Power 50 discussion -- Latest: September Power 50 now up!

[Tedaldtada]

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2010/10/9/1740612/rookie-review-lorenzo-cain

 

Short Sickel's article on Lorenzo Cain. He seems pretty optimistic.

 

Sickels:

"I don't expect Cain to hit .300+ every year, but I can see him as a

consistent .270-.290 hitter with some seasons that get beyond that. If

he boosts is isolated patience a bit, maintains his polish on the

bases, his offensive and defensive skills will make him quite valuable."

[TheCrew07]

I'm still catching up on reading here and there, reading a couple of threads a week, so I'm very late to the party.

 

I no longer hold out any hope that the big league club will get over the hump until the organization can develop it's own pitching. The only impact pitching Melvin has been able to acquire in his tenure as GM was Sabathia, and it's awfully tough to miss when you trade for a healthy CY pitcher. I wasn’t in favor of the trade at the time and remain of the opinion that it hurt the performance of the team long term, but CC was an impact talent. DM just isn't willing or capable to make a deal for impact pitching, there's no history in Milwaukee or Texas to support the notion that he's even capable of building a championship caliber rotation. As a fan, I really only care about having the opportunity to compete for a championship, I'm not interested in 1 and done in the playoffs, I want to be able to compete with the big boys. I've already hashed out why I think the pitching is the key to Milwaukee’s future success/failure, and I'm not going to rehash dozens of posts here to make my point once again. However, this is the perspective I'm posting from.

 

I like the fact that the power 50 has become pitching heavy near the top, I like the system now more than I have in the past. That being said I do find it curious that no one including the Brewers have pimped Rivas. We must not have all the information because they've pimped much worse pitchers much more in the past…. Little Ben anyone? They give him the pitcher of the year award for 2009 but the 3 guys we heard the most about once Axford and Braddock were up were Odorizzi, Rogers, and Jeffress. What's not to like to about a young pitcher who’s FB has good movement, sits in the low 90s, reaches the mid 90s, and has an excellent change to boot? Are they intentionally trying to fly him under the radar? While it was good for Rogers and Jeffress to get MLB experience the call-ups were clearly as much a PR move as they were a reward. 2 former first round starting pitchers make good and reach the majors… hurray for us!

 

I won’t go name by name but I still think we’re short on impact talent pitching wise, especially given Parra’s failure in the rotation. Now if Jeffress comes back to starting and is effective and Scarpetta is truly working the mid 90s then I’ll feel better up about the situation than I do. It’s just hard for me to believe that Cody’s velocity jumped 4ish MPH in one year as he looked to be physically mature when I saw him pitch multiple times in Appleton last season, and we didn’t read about any major mechanical flaw that was affecting his velocity, only his location. I think many of the projections we read on pitchers in our system are very conservative because they don’t have jaw dropping peripherals and are works in progress (Rogers, Rivas, Peralta, Heckathorn). Odorizzi does have those peripherals, which is not so coincidentally why he’s routinely pimped by prospect gurus. I understand he has a legit 4 pitch arsenal as well, but we’ll see how well he locates all those pitches as he moves up and his FB certainly isn’t overpowering like Rogers and Jeffress. I’m still shocked that Rogers name doesn’t come up nationally, he throws as a hard as anyone at AA this season and injury history aside, how are his stuff/raw tools not exciting? I get that his command needs work and his BB/9 is borderline bad, but come on, the young man can throw the freaking ball and no one seems to be able to hit off of him.

 

Of the players in the low rungs of the minors I find the Helena staff to be particularly intriguing, but I’m still very pissed that the Brewers played the waiting game trying to save some money with the Covey pick. The family is notified less than a week before the signing deadline that their son has type 1 Diabetes… of course they are going to take the ultra conservative road while they come to grips with the diagnosis. I don’t fault the family for making the decision to keep Dylan close to home, but I do wonder how the situation would have turned out if Dylan, his family, and the team had a couple of months to reflect on the situation and come up with a reasonable plan. This is exactly the type of the situation that gets chalked up to bad luck, when it’s just not that simple. I’m not sure I understand exactly why our draft picks don’t get physicals until they sign or are offered a contract, why don’t top picks fly in immediately for a physical before the process even starts? I guess what I mean is that it doesn’t seem right to offer someone a contract before doing your due diligence, it seems like a poor business practice to me and it’s been bothering me since Scarpetta’s finger.

 

Position player wise, Lawrie could be an impact talent at some point and it’s pretty thin after that. Salome had that ability as a C, but he’s just a guy in the OF, and as he was always one of my boys, I was extremely disappointed by the freefall he put himself into. We have quite a few guys that project to be averagish MLB players, and I’m alright with that. A player like Cutter Dykstra doesn’t really have a home playing at the same level as Gennett, but I’m not sure he’s ready for 2B at AA next season either. Another player without a position is Chris Dennis… yes I understand that there is a DH every game until AA, but each player getting half the game experience they should be defensively doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy, especially given the organization’s history developing defensive acumen. It’s kind of the same ole story, a bunch of intriguing/undervalued bats that may or may not play their current position.

