Executive Approval Poll - Post Trade Deadline 2014

[Hairyducked Idiot]

That last line should continue, "... just enough to win 79 games and still not have any playoff hopes, and then be deprived of Albert Almora (eh), Kris Bryant, and Kyle Schwarber + three high school arms with good upside."

 

How are we going to have the imaginary decade of dominance if this front office can only draft well at the front of the draft?

[SouthSideRyan]

Almora's draft position was already locked in from the 2011 season. Schwarber could have been drafted later than 3rd.

[Sammy Sofa]

... under a different draft system, when they could throw a bunch of money at the draft and get a lot of good, lesser talents and some eventually turned out really good.

 

Come on, the new CBA didn't suddenly turn this into the NBA draft.

[Guest]

it's a tangential point now, but people earlier in this discussion (and in others) who are framing failures to compete in '12 as the FO's willful or purposeful tanking seem so hilariously divorced from the confines of reality

 

the new FO inherited a 91-loss team, saw the payroll cut by $25M and the internal options at their disposal (Brett Jackson, Josh Vitters, Bryan LaHair, Steve Clevenger, Chris Rusin, [Marwin Gonzalez, Ryan Flaherty, DJ LeMahieu]) all went on to combine for minus-1.6 fWAR

 

 

reasonable expections, to be sure

"the team i'm giving you really sucks already, and i'm slashing your budget, and using the guys from the minors will only make you worse"

 

"but i'd still like you to compete"

 

That last line should continue, "... just enough to win 79 games and still not have any playoff hopes, and then be deprived of Albert Almora (eh), Kris Bryant, and Kyle Schwarber + three high school arms with good upside."

 

Thank goodness we dodged the terrible drafting they did in Boston.

 

Oh my goodness. You know why this is a horrifically bad argument, right?

[Aaron_Kennelly]

That last line should continue, "... just enough to win 79 games and still not have any playoff hopes, and then be deprived of Albert Almora (eh), Kris Bryant, and Kyle Schwarber + three high school arms with good upside."

 

How are we going to have the imaginary decade of dominance if this front office can only draft well at the front of the draft?

 

Because if there are superstars in place in, I don't know, maybe a couple of our top-five picks and Rizzo, then we can add pretty good prospects from later in the draft to complement them, rather than just relying solely on guys drafted later in the draft.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

When you put forth the argument that we somehow *needed* to have top draft picks, you're basically forfeiting the idea that this front office can build sustained success. They're just doing the old small-market "window" thing where you build up a bunch of prospects for a 3-5 year run.

 

Teams that have real sustained success like the Cardinals or Red Sox don't need to draft in the top-5 a bunch of years in a row to get production from their farm system. If this front office did, then they aren't as good as you think.

[Sammy Sofa]

it's a tangential point now, but people earlier in this discussion (and in others) who are framing failures to compete in '12 as the FO's willful or purposeful tanking seem so hilariously divorced from the confines of reality

 

the new FO inherited a 91-loss team, saw the payroll cut by $25M and the internal options at their disposal (Brett Jackson, Josh Vitters, Bryan LaHair, Steve Clevenger, Chris Rusin, [Marwin Gonzalez, Ryan Flaherty, DJ LeMahieu]) all went on to combine for minus-1.6 fWAR

 

 

reasonable expections, to be sure

"the team i'm giving you really sucks already, and i'm slashing your budget, and using the guys from the minors will only make you worse"

 

"but i'd still like you to compete"

 

That last line should continue, "... just enough to win 79 games and still not have any playoff hopes, and then be deprived of Albert Almora (eh), Kris Bryant, and Kyle Schwarber + three high school arms with good upside."

 

Thank goodness we dodged the terrible drafting they did in Boston.

 

Oh my goodness. You know why this is a horrifically bad argument, right?

 

Only slightly worse than basically saying "we NEEDED to draft at the top to save this team from the nightmare state it was in."

[Hairyducked Idiot]

... under a different draft system, when they could throw a bunch of money at the draft and get a lot of good, lesser talents and some eventually turned out really good.

 

Come on, the new CBA didn't suddenly turn this into the NBA draft.

