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I've been hanging around MC the Ms blog-o-sphere for what ... 5 years now? 
I do believe this may the first time that there has actually been prolonged discussions about player DEVELOPMENT. 
Okay, maybe I'm projecting -- but my sense of the past half decade is that "prospects" were viewed in one of two ways ... what great stats they were putting up ... or what great stats they would put up once they "developed".
Mind you, there WERE posts about a guy needing to fix this weakness or that weakness ... but no real categorization of the chaotic nature of ACTUAL player development.
And what I draw from this revelation is this ... the REASON that nobody had discussions about player development is because it wasn't happening.  For most of the first decade of the 21st century the Ms simply drafted (or signed international FAs) see-ball, hit-ball types and they climbed the ladder until they could no longer see the ball.
So, the question for me is ... did guys who have been following the Ms for decades just gotten loads smarter than they were 5 years ago ... or is the discussion an artifact of actual player "development" occuring?
It's sort of the "uncertainty principle" in reverse.  Can an observer remain unaffected when watching an experiment?
I've been fairly down about the 2011 prospects for Seattle, (pun intended).  While most might consider this thread just one more in a laundry list of prospect dissections.  I'm thinking it may in possibly the weirdest connection I've ever made, the evidence I've been looking for that player development has returned to the Ms farm system.