 

Having a system and a MLB team built around it’s position players didn’t work for us, and doesn’t really work for anyone that’s been in that position in the last decade. Having that great offense only means you’ll score runs, it doesn’t mean you’ll win games, none of those teams were truly competitive until the pitching caught up with the hitting. For example Philly was always a top 3 team in the NL offensively, but didn’t do anything in the playoffs until they picked more pitching. I would like to add some more impact hitting talent in the system as with Gamel and Cain graduating we’re pretty thin, so I hope an impact hitting talent is available when the Brewers draft next season but I am comfortable with this transition away from hitters who had dominated the P50 for years.

 

There are position players I really like up and down the chain for various reasons, I think we have plenty of depth, but the lack of impact hitting talent at the moment is a bit concerning. I do believe though that dollar for dollar position players are better value in FA, so I’d much rather plug some position spots via FA if necessary than spend money on pitching. I’m pretty comfortable saying that we’ll be able to field a decent pitching staff from within in the coming years, so I’d like the drafting focus to return to more of an even split if possible.

 

Obviously some drafts will favor pitching over hitting and vice versa, but in general I’m a BPA type of guy, and I don’t think that we can definitively say the Brewers have been drafting with BPA in mind other than drafting the best available pitcher. I’d also like to see them get away from drafting the “workout warriors” for lack of a better term. A workout warrior is that young man who impresses in a workout but doesn’t have the body of work to support their draft position, like a Frederickson or Walla. The Arnett pick hurts, but he looked to be a player on the rise who was a very good athlete to boot, I don’t mind that pick in the same way I’ve always been fine with the Rogers and Jeffress picks. The early returns are just incredibly disappointing, as is Nichols handling of the situation, which was ludicrous.

 

I don’t quibble about the placements of individual players, the system is solid, and I appreciate the efforts of those involved in making the list.

[uwisfan]

good post. I guess I'm not terribly concerned about position players throughout the org, because the entire current roster is locked up for a while. By the time we start turning players over 3 or 4 years from now, we'll be talking about new players that arent in our system anyways.. and there of course will be some players that surprise us in the positive as well.

[igor67]

Um Crew the Commissioners office has pretty much refused to OK any over slot deals until the signing deadline, that's why the Covey thing really couldn't have gone any other way. The Brewers weren't trying to do anything other than get him signed and I think they had a pretty good idea all along how that would play out only to get that late surprise on the diabetes.

[TheCrew07]

You missed the point.

 

Over slot isn't the problem here, I don't understand why every player doesn't come in for a physical immediately after being drafted, or at least the guys in the first 15-20 rounds? I understand how the signing process works, the medical part just doesn't make sense to me. Again, it's been bothering me since Scarpetta's original contract had to be voided, this isn't just a Dylan Covey deal.

[colbyjack]

I don't believe teams are able to give amateur players physical tests to determine their health. I do know they give them a lot of other surveys and conduct in-house visits to determine their mental and emotional state. I agree that is a problem, and some people (I believe John Manuel at BA) have suggested that there should be some kind of pre-draft combine in which these things are determined. That's why the physicals are usually combined with the signing process. Barret Loux had the same issue this year.

[LouisEly]

Position player wise, Lawrie could be an impact talent at some point and it’s pretty thin after that.

I think some around here are a bit spoiled after a half-decade of top 10 picks spent on bats - Fielder at #7 overall, Weeks at #2 overall, Braun at #5 overall, LaPorta at #7 overall. It's a lot easier finding All-Star caliber bats in the first 7 overall picks of the draft then later on. The Corey Hart and Albert Pujols type picks outside of the first three or four rounds are fairly rare. Finding Lawrie at #16 was a very shrewd pick, and it looks like he will fare better than most players picked in the second half of the first round.

 

You don't need All-Stars at every position. You need 3 All-Star caliber position players, five average to slightly above average major league position players, and above-average pitching. They have the All-Star caliber position players in Braun, Hart, Weeks, and Fielder. I'd say that Cain, McGehee, and Lucroy are league average for their positions with Escobar slightly below average so far. They were #4 in the NL in runs, #4 in OBP, and #3 in OPS. The only thing separating them from the playoffs is pitching. They've gotten rid of the below-replacement-level pitching of Suppan, Davis, Estrada, Vargas, Riske, and Hoffman and moved Parra into the pen and Hawkins to the DL. They have above average #4/#5 starters in Capuano and Narveson, with Rogers a distinct possibility to take over the #5 and pitch like a #2/3. Wolf is an average #3 and Yo an average #1; they just need a true #2.

[sveumrules]

Over slot IS part of the problem, though. The primary problem is the lack of a NFL style combine where these guys can be poked, prodded and given comprehensive physicals. At the same time given the nature of the MLB draft this would be much more difficult to set up than it is in the NFL or NBA.

 

That aside, had we offered slot and Covey been willing to accept he could have been signed (and therefore undergone a physical) within days of the draft & not two months later. Would that have effected his diagnosis at all? I don't know, I'm not a doctor.

 

In the end I find it hard to fault Melvin in any way for the Covey situation and it would seem to be more on Seid than anyone else if someone in the FO were to blame. The MLB draft is obviously broken in a number of ways and is almost wholly to blame for the Covey outcome. While some of the issues are a lot bigger and harder to correct than others, it seems like all the top prospects undergoing a MLB sanctioned physical at some point in the week(s) leading up to the draft would be a pretty easy fix in the next CBA.