2016 MLB Season Thread Baseball • Page 29

Still better than 95% of the league

 

This was an interesting read. Imagine Trout on a team like the Rockies?

 

He'd put up video game numbers

 

Angels had a great spring, but I'm hesitant to get my hopes up. I'm just excited they're starting at home for once. It's been road openers the last couple of years.

Angels may be wasting his talent, but they're not wasting his potential to make a profit haha

 

Always preferred the Angels over the Dodgers. Im originally from Brooklyn and my family was full of Dodgers fans. When they left everyone became a Met fan. So we've been hating on the Dodgers ever since lol

 

I like this article because this is what I have kind of thought in my head. Why are the Angels still stuck in no mans land. Not apples to apples, but this is like drafting LeBron James or Sidney Crosby and not being any better off. Really bizarre.

 

Drafting in baseball is such an imprecise process. It's really a game where it's impossible to play "what if" about draft picks.

 

I mean most of the time 1-1 picks end up being MLB players(some stars, others not so much) but after that it's really a crapshoot and there are way too many factors in play to play the "what if" or "woulda/shoulda/coulda" game.

 

I agree to an extent. The scouting departments in baseball are much bigger and more comparable to hockey I would say. There should be enough knowledge of who is really good that there should be fewer misses at the top. That's a problem that needs to be corrected in baseball front offices and or development teams.

 

That's awesome

 

Maybe that explains his lack of control to start. Seems to be settling down now, from what I can tell. Bummed I'm working and can't catch the game!

 

I don't think it's "missing". Look how many surefire, "can't miss" prospects end up doing nothing. There are just way too many factors in a baseball player's development.

 

I agree. Drafting in MLB is a crapshoot. Being angry with your teams drafting is kind of silly. Its so hard to tell who is going to be good in the majors.

 

My uncle works for an MLB team doing scout-like things, and I've been dying to pick his brain on all things scouting. It's a fascinating process to me.

 

For as many "Well shit, X player worked out better than expected." I'm sure there are just as many "well fuck, X player was worse than expected"

 

I think the latter happens more often than the former.

 

Stuck at the eye doctor with an hour before first pitch...nervous

 

Of course, obviously the number of players drafted compared to the # of players that make it to MLB is not even close to the same.

 

I respect the normal process of a player being drafted and working his way up the chain, but it's just my opinion that between larger/wider scouting departments, development groups, and medicine that there should be fewer players drafted at the top that don't work out. Either a better choice needs to be made or development for that team needs to be improved. Some players make poor decisions like the Padres SS that went to TB and then to prison.

I watch the Indians farm talent vastly improve over the years from an organization that could not hit water if it fell out of a boat. So many current players were drafted and developed through our system. Improve your scouting, be it the head or the actual scouts. Improve your development of players. "Are we as a group using dated tech or old ways of thinking? Could we possibly do something different than what we are doing today?" Improve your approach to nutrition, dieting, rehabbing, injury prevention. The answers and tools are there to be better. I find it hard to give every team that messes it up a pass.

 

I think if your team picks a guy who's a bust when there's a bunch of guys who ended up being really good allover that round except for a few including your guy... Then maybe because I mean c'mon

 

A lot of what goes into how drafted players pan out happens after the draft and i think that's definitely way more true in baseball than in any of the other major American sports leagues, talent is only so much of the equation but obviously development figures into it and baseball prospects (Harper is a bit of an anomaly ofc) usually get a lot more time and leeway with the team than someone like Marcus Mariota or even Jamarcus Russell, who in comparison is pretty much expected by the team to be serviceable right out of the gate. Prospects that don't really mesh with the team that drafted them find success elsewhere at a pretty good rate (Rizzo or Adam Jones).

With regards to the article it is intriguing as hell what would have happened had Trout ended up elsewhere but I look at it this way: in 2007 Dustin Ackley was one of the best college hitters to show up in ages and the Mariners selecting him at 2 was in many ways a no-brainer at the time. We all know what happened there, he had a promising debut year and then inexplicably fell into the depths of mediocrity. But let's say the Mariners took Mike Trout instead - yeah it's Mike Trout, and yeah he's undeniable talented, but who's to say his time the Mariners couldn't have ruined him too given what we know about Ackley (now of course this is a kind of reductive treatment of Ackley's time with Seattle but I think the general point about the crucial nature of prospects' developmental years post-draft holds)? We're talking about post-hoc projections of talent but surely Trout didn't get to a 10.3 fWAR rookie season on talent alone.

So yeah there's always going to be random incidences of stupidity, the Mariners taking Jeff Clement in a really star-studded 07 draft or trading away Adam Jones+ in one of the most lopsided trades of the 21st century. You're definitely right about how different organizational approaches factor into the success of their prospects. Seems the Mariners of the Bavasi/Zduriencik era are a great case study for a) how not to draft b) how not to handle your drafted players.

 

Baseball is like investing in a stock where football/baseball is buying a car.

A car you know what you're getting almost immediately and hope that it lasts you a good while.

Baseball you just hope off of some crazy idea of what people with similar situations turned into and that happens with your draft pick.

 

Cubs staring lineup tonight. Interesting to see Zobrist as the #3 hitter, but having 3 high OBP guys in front of power makes sense.

 

This is me nitpicking but if you're going to use the old scoreboard for the lineup you should use the space and ditch the league headings.

 

I can't believe the Reds are coming out to Lose Yourself in 2016.