Random Cubs Musings

[Backtobanks]

The point of having lots of top prospects is to reduce the effect of any particular prospect's failure. They're not in trouble if two or three don't become stars because that would mean two or three do become stars, which is well above average return.

 

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level.

[Guest]

Also, prospects don't randomly flame out, most of the time. Regular failures in prospect development should point more towards organizational development failures, rather than the "luck of the draw".

 

The more I've heard about what the new management regime has implemented, the more I realize just how backwards and embarrassing the organization's development was before.

 

On the one hand, I tend to think it's much more about picking the right guys than it is about player development.

 

On the other, when you're as far on the extreme end of bad in that department, the fact that we've gone from that to very good player development is probably extreme enough that it's a factor (in terms of comparing our past track record with prospects).

 

I don't know, the Cardinals development system seems to have produced a pretty good number of hitters who really weren't all that heralded when they picked them up. Obviously they have to have talent, but I think some organizations have a knack for bringing it out much better than others.

 

Yeah...but they didn't need to be all that heralded to have been the right guys.

[Post Count Padder]

Had my first game at Wrigley Thursday night. It was everything I had hoped it would be (including the loss :roll:

 

Sat in the bleachers, had some Old Style. Just a great time.

[Old Style]

Had my first game at Wrigley Thursday night. It was everything I had hoped it would be (including the loss :roll:

 

Sat in the bleachers, had some Old Style. Just a great time.

:hello:

[bukie]

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[XZero771679666304]

The point of having lots of top prospects is to reduce the effect of any particular prospect's failure. They're not in trouble if two or three don't become stars because that would mean two or three do become stars, which is well above average return.

 

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level.

 

The late 2000s Red Sox weren't a 70 win team because they had been competently run for years, even during the previous regime, and Theo was fortunate enough to inherit a good major league team. The same cannot be said for the Cubs and their situation. You can't build a house on sand, and what is happening now is the laying of a foundation the Cubs haven't had in years (a process which has been expedited to a significant degree). Trying to construct a winning MLB team without the ability to significantly supplement the roster with quality players from within is at best hit or miss (see Jim Hendry's results) and at worst a complete waste of time and money.

 

The signings and trades will come, probably soon.

 

But in a discussion about what the success rate of top prospects is, the state of the major league team is immaterial.

[Backtobanks]

The point of having lots of top prospects is to reduce the effect of any particular prospect's failure. They're not in trouble if two or three don't become stars because that would mean two or three do become stars, which is well above average return.

 

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level.

 

The late 2000s Red Sox weren't a 70 win team because they had been competently run for years, even during the previous regime, and Theo was fortunate enough to inherit a good major league team. The same cannot be said for the Cubs and their situation. You can't build a house on sand, and what is happening now is the laying of a foundation the Cubs haven't had in years (a process which has been expedited to a significant degree). Trying to construct a winning MLB team without the ability to significantly supplement the roster with quality players from within is at best hit or miss (see Jim Hendry's results) and at worst a complete waste of time and money.

 

The signings and trades will come, probably soon.

 

But in a discussion about what the success rate of top prospects is, the state of the major league team is immaterial.

 

It's not immaterial if your ML team only needs to fill 1-2 holes as opposed to a team that has 5-6 holes to fill. The Cubs need a high percentage of their top prospects to make it, while it was a luxury for the Red Sox to have prospects make it. The FO has put all of their faith, time, and money into the ml system with the thought that it will pay off somewhere in the future. The Red Sox really did work on "dual fronts" by having a very good team and a strong farm system.

[XZero771679666304]

The point of having lots of top prospects is to reduce the effect of any particular prospect's failure. They're not in trouble if two or three don't become stars because that would mean two or three do become stars, which is well above average return.

 

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level.

 

The late 2000s Red Sox weren't a 70 win team because they had been competently run for years, even during the previous regime, and Theo was fortunate enough to inherit a good major league team. The same cannot be said for the Cubs and their situation. You can't build a house on sand, and what is happening now is the laying of a foundation the Cubs haven't had in years (a process which has been expedited to a significant degree). Trying to construct a winning MLB team without the ability to significantly supplement the roster with quality players from within is at best hit or miss (see Jim Hendry's results) and at worst a complete waste of time and money.

 

The signings and trades will come, probably soon.

 

But in a discussion about what the success rate of top prospects is, the state of the major league team is immaterial.

