams didn't know if they could sign them, but the Tigers did. Now they have a stud pitcher and a highly rated OF prospect. After Borchard, we haven't come close to giving out a really big signing bonus. The last couple of years we've taken safe, college pitchers who didn't have too much leverage to turn down a contract offer from us. I would have loved for us to taken Porcello in this year's draft, but we didn't and the Tigers did. He was the best high school pitcher in the draft and should have gone Top 3 if not for signability issues. Obviously, he could not sign and go to college, but I have a feeling the Tigers will get it done. That said, I still really like the guy we did take, Poreda, but I think it would have showed the fans that we were going to be a little more daring and serious about restocking the minors if we had taken a chance on Porcello.

Edited June 13, 2007 by dasox24

[LVSoxFan]

Can you explain to me what "signability issues" means?

[Chisoxfn]

Can you explain to me what "signability issues" means?

Signability typically relates to high school seniors or collegiate juniors as both have leverage. A collegiate junior can be asking for a huge sum of money (higher than the slot money) and he has some leverage as he could opt to go back to school and hope to improve his draft status (so essentially he can put a gun to the team head to step up the offer or he stays in school).

 

In the case of a high school player, signability typically relates to guys with high potential that either have high salary demands (ie well over 6 figures to sign) or strong commitments to college. In this case teams may shy away in the early rounds because they figure if they were to draft the guy that it is going to take a bloody ransom to sign them so at that point they continue to fall and fall and if a team wants to take a chance on him they know they are going to do so having to give the guy way more than slot money (still close to the couple million he is probably asking for). Sometimes a team will take these sort of guys in the 10 or 20th round (Sox took BA' 66 or 67 rated prospect right around the 22nd round in this years draft and also did something similar when they took John Danks brother) and than try to make a serious offer (giving them top 2 round money). Danks brother was a guy that turned down a pretty good offer from the Sox because he wanted to stay in school.

 

However, more vaguely speaking, signability would relate to any player that has serious salary demands. So say one highly touted first round pick is repped by Boras and is asking for an 6-8 million bonus (maybe he's rated #1 on your teams draft board) but another prospect is likely to sign for a 2-3 million bonus (maybe this guy is rated #4 on your draft board) than your team may go with the guy that is the easy sign and save the money. An example of this is when the Brewers opted to draft LaPorta, whose an incredibly talented bat but he also is considered an easier sign because he's a college senior with no leverage who wasn't quite projected to go as early as he did.

 

Hopefully that helps a bit, even though my explanation was kind of all over the place.

[dasox24]

Sometimes a team will take these sort of guys in the 10 or 20th round (Sox took BA' 66 or 67 rated prospect right around the 22nd round in this years draft and also did something similar when they took John Danks brother) and than try to make a serious offer (giving them top 2 round money). Danks brother was a guy that turned down a pretty good offer from the Sox because he wanted to stay in school.

Man, how sweet would it have been if we could have somehow signed Jordan Danks? Though, from the get-go, we knew we had a .01% chance since he only fell b/c he specifically told teams he wouldn't sign. I do remember his father speaking very highly of the Sox and how they handled the negotiation process, and that he'd love for his son to get drafted again by the Sox. Well, who knows if that will happen, but we did trade for his other son

[LVSoxFan]

Thanks for the post Chisxfan.