 

The CBA thing is ridiculous. People act like elite prospects were just sitting there in the 4th round ready to be poached under the old system.

 

Teams spent a bunch of extra money to get a very small amount of extra draft value, and they took that away, but it wasn't some seismic shift in how the draft works. Ever looked at who the non-first-round 7-figure draftees were under Epstein in Boston? They all ended up sucking.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

When you put forth the argument that we somehow *needed* to have top draft picks, you're basically forfeiting the idea that this front office can build sustained success. They're just doing the old small-market "window" thing where you build up a bunch of prospects for a 3-5 year run.

 

Teams that have real sustained success like the Cardinals or Red Sox don't need to draft in the top-5 a bunch of years in a row to get production from their farm system. If this front office did, then they aren't as good as you think.

 

When did I say we needed them? I just think it is easier to rely upon them being successful, which is true. And I would rather take the more reliable more towards building a farm, if the alternative is to just win 75-80 games.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

When did I say we needed them? I just think it is easier to rely upon them being successful, which is true. And I would rather take the more reliable more towards building a farm, if the alternative is to just win 75-80 games.

 

If the "alternative" is to win 75-80 games after three seasons, don't they kinda suck at their jobs?

 

Putting together a good baseball team once in awhile isn't some magically hard thing to do. After this year, more than half the league will have made the playoffs in the time that Epstein and Hoyer have been here.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

Also, the key qualifier there, being that teams like St. Louis and Boston that have sustained success and don't need top-5 picks to continue that success, is that they have had sustained success. When you already have superstars in place, it becomes less needed to add superstars through the farm. We didn't have that. I hope that once we get better, then we won't rely on the farm as much. And if we are relying on prospects in five years like now, then something will have went terribly wrong.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Also, the key qualifier there, being that teams like St. Louis and Boston that have sustained success and don't need top-5 picks to continue that success, is that they have had sustained success. When you already have superstars in place, it becomes less needed to add superstars through the farm. We didn't have that. I hope that once we get better, then we won't rely on the farm as much. And if we are relying on prospects in five years like now, then something will have went terribly wrong.

 

That makes no sense. So St. Louis put together their current awesome pile of young talent without top draft picks because they used to have Pujols when he was awesome?

[Guest]

I'm as not-angry with the front office as someone gets, and I still don't get the draft pick angle. I mean it's a potential ancillary benefit to draft closer to the top and have a bigger pool, but if that was the primary reason then they didn't do a very good job. They could've saved a lot more money by not signing the likes of Jackson, DeJesus, Maholm, even Feldman and Hammel. They could've actually done the Astros thing if they really wanted to, but intentionally being as bad as possible was never the aim. Prioritizing long term value/flexibility over short term production, sure, but better draft position was not the goal.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

Also, the key qualifier there, being that teams like St. Louis and Boston that have sustained success and don't need top-5 picks to continue that success, is that they have had sustained success. When you already have superstars in place, it becomes less needed to add superstars through the farm. We didn't have that. I hope that once we get better, then we won't rely on the farm as much. And if we are relying on prospects in five years like now, then something will have went terribly wrong.

 

That makes no sense. So St. Louis put together their current awesome pile of young talent without top draft picks because they used to have Pujols when he was awesome?

 

No, St. Louis is different because even though guys like Wong and Taveras and Shelby Miller have all been meh, they don't need to rely on them as much because they have had sustained success. When Theo took over, we had neither sustained success nor a good farm. So it's kinda hard to turn that around without focusing on either the success part or the farm part -- unless you believe in the "dual fronts" thing. Which is total [expletive] and never should have been said by anyone in our organization.

Edited August 4, 2014 by Duke Silver

[Sammy Sofa]

I'm as not-angry with the front office as someone gets, and I still don't get the draft pick angle. I mean it's a potential ancillary benefit to draft closer to the top and have a bigger pool, but if that was the primary reason then they didn't do a very good job. They could've saved a lot more money by not signing the likes of Jackson, DeJesus, Maholm, even Feldman and Hammel. They could've actually done the Astros thing if they really wanted to, but intentionally being as bad as possible was never the aim. Prioritizing long term value/flexibility over short term production, sure, but better draft position was not the goal.