 

It's not immaterial if your ML team only needs to fill 1-2 holes as opposed to a team that has 5-6 holes to fill. The Cubs need a high percentage of their top prospects to make it, while it was a luxury for the Red Sox to have prospects make it. The FO has put all of their faith, time, and money into the ml system with the thought that it will pay off somewhere in the future. The Red Sox really did work on "dual fronts" by having a very good team and a strong farm system.

 

Because they were already good when Theo took over there. The Cubs were not. Trying to do the dual fronts thing from where the Cubs were in 2011 (bad big league team, bad farm system) would have resulted in just as protracted a wait, if not longer, because one comes at the expense of the other. The cost of that trade off is mitigated when both are already good, but to get to that point one is more vital than the other. Like I said, you need the foundation laid before you build the house, and Theo and Jed have done nothing short of spectacular (though imperfect) work in building up the farm in a relatively short period of time.

 

And the Cubs absolutely do not need a disproportionately high number of prospects to pan out to get where they want to go. That line of thought would be on the assumption that were never going to spend or make significant trades. They just need a few of them to work out, enough to constitute a core to supplement. Every successful MLB team relies on certain level of contribution from their farm to win with consistency.

 

A good example of where the Cubs are (hopefully) could be the Yankees of the mid-1990s. They were objectively terrible at the big league level for the first half of the decade, but out of those bad years came Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera, etc., who they then built around with shrewd signings and trade acquisitions. They did not have a disproportionately high number of their prospects work out (in fact many of their top kids flamed out), but enough did.

 

If you add just 2-3 of the Cubs' top 10 to the existing roster, suddenly you're quite close, close enough that just a few decent acquisitions (or a couple really good ones) puts the team in a very good place. That's how the Yankees did it (Before they turned into the Evil Empire), that's how Epstein's Sox did it, that's how the Cardinals have done it, how the consistently great franchises do it. Once you get that machine up and running, then it fuels itself. It's becoming clearer by the day that Jim Hendry and predecessors did not, that they tried to build their house on metaphorical sand and is why we are enduring what we are.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Yep, just be the 1990s Yankees. Develop a couple of HOFerse and then break the league with your insane spending levels. Easy as pie.

[XZero771679666304]

Yep, just be the 1990s Yankees. Develop a couple of HOFerse and then break the league with your insane spending levels. Easy as pie.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. The point was that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. Not even the Yankees were exempt from this. No one is expecting the Cubs to become the Yankees, but the approach should be the same. And the guys I mentioned were merely very good before they were HOFers, and that was enough.

 

And it was a few years on from when the Yanks re-emerged that they started "breaking the league" with their spending.

 

That Yankees run was probably something that will not be replicated, by anyone. But its genesis was not in insane spending, it was in player development.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The approach *isn't* the same though. The Yankees never did what the Cubs did in 2012, which was nearly abandon a season and focus only on the prospects.

 

The Yankees' prospects didn't come about as a result of a conscience effort to divert nearly all possible resources to building a base of prospects.

 

I mean yes, everyone who wins develops players, so in that sense player development is at the basis of everything. But everyone not owned by Reinsdorf tries to develop players, so I don't think that qualifies as an identifying characteristic of your franchise.

[jersey cubs fan]

Yep, just be the 1990s Yankees. Develop a couple of HOFerse and then break the league with your insane spending levels. Easy as pie.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. The point was that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. Not even the Yankees were exempt from this. No one is expecting the Cubs to become the Yankees, but the approach should be the same. And the guys I mentioned were merely very good before they were HOFers, and that was enough.

 

And it was a few years on from when the Yanks re-emerged that they started "breaking the league" with their spending.

 

That Yankees run was probably something that will not be replicated, by anyone. But its genesis was not in insane spending, it was in player development.

 

Even when the Yankees were not yet running away with the payroll leaderboard, they were merely playing leapfrog with Baltimore.

 

It's also not at all true that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. That may be the preferred method for some. That is the safe and more cost effective method. But it is also the much more time consuming and loss running up method. The only teams that have to build from within first are the truly poor ones or the rich ones who choose to be run excessively conservatively.

[XZero771679666304]

The approach *isn't* the same though. The Yankees never did what the Cubs did in 2012, which was nearly abandon a season and focus only on the prospects.

 

The Yankees' prospects didn't come about as a result of a conscience effort to divert nearly all possible resources to building a base of prospects.

