What is the bad? Perrotto quotes Baseball America executive Jim Callis:
About the only downside of the Pirates' farm system is it has no surefire superstar-type talent.I think this - Baseball America, that is - is the source for the often-circulated argument that the Pirates have been too risk-averse in the draft and, as a result, have no "A" prospects in their system.While Baseball America ranks four Pirates among its top 100 prospects, Van Benschoten is the highest at No. 38. Burnett is ranked 64th, Bay is 74th and Bullington is 97th.
Callis believes the Pirates would have players higher on the list if they would have been willing to gamble in the amateur draft the last two years. Some of that was dictated by ownership wanting the Pirates to go the safe route with more established college talent in the first round.
"I think a team that hasn't won anything in a long time needs to take a few more chances and try to get players with higher upside," Callis said. "That's the only drawback with the Pirates' farm system. They have a lot of good young pitching, but nobody stands out as a potential No. 1 starter. They are thinner with position players and none of them project to hit 40 homers or drive in 120 runs.
"Still, the Pirates have come a long way. They may lack the high-end talent of some other organizations but there are few organizations who can match the Pirates for their overall depth of talent."
I get suspicious when there's so much agreement in the prediction business. Are the other writers parroting Baseball America? If that's not the case, how is this collection of talent so cut-and-dried that there can be no dissenting interpretation of its value? Are there really no "A" prospects? (Isn't telling a 21-year-old that he is a "surefire superstar-type" player one of the surest ways to derail his development? Maybe it's good for our young arms that everyone agrees they still have a lot to prove.) Anyway, the consensus is suspicious, and inquiring minds want to see the evidence for themselves before they sign up for that hard-to-swallow conclusion.
I approach the minor-league talent with this question: how well does the Pirates' performance in the draft serve their particular needs as a franchise?
Littlefield has learned that it's pretty easy to sign a Reggie Sanders or a Raul Mondesi cheaply in the offseason. These days, star-quality hitting talent at the bumbling end of the defensive spectrum - first basemen, corner outfielders - is pretty easy to get cheap. Three-true-outcome bashers like Jim Thome or Craig A. Wilson can be had in the draft after round one, too. (Thome was a 13th-round draft pick; Wilson was a 2nd-round pick.) Since the Pirates can acquire replacement value or star-quality players on the market or with mid-level draft picks, why should they use their #1 draft picks gambling on first basemen or corner outfielders who might hit 40 and drive in 120? Maybe the difference between that guy and someone who hits 25 and drives in 95 is the difference between making the playoffs and not making the playoffs. Still, this seems like a marginal improvement compared to the gains the Pirates might achieve in other areas.
They could target a young middle infielder, but they are easy to gather in trade - as we learned this off-season - and the no-hit, super-glove variety such as Pokey Reese are always out there for a reasonable price. (For those of you who think the Pirates overpaid Reese, keep in mind that he declined a four-year, $21M contract from the Reds in the 2000-2001 offseason. Pittsburgh then got him for $5M for two years, and, the last time he went on the market, Reese was signed by the saberlicious Red Sox for even less. It's safe to say that the market for these guys is a buyer's market. Rey Ordonez is out of work as I write this.)
Again, a superstar up the middle would be great, but regular stars are available at good prices. A team with Reggie Sanders in RF, Pokey Reese at 2B, and Craig A. Wilson at 1B is not necessarily a losing team.
What the Pirates can't sign in the offseason is a front-of-the-rotation starter or, these days, even a middle-of-the-rotation starter. There are some Jeff Suppans and some Rick Reeds available lately. As the essay on the Reds in the 2004 Baseball Prospectus book explains: "The market on retreads isn't quite so cheap, or as loaded with easy pickings, as it used to be." So, why not use the draft to seed the minor leagues with the kind of players they can't sign in the offseason? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Let's step back and consider the draft from the perspective of another team, the Yankees. Since the Yankees can acquire Javier Vazquez or a comparable player off the free-agent market every year, I don't know why they would even bother drafting pitchers. Young pitchers are so susceptible to injury and failure, many analysts argue that there is no such thing as a pitching prospect. For this reason and others, we might criticize Littlefield for trying to build a winner on pitching and defense. Rightly or wrongly, then, the Pirates are drafting pitchers, and fishing - like every team who drafts pitchers - for #1 and #2 starters. Baseball America doesn't question the Pirates' decision to rebuild around pitching and defense, they question their preference for "safe" college pitchers over the kind of picks that have a chance of becoming what Callis calls the more "surefire superstar-type" players. This same argument has been repeated in similar essays for Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Primer. After what the Brewers have gone through with Nick Neugebauer, and what the Mariners have gone through with Ryan Anderson, I'm not sure why a team like the Pirates would be wise to use their top picks on glittery 19-year-old power pitchers. How can Callis criticize the talent in the Pirates' organization for not being "surefire superstar-type" without openly questioning the Pirates' decision to draft pitchers first? That would take the debate into more appropriate territory and, as I outline above, I think there are very good reasons for the Pirates to focus on starting pitching in the draft.