 

That actually makes me feel worse than if they had intentionally tanked.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

No, St. Louis is different because even though guys like Wong and Taveras and Shelby Miller have all been meh, they don't need to rely on them as much because they have had sustained success. When Theo took over, we had neither sustained success nor a good farm. So it's kinda hard to turn that around without focusing on either the success part or the farm part -- unless you believe in the "dual fronts" thing. Which is total [expletive] and never should have been said by anyone in our organization.

 

You're still not making sense. The Cardinals have a good, young team that they didn't need top draft picks to get because they had success in the past?

 

Edit: misread what you said

 

But whether it should have been said or not, it was:

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=7147793

 

"I didn't use the world rebuilding and I wouldn't. I think that is just a buzzword in baseball that leads people down the wrong path," Epstein said.

 

"The best way I can describe it is there are parallel fronts -- the job of building the scouting and player development foundation that is going to serve well for the long haul and treating every opportunity to win as sacred."

 

 

 

A good front office could/should/would have built this team on both fronts. They would have fixed the crappy organizational infrastructure and used the emerging farm system (which wasn't as bad as many would have you believe now) simultaneous to improving the MLB roster. We'd have an above-average team and an above-average farm system right now, and that would be real sustained success. Not losing a bunch and then hopefully winning a bunch later.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

Let me be more clear, I think the "dual fronts" idea is totally reasonable and makes sense if you are in St. Louis or Boston's position. And it is why they are continually awesome. I just think it was stupid for us to say that, given where our organization was: Terrible major league roster, terrible farm, too many old-school people in prominent positions, a new owner, the new owner being broke, little influence in Latin America, our stadium and local government holding us hostage and depriving us of new revenue streams. We just were in no position to have success on dual fronts, and I think we are now.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The farm system wasn't terrible.

 

We have tons of examples of teams fixing their farm systems without needing to lose a bunch. We have plenty of examples of teams without a lot of MLB talent or a great farm system or a lot of money turning it around in less than three years.

 

So there's no reason they couldn't have made a real effort at doing both. None at all.

Edited August 4, 2014 by Hairyducked Idiot

[Aaron_Kennelly]

No, St. Louis is different because even though guys like Wong and Taveras and Shelby Miller have all been meh, they don't need to rely on them as much because they have had sustained success. When Theo took over, we had neither sustained success nor a good farm. So it's kinda hard to turn that around without focusing on either the success part or the farm part -- unless you believe in the "dual fronts" thing. Which is total [expletive] and never should have been said by anyone in our organization.

 

You're still not making sense. The Cardinals have a good, young team that they didn't need top draft picks to get because they had success in the past?

 

Edit: misread what you said

 

But whether it should have been said or not, it was:

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=7147793

 

"I didn't use the world rebuilding and I wouldn't. I think that is just a buzzword in baseball that leads people down the wrong path," Epstein said.

 

"The best way I can describe it is there are parallel fronts -- the job of building the scouting and player development foundation that is going to serve well for the long haul and treating every opportunity to win as sacred."

 

 

 

A good front office could/should/would have built this team on both fronts. They would have fixed the crappy organizational infrastructure and used the emerging farm system (which wasn't as bad as many would have you believe now) simultaneous to improving the MLB roster. We'd have an above-average team and an above-average farm system right now, and that would be real sustained success. Not losing a bunch and then hopefully winning a bunch later.

 

Ok. That I agree with you on 100%; I just don't think that was possible given what they were handed. I think it is now, though, and not doing so from now on would leave me with no choice but to be extremely critical.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

The farm system wasn't terrible.

 

It was pretty bad -- most had them 20-22 if I recall, and I know BA was higher, but they still had them as middling. Our top guys (outside of an 18-year-old, just drafted Baez, who surely wasn't going to make a difference in the majors for awhile) were Jackson, Szczur, McNutt, Lake, and Vitters. And they all turned out to suck, so good luck turning a bad team around quickly with prospects who end up being terrible at baseball, when you are also being sapped of cash flow to build the major league roster through free agency.

 

It's not just that the farm system was bad; it's that the farm system gave us nothing once they did come up. If some of those guys had contributed, then maybe Theo sees the urgency in adding parts around them.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The farm system wasn't terrible.