 

But it did come about (at least in part) because of the Yankees being dreadful at the major league level. For the purposes of identifying the reasons the Yankees reemerged so quickly and trying to replicate it (at least the pattern if not the level of success), the intent isn't really that important.

 

Say what you will, but the Cubs' abandonment of the 2012 season seriously expedited the farm system rebuild, which is crucial to long term success. If the FO had half halfheartedly tried to compete last year it almost certainly would have slowed the overall process down. It sucked, but in the end I prefer pragmatism to the feeble pretense of "trying" to return a moribund team to competition immediately to satisfy the meatballish sensibilities of the common fan. Whether it will prove to have been the most efficacious path remains to be seen.

 

I'm pretty satisfied with the job the FO has done to this point, but this coming offseason is going to mark an important crossroads, imo.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I think when you look at the past decade or two of World Series winners, the most common path is developing prospects simultaneous to trying to compete at the MLB level (with varying levels of success).

 

Teams like the Yankees, Giants, Cardinals all developed a lot of homegrown prospects, but they either did it while they were winning or during periods of downtime that happened despite their best efforts. At their worst, they resemble the 2013 Cubs.

 

The whole "first we amass a pile of prospects, then we try to win, then we do win" paradigm has mostly been taken up by small-market teams that have had tepid at best results. The Brewers got their window, but it wasn't much of one and will end up being surrounded by awfulness on both sides. The Royals are finally at the point their fans thought they'd be five years ago, and it looks like they may peak there. The Nats certainly don't look like they are having the long-term, sustained success that many envisioned at this time last year.

 

tl;dr Parallel fronts >>>> building the foundation first

[KingCubsFan]

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p228/irish1289/photo12.jpg

[jersey cubs fan]

It sucked, but in the end I prefer pragmatism to the feeble pretense of "trying" to return a moribund team to competition immediately to satisfy the meatballish sensibilities of the common fan.

 

It's pretty ignorant to characterize the fan's desire to see his team win games as meatballish.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Say what you will, but the Cubs' abandonment of the 2012 season seriously expedited the farm system rebuild, which is crucial to long term success. If the FO had half halfheartedly tried to compete last year it almost certainly would have slowed the overall process down. It sucked, but in the end I prefer pragmatism to the feeble pretense of "trying" to return a moribund team to competition immediately to satisfy the meatballish sensibilities of the common fan. Whether it will prove to have been the most efficacious path remains to be seen.

 

The abandonment of 2012 also put them in a hole they tried but failed to dig out of in 2013, and we may yet see more of those consequences in 2014 and 2015.

 

I'm far from convinced that what we gained in an expedited farm system will make up for the seasons we lost. We've locked in the downside and are praying for enough upside to cover it.

[KingCubsFan]

Say what you will, but the Cubs' abandonment of the 2012 season seriously expedited the farm system rebuild, which is crucial to long term success. If the FO had half halfheartedly tried to compete last year it almost certainly would have slowed the overall process down. It sucked, but in the end I prefer pragmatism to the feeble pretense of "trying" to return a moribund team to competition immediately to satisfy the meatballish sensibilities of the common fan. Whether it will prove to have been the most efficacious path remains to be seen.

 

The abandonment of 2012 also put them in a hole they tried but failed to dig out of in 2013, and we may yet see more of those consequences in 2014 and 2015.

 

I'm far from convinced that what we gained in an expedited farm system will make up for the seasons we lost. We've locked in the downside and are praying for enough upside to cover it.

I think part of it will depend on how Kris Bryant turns out.

[Guest]

Theo's Red Sox (2003-2011) had 62 player seasons of > 3 fWAR, right at 7 per year. Those 7 in aggregate were composed of:

 

3 prospects who averaged 4.6 fWAR

1 buy low pick-up(Ortiz/Bellhorn) who averaged 4.4 fWAR

2 players acquired in big trades, who averaged 5.2 fWAR

2 free agents, who averaged 4.5 fWAR

 

This also represents a different CBA era, going forward I'm not sure how many Mannys, Schillings, Drews, or even Beltres will be out there in Free Agency. But in any case, it's illustrative that you need all types, and you especially need the system to both develop stars for yourself and the currency to go get those players in trade who make a difference too.