Since the Yankees can acquire an ace like Vazquez - or a mega-hitting slick-glove middle infielder like Alex Rodriguez - whenever they want, it follows that they should heed Callis's advice and use the draft to focus exclusively on the high-risk, high-reward picks that are more likely to emerge as "surefire superstar-type" prospects. Since the Yankees only stock the team with the best that money can buy, they have no hope of growing a player they could use on the big-league club unless they go for broke every time. As trade bait, "surefire superstar-type" prospects are five times more desirable than the less surefire types. Teams don't want to trade for B- and C-level prospects unless you are taking on some of their unwanted salaries.
Last year the Pirates passed up Jeff Allison, a strong-armed high schooler, for Paul Maholm, a college pitcher. John Perrotto wrote up that decision for Baseball America. Again small-minded, small-market mental failures were implied as the cause of the "safe" decision, as you can see in the tone of the first few paragraphs. Perrotto is undoubtedly one of the best sportswriters covering the Pirates right now, but in this essay he regurgitates the CW of the Heathers who repeatedly insist that the Pirates are morons for not focussing exclusively on players they project as "surefire superstar-type" prospects.
From the Pirates' point of view, there are two more strikes against the high-risk, high-reward youngsters so in vogue. First, unlike the Yankees, the Pirates can't afford to miss in the draft. For the Pirates, the all-or-none strategy makes less sense. Given the limitations of their resources, they can't be throwing money at a pitcher with a Nick Neugebauer chance of making the big leagues in the role he was drafted to fill. Second, most of these youngsters - take Barry Bonds, for example - don't put up superstar numbers until their fourth or fifth season in the big leagues. Why should the Pirates draft a corner outfielder like Bonds with their first pick, suffer through his development - when Raul Mondesi and Reggie Sanders are available in the current market - only to lose the mega-superstar to free agency as soon as he becomes eligbile? If there's one thing a small-market team can't do often, it's award the long-term, high-dollar contracts that these players command.
Anyway, this is what Callis's criticism comes down to, in more practical terms: in a few years, will the Pirates regret taking Maholm when they could have had Jeff Allison? Allison slipped in the 2003 draft, and many thought this was because teams like the Pirates feared the signing bonus he would demand (he ended up with considerably less than Maholm earned). No doubt Littlefield will not confirm this as true even if it were true, but because people suspect these motives, there's no way Littlefield can credibly deny them without tipping his hand and explaining to every one at the poker table just what, exactly, is in his hand and how, exactly, he intends to play it. It's a lose-lose situation for Littlefield. He doesn't draft the way the Heathers want him to draft, and in his position, it's not in the team's best interest for him to concern himself with correcting the Heathers. In 2003, Allison pitched nine innings in the Gulf Coast League before he was shut down with shoulder tendinitis, and he reported three weeks late to Class A camp this spring for personal reasons. The Sun-Sentinel reports today that Allison has agreed to two years of random drug testing and has also agreed to defer a chunk of his signing bonus. Things could change in a hurry, but right now I see a few red flags. Meanwhile, Maholm showed up in spring training and looks good to go.
Since different teams face different obstacles in the construction of a championship-caliber franchise, it follows that criticism of the way the Pirates draft players should focus on the way these players fit into what we can gather to be the Pirates' long-term building strategy.
It's also important to remember that not every ace was a top-shelf pitching prospect. If the Pirates can bring Van Benschoten, Burnett, Maholm, Bradley, and Bullington to spring training in 2005, and one emerges as an ace, and two emerge as legitimate #2 or #3 starters, then the draft strategy has been a smashing success. If the Pirates can assemble a cheap, durable, homegrown staff that is three-fifths the quality of Oakland's young staff, then I think we have to credit the drafts as successful and reverse direction in the chatter about Littlefield's managerial abilities.
One more thing about these prospect lists. This is important: they are often used for evil. Not only do the rankings often fail to consider fully how a prospect's talents and risks meet a team's current and long-term needs, they are also used to evaluate the overall health of a team's minor-league system, as in the example that begins this essay.
Case in point: In the 2003 draft, two closers-in-waiting, Ryan Wagner and Chad Cordero, were taken shortly after the Bucs took Maholm.
One of these closers, Ryan Wagner, gets heaps of praise from performance analysts (for his 2003 big-league performance) and from scouts (for his one amazing pitch). For years the Reds have tried to succeed by acquiring failed major-league starters in hopes of correcting their problems and putting them back on the narrow road to success. This retread formula hasn't paid off lately. Why is Ryan Wagner touted here and far as a top prospect for the Reds when he's a closer? He has two pitches: he's a closer. If a team needs pitchers who can throw 220 innings, why do the Top Prospect lists reward them with high numbers after they draft an 80-inning college closer? Baseball America ranks Wagner as the #46 prospect, between Golden Flash and Sean Burnett. Is Wagner really more suited to help the Reds win a championship than Burnett? We all know that any half-decent starter can be converted into a pretty good closer. Does an elite closer add so much to a team that it makes sense to use a #1 draft pick on him? We need to ask these questions, I think, when we evaluate the overall quality of a team's collection of prospects.
