Home Grown Bats and Dreams of Cano
There's talk in the shouts about Cano, since it's the offseason so pipe dreams are a way to pass the time until dull reality strikes. Let's forget for a second that Cano has Jay-Z representing him, and I have trouble believing Cano would come to sleepy Seattle no matter the price or the supporting cast.
Let's say he would come if he got the contract in the neighborhood of what he wants (30 per for 7 seven years, opt out after 3 or some such), and we would have to make a choice: plunk down the change, or let it ride with the kids and some lesser lights added via trade or FA.
As was said earlier in the shouts, the team that developed all 9 position prospects themselves and were title contenders doesn't exist. OTOH, many of our 9 positions are filled with extremely talented youngsters. It's nice to think they could all work out and make us into a division winner, but again, it's never quite happened that way.
But how close has it been? Are there any teams in the couple decades or so that home-grew the vast majority of their lineups and competed for pennants? What would that look like?
Well, there's the 2008 Rays, who won 31 more games than the '07 squad:
Homegrown: Dioner Navarro (couple hundred PAs with the Dodgers before becoming a full-time Ray), Carl Crawford (7th season), Evan Longoria (first season), BJ Upton (3rd season)
Imported: Cliff Floyd (last legs), Gabe Gross (6th part time season, last legs), Eric Hinske (7th season benchie), Carlos Pena (6th season), Iwamura (9 seasons in Japan make him not a rook, but I guess he could be "homegrown"), Jason Bartlett (4th season)
So only half their lineup actually consisted of homegrown talent (in 2009 Zobrist got promoted to full-time work, so that counts too, and they keep building from within as much as possible). This is actually a trick answer, however, because the reason the Rays got 30 games better was because their pitching lopped almost 300 runs off their allowed totals from the prior year. The offense was about the same as '07 (average).
All it took to make all that happen was a decade of never winning more than seventy games, trading off every good player they acquired for more draft picks, and netting so many of them in the end that Major League Baseball changed the rules so you could never do it the Rays Way again. So that's a hard model to follow - but maybe it speaks to making the pitching the priority instead of helping our painfully underproducing offense.
You'd think with 40 million to spend this offseason we could do both, though.
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Is half your offense coming from the farm the best you can do? Well, there's another team I'm thinking of: the 90s Indians did a really steady job at it. Their 1994 strike shortened contender (and 100-win '95 team) consisted of:
Homegrown: Sandy Alomar (came from the Padres with 23 PAs there, 5th season), Jim Thome (first real season), Carlos Baerga (5th season), Kenny Lofton (came from Houston with 79 PAs, 3rd real season), Manny Ramirez (first season), Albert Belle (5th season)
Imported: Eddie Murray (last legs), Paul Sorrento (3rd real season) Omar Vizquel (6th season)
Those Indians were something else. Still can't believe they didn't win a World Series... but at least they got there. And they built most of the thing from their own farm or with great trade pieces that hadn't had a chance to succeed elsewhere.
But it took a few years after gathering SEVERAL Hall of Famers onto one squad to make it work. Kenny Lofton, Sandy Alomar and Albert Belle were already there for a few seasons holding down the fort before two MORE HOF-level players showed up in their first full seasons (Thome and Man-Ram) to take them over the top.
Who here thinks we have 5 potential Hall of Famers on this team? Five Hall of Very Good? Five All-Stars? Five above-average major-leaguers?
I like Seager, Zunino, Miller and Franklin to be above-average (should they all stay). But building an offense around above-average hitting glove infielders isn't exactly the way to success. Here are the OPS+ numbers from that 94 Indians team:
Sorrento - 106 (Smoak should have that locked up...)
Alomar - 115 (okay, mayyyybe Zunino can do that...)
Baerga - 119 (I guess Franklin or Miller had better bring it)
Man-Ram 125 (ouch, that's within reach of a career year by Seager)
Thome - 127 (we're running out of hitters who can do this...)
Kenny Lofton - 145 (okay, there's no way...)
Belle - 194 (what!?!)
Their worst hitters were a HOF-level glove in Vizquel at 71 and a 38 year old DH at 87. I'm sure we could find that. It's all the 100+ numbers we need to locate. And their staff had an ERA+ of 107 so lets not think they were carried just by offense.
By any measure, even IF we are lucky enough to have 5 HOF level players currently with this team (lets say Seager, Miller, Zunino, Franklin and DJ who will come up next year) it'll take another couple of years to get that to work out without outside help.
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I've been saying 2016 is the end of the gestation date for this current farm talent for a couple of years now. If we stick it out, wait for Peterson and Choi, trade no one and let our pitching sort itself out we're still a couple of years away.
I'm not against that, if we believe in the farm talent. Smoak and Ackley are making it hard to believe in all of our talent coming together and performing at their assumed levels; still, both guys could take another step forward this next year and start really helping us. But we kinda have to bet on that if we're not gonna take large steps to add outside production to our offense.
Re-signing Morales and adding an outfielder is a start, but in this theoretical world where Cano would come here I would be interested. The Indians were so stacked offensively they wound up trading away Richie Sexson and his 40 bombs a year because he was blocked by Thome. We would walk over hot coals for 40 bombs from one player.
If we want to make this work before the second half of the decade and have a viable team to follow, I don't see how it happens without outside help. We have two #1 pitchers right now, and a TOR (or TWO) slated for the back half of the rotation while they get their feet under em. Now would be the time to back them with more than 600 runs a year, you would think. Not later - now.
In the mythical world of Cano interest, I'd trade Franklin and a low-minors arm like Diaz for Joey Bats, sign HOFer Cano, and let the chips fall where they may the next 3 years. It's kinda too bad we don't live in that world - that would be a fun team.
Still hoping the 2014 Ms team can be a fun team - and a winner - without any need for pipe dreams. Hopefully the dominos start to fall soon so we can get a glimpse.
~G