I enjoy John Sickels’s website. His rating of our system is coming up shortly (5 teams away, I believe), but the community prospects lists are always a good time too. Getting a collective read on how many people who dilligently follow the minors view our system (non-“experts” though they may be) is informative.
Danny Hultzen was just rated yesterday as the 9th best pitching prospect in the minors via community consensus.
Next highest rated pitcher in that particular vote? Taijuan Walker.
In the picture of candidates? James Paxton (who I think is being rated a little low, but it’s not my list and it’s not a slam).
We should have two of the top 12 and 3 of the top 20 minor league pitchers in baseball (or thereabouts), as assessed by group consensus.
Franklin’s probably gonna show up somewhere in the 15-22 range as a hitter (not there yet) and then we’ll see what people think of the rest of our remaining minor league hitters, but the arms…
Our arms are viewed as weapons by almost everyone.
We don’t HAVE veteran starters other than Felix and Vargas. As I said before, the Marlins paid ONE guy to set the tempo for their 2003 title (Pudge) and let most of the rest be formed from their massively talented arb- and pre-arb players.
We have 30 or 40 million more to spend than they did - we can afford to pay two guys. The nearly free talent we're plugging in to the other holes isn't replacement-level. We're not stuffing Beavans and Vasquezes in, or at least we shouldn't be. The young hitters we're going forward with aren't Mike Saunders and Carlos Peguero, but rather Mike Carp and Dustin Ackley and Justin Smoak.
And I happen to believe in them more. We'll see if Jack does soon enough, and whether he wants some more Civics to be comfortable or if he's willing to roll the dice on his talent assessment of the pieces he's collected to fill some of t hose Civic spots and use the monetary savings to go deep-sea fishing for one of the big boys.
~G
............
Last post, we were talking about the logic that says.... "Well, the M's need 1 WAR for every $2M they spend, so the M's cannot spend $25M for one 5-WAR player. Really they need to think in terms of doing better than the market. Where the Mariners are, spending $4.5M per WAR would be a disaster."
Which is interesting logic, but G-Money's reaction to this was silky-smooth:
.... I don't understand why paying Fielder 20 million for 5 WAR is worse than paying 20 million for 3 other guys who add up to 5 WAR.
At least if you pay it to Fielder you have two other slots to put in cheap hitters who can out-perform their contracts.
Just so. In fact, Big Blog's 2011-12 offseason plan offers a perfect contrast between the models of [25 Civics] vs [Stars & Scrubs]:
.
| SP Capuano | $6M | 2.5 WAR |
| SP Bedard | $4 | 2.0 |
| RHP Francisco | $5 | 1.0 |
| LF Doumit | $4 | 1.5 |
| C Snyder | $3 | 1.0 |
| Total | $22M | 8.0 WAR |
Now the chart below is not an offseason plan, no way no how. (Nobody can script an offseason plan in such a static manner; you don't know what the emerging opportunities will be.)
But SSI's way of spending $22M+, and probably Zduriencik's way , would look considerably more like this:
| 1B Fielder | $22M | 5.5 WAR |
| SP Paxton | $0.4 | 1.5 |
| SP Hultzen | $0.5 | 1.5 |
| RHP Delabar | $0.4 | 0.5 |
| LF Carp | $1.0 | 2.0 |
| Total | $24.3M | 11 WAR |
It's no contest even on the face of it. But keep going! Which group is more dynamic?
(1) Michael Pineda had 3.4 WAR in 2011 and was probably unlucky to be that low. What if Paxton or Hultzen ... or Paxton AND Hultzen have Pineda seasons?
(2) What if Mike Carp is not a league-average player? What if, instead, he follows through on the 40+ homer pace he's had in Cheney the last two years, and on the 30-homer pace he set after his callup in 2011?
(3) What if Chris Capuano, in the Civics model, does not pitch well in his first season outside the National League? You keep pitching him and losing with him. On the other hand, what if James Paxton does not pitch well? Might not Charlie Furbush, or Blake Beavan, or somebody, be able to get you 1.5 WAR in his place?
(4) Which model offers you more options moving forward through 2012 and 2013? If Arizona decides to trade Justin Upton, are they going to ask for Ryan Doumit in return, or are they going to ask for a minor league pitcher .... or are they going to ask for a Mike Carp or James Paxton who are performing well in the majors?
(4b) Supposing that Paxton and Hultzen and Carp prove themselves in the majors, does this not free your hands to trade your second generation of blue-chippers, such as Taijuan and Nick Franklin etc?
The Civics model tends, more, to freeze out your best young players -- in the Capuano/Bedard model, all of the M's monster SP's are blocked for at least one, probably two more years -- and it ossifies your best 40-50 resources.
Trayvon Robinson and Casper Wells aren't going to gain value if they're in Cheney with Ryan Doumit in Safeco.
..........
*Fielder's salary in 2012 might be more than $22M. But! If the suits approve that idea, they're going to flex the payroll a little for Fielder's "special case." $5M, or some part of Fielder's contract, will be "free money" relative to a Civics payroll, in the sense that some part of Fielder's contract will be payroll expansion.
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Comments
You've got to roll the hard six.