The 2004 Baseball Prospectus book takes the Baseball America argument to a more hyperbolic extreme. The essay on the Pirates includes a ranking of the top 25 players by VORP that supposedly damns the Pirates to hell for drafting unwisely. The list includes Estaban Loaiza, Pedro Martinez, Tim Hudson, Jason Schmidt, Mark Prior, and Kevin Brown. Loaiza was an undrafted free agent from Mexico. Pedro Martinez was an undrafted free agent from the Dominican Republic. Tim Hudson was a sixth-round pick in the 1997 draft. Jason Schmidt was an eighth-round pick in the 1991 draft. Of this list, only Mark Prior and Kevin Brown were first-round picks. Only Kevin Brown was 19 and drafted in the first round. Just because the Twins passed on him, does anyone think the Pirates would have passed on Mark Prior in the 2001 draft had he fallen to them? It's weak to hold him up as the kind of player the Pirates should draft when they never had the opportunity to draft him (In 2001, Bonifay drafted John Van Benschoten, a player everyone projected as a star hitter and, in a typical "risk-averse" move for the Bucs, told the Golden Flash that he'd been drafted as a pitcher.) The moral of the story of 2003's top-VORP pitchers is this: if a team wants to find aces in the minor-league system, the only sure way to do this is to scour the globe and draft a ton of pitchers. Also note that Loaiza and Schmidt passed through the Pirates' hands for different reasons. In both cases, neither player was primed for his VORPtastic season until he had acquired considerable big-league experience.
Does this suggest that it is unwise to draft pitchers in the first round, given the poor track record first-round pitchers have in comparison to first-round position players? Not necessarily, although I admit the case can be made. Whether or not Littlefield should focus again on pitching in the 2004 draft is an open question, and one we can debate in the coming months.
Right now, in this essay, we need to focus on how Top Prospect lists are used to measure the overall quality of a team's minor-league organization. The Pirates, like the Reds, need a lot of cheap pitching. One team uses their draft picks getting their favorite college pitchers, and taking control guys over power guys if circumstances make that appropriate. The other team drafts a closer. Which team gets pilloried in the baseball scholarship as the team without a plan, or the team that drafts poorly?
Why is Wagner more highly rated as a prospect? There is a good reason. The reason is this: the prospect lists are yet another form of predicting the stock market, and the people who put them together care a lot about looking good and smart in the short-term. You can't overlook Wagner when you see he could dominate the late innings starting next week. It doesn't matter that a 70-inning pitcher is one of the last things the Reds need right now; if you are putting together a prospect list, you have to put Wagner on that list. The men at Baseball Prospectus ranked Wagner as the #14 overall prospect after savaging the Reds in their essay for the misery that has been the Reds' rotation. How could they miss the irony of this?
I don't have a problem making and using prospect lists with next year's Rookie of the Year award in mind. If you are interested, any subscriber can read the Baseball Prospectus roundtables which admirably share the thinking behind their selections. I highly recommend them. Participants suggest, for example, that some young guy can be on the list next year so another player, more likely to make the Show this year, can be added. Some participants have a team's best interest in mind, but not all, and certainly a handicap-the-ROY-race attitude prevails in which the main consideration from a club's point of view is whether or not this prospect will have an opportunity to play in 2004.
That's fine, but then don't use those lists to evaluate a farm system. The fact that Bryan Bullington did not make Baseball Prospectus's "top 50 prospect list" is not "a scathing indictment" of him, as their essay on the Pirates childishly insists. If anything, the fact that BP's editors let that outrageous comment slip into the final product is a scathing exposure of that crew's need for some level-headed editors who will save the crew from the perils of that hubris we often use to fuel the completion of an essay at its deadline.
Given that the "top prospect" focus usually neglects or at least discounts a player's ability to fill a high-priority need in a given organization's long-term plan, we should be skeptical when someone evaluates a team's minor league system by adding up the number of prospects they have in the top 100 list. Propsects often make the top 100 list for reasons that have little to do with the way they reflect on their organization's competence in the draft. I don't care what the experts say. The fact that all six of the Pirates' minor-league affiliates made the playoffs is a much more relevant measure of the health of the minor-league system than the fact that few of those prospects put up minor-league performances that somehow suggest they are fast-tracked for the Hall of Fame. Or that few appear poised to win a Rookie of the Year award. Or that few are guaranteed a rotation spot in 2004 or even 2005. I'm not arguing that the Pirates have the greatest minor-league system in the universe, but I do believe that counting the number of top 100 prospects is an ass-backwards way to come up with a conclusion to an analysis of their talent pool, and I offer this essay as a modest call for a more original and honest appraisal of the relationship between the Pirates' particular needs as a franchise and the talent they have assembled in the current minor-league system.
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