[imb]

The whole "first we amass a pile of prospects, then we try to win, then we do win" paradigm has mostly been taken up by small-market teams that have had tepid at best results. The Brewers got their window, but it wasn't much of one and will end up being surrounded by awfulness on both sides. The Royals are finally at the point their fans thought they'd be five years ago, and it looks like they may peak there. The Nats certainly don't look like they are having the long-term, sustained success that many envisioned at this time last year.

 

this means nothing to me, assuming the cubs will be operating with a cubs-like payroll when the prospects are ready. i know we all have our qualms about our ownership right now and where the money is going, but if a few of our minor league guys hit at the same time, a la the royals or whatever, i don't see the cubs operating with a royals-like payroll or going "we're only spending briefly" like the brewers

[XZero771679666304]

Yep, just be the 1990s Yankees. Develop a couple of HOFerse and then break the league with your insane spending levels. Easy as pie.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. The point was that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. Not even the Yankees were exempt from this. No one is expecting the Cubs to become the Yankees, but the approach should be the same. And the guys I mentioned were merely very good before they were HOFers, and that was enough.

 

And it was a few years on from when the Yanks re-emerged that they started "breaking the league" with their spending.

 

That Yankees run was probably something that will not be replicated, by anyone. But its genesis was not in insane spending, it was in player development.

 

Even when the Yankees were not yet running away with the payroll leaderboard, they were merely playing leapfrog with Baltimore.

 

It's also not at all true that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. That may be the preferred method for some. That is the safe and more cost effective method. But it is also the much more time consuming and loss running up method. The only teams that have to build from within first are the truly poor ones or the rich ones who choose to be run excessively conservatively.

 

No team wins with consistency without significant contribution from within. Say what you will about how you get to the point where you consistently get those contributions, but the necessity of them isn't an arguable point.

 

If you try to build exclusively from without, you either fail or find only inconsistent success (again, see Hendry). Every consistently great franchise maintains a good farm system.

 

I understand the position that gains should be made on both sides in equal measure, but I don't think that approach would have made the big league team good (not better, but actually good) any more quickly. I think that the team is in a position where it could very well get much better in rapid fashion because of the resources that have been brought in during the last 18 months or so.

 

Of course much of that depends on how tightly Ricketts is holding the purse strings, which is actually pretty unclear at this point.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

this means nothing to me, assuming the cubs will be operating with a cubs-like payroll when the prospects are ready. i know we all have our qualms about our ownership right now and where the money is going, but if a few of our minor league guys hit at the same time, a la the royals or whatever, i don't see the cubs operating with a royals-like payroll or going "we're only spending briefly" like the brewers

 

We can be the Nationals with a little more money and a slightly worse prospects.

[XZero771679666304]

It sucked, but in the end I prefer pragmatism to the feeble pretense of "trying" to return a moribund team to competition immediately to satisfy the meatballish sensibilities of the common fan.

 

It's pretty ignorant to characterize the fan's desire to see his team win games as meatballish.

 

It's meatballish to prefer marginal and mostly symbolic gains in w/l to substantive improvements to the overall franchise. The assumption many have made is that the team could have been returned squarely to competition in short order from where it was when Theo took over, which is a position that is, imo, pretty ignorant.

[imb]

this means nothing to me, assuming the cubs will be operating with a cubs-like payroll when the prospects are ready. i know we all have our qualms about our ownership right now and where the money is going, but if a few of our minor league guys hit at the same time, a la the royals or whatever, i don't see the cubs operating with a royals-like payroll or going "we're only spending briefly" like the brewers

 

We can be the Nationals with a little more money and a slightly worse prospects.

 

am i wrong or wouldn't that be like, awesome?

[XZero771679666304]

this means nothing to me, assuming the cubs will be operating with a cubs-like payroll when the prospects are ready. i know we all have our qualms about our ownership right now and where the money is going, but if a few of our minor league guys hit at the same time, a la the royals or whatever, i don't see the cubs operating with a royals-like payroll or going "we're only spending briefly" like the brewers

 

We can be the Nationals with a little more money and a slightly worse prospects.

 

You would have been overjoyed to have been the Nationals with slightly worse prospects prior to this season, and don't try and say you wouldn't have. There are no guarantees on the field, and the Nationals are an example of that.

 

And IMB's point is right on, that yours only holds an ounce of water if the assumption is that the Cubs are going to be thrifty in the long term, which seems unlikely at best.