 

It was pretty bad -- most had them 20-22 if I recall, and I know BA was higher, but they still had them as middling. Our top guys (outside of an 18-year-old, just drafted Baez, who surely wasn't going to make a difference in the majors for awhile) were Jackson, Szczur, McNutt, Lake, and Vitters. And they all turned out to suck, so good luck turning a bad team around quickly with prospects who end up being terrible at baseball, when you are also being sapped of cash flow to build the major league roster through free agency.

 

It's not just that the farm system was bad; it's that the farm system gave us nothing once they did come up. If some of those guys had contributed, then maybe Theo sees the urgency in adding parts around them.

 

Part of the reason the farm system didn't have that much about to graduate is because there was a decent chunk of young talent already on the team, like Castro and Samardzija.

 

I'll point out again that three teams were lower than us in the farm system rankings at either the beginning or end of 2011, were below .500 in 2011, and have since made the playoffs with a payroll of less than $100m. It isn't some magically hard thing to do.

[TruffleShuffle]

I, of course, vote no.

 

The "plan" predictably is taking much longer than many thought originally, and Hoyer is already laying the groundwork for having excuses in place for 2015 as well. Nobody makes the playoffs every single year under the new CBA, so they probably won't be making it often enough to turn their 0-for-4 into anything other than a middling average.

 

Who thought the "plan" was going to take a shorter amount of time than this?

 

Literally everyone three years ago. Even the people who wanted to rebuild would say things like "If we're not good by 2014, then I'll be right there with you."

 

you mean back when people thought the team would continue to have a $130m payroll, and thought that soto and soriano and zambrano might continue to be viable baseball players, and that brett jackson, josh vitters and matt szczur would be up within a couple of years to help improve the big league club?

 

your constant moaning about this is like people who bitch that obama didn't fix everything within a few months. just because a lot of people thought in late 2008 that the economy would be back to 5% unemployment and steady GDP growth by mid-2009 doesn't mean that this was at all a realistic expectation, given what we know now about the state of the national/global economy when obama took office.

[Sammy Sofa]

you mean back when people thought the team would continue to have a $130m payroll, and thought that soto and soriano and zambrano might continue to be viable baseball players, and that brett jackson, josh vitters and matt szczur would be up within a couple of years to help improve the big league club?

 

See? This guy gets it. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

The farm system wasn't terrible.

 

It was pretty bad -- most had them 20-22 if I recall, and I know BA was higher, but they still had them as middling. Our top guys (outside of an 18-year-old, just drafted Baez, who surely wasn't going to make a difference in the majors for awhile) were Jackson, Szczur, McNutt, Lake, and Vitters. And they all turned out to suck, so good luck turning a bad team around quickly with prospects who end up being terrible at baseball, when you are also being sapped of cash flow to build the major league roster through free agency.

 

It's not just that the farm system was bad; it's that the farm system gave us nothing once they did come up. If some of those guys had contributed, then maybe Theo sees the urgency in adding parts around them.

 

Part of the reason the farm system didn't have that much about to graduate is because there was a decent chunk of young talent already on the team, like Castro and Samardzija.

 

I'll point out again that three teams were lower than us in the farm system rankings at either the beginning or end of 2011, were below .500 in 2011, and have since made the playoffs with a payroll of less than $100m. It isn't some magically hard thing to do.

 

Which three teams are they? I am assuming 1.) They also had some young talent already at the major league level. 2.) They didn't have as many bad players being paid exorbitant sums of money. 3.) They had more success from guys that came up from the minors. 4.) Their payroll wasn't slashed because of a change in ownership. 5.) They probably spent some on veteran free agents, and some of those signings are probably going to be a hindrance to them soon. 6.) They probably don't look to have as bright of a future as we do, anyway.

[TruffleShuffle]

I'll point out again that three teams were lower than us in the farm system rankings at either the beginning or end of 2011, were below .500 in 2011, and have since made the playoffs with a payroll of less than $100m. It isn't some magically hard thing to do.

 

which teams were those? i'm looking forward to hearing this, because it will probably be extremely easy to punch holes in this argument.