Why do the Brewers use such aggressive minor league placements?

[zjl3]

Can somebody please explain why the Brewers insist on sending guys to minor league levels they are not ready for yet? Such as having Ray BEGIN at A#, not having Kodi stay another year at A ball, etc? It seems like doing this is messing around with their development and confidence. Why not give these players normal, realistic assignments like every other team?

[Mass Haas]

Every other team? That's way too much of a blanket statement, many fans of other organizations are asking similar questions.

 

Big part of it is just the talent makeup in the system - where are on-field positions of excess depth, where are there gaps in talent due to a poor draft season, etc.

 

Surely some individual players can be debated, but there have been other years where posters here have clamored for more aggressive promotions - "what's this guy still doing at ____?"

[Mr Southpaw]

Top five drafted college players should start at A+. When Kirby gets healthy, I expect him to be in Brevard after maybe a quick stop in Wisconsin. On average, A+ is for 21 year olds.

[jerichoholicninja]

I've always felt the Brewers were way too conservative. Every now and then they'll get aggressive with someone but for the most part they seem like they are in no hurry to move guys along.

[TheCrew07]

I've always felt the Brewers were way too conservative. Every now and then they'll get aggressive with someone but for the most part they seem like they are in no hurry to move guys along.

I think this has been the prevailing view around the forum for years, posters wanted our prospects promoted more aggressively. I don't agree... for hitters you can promote them aggressively if you think will adjust, but pitchers need certain benchmarks to be able to maintain success. I'd rather not into an extended discussion rehashing this, but I think the new regime's aggressive promotions of young players adequately highlights all of my reasons for concern on the pitching side. There are some very notable hitters who were out of place all season like Malik Collymore, I think that did prospects like him a great disservice.

 

Top five drafted college players should start at A+. When Kirby gets healthy, I expect him to be in Brevard after maybe a quick stop in Wisconsin. On average, A+ is for 21 year olds.

I would take the time to go back through all of the top 5 college players drafted over the last 30 years to point out how few players have started at A+, including Braun, but it's honestly not worth the effort.

 

Starting players at A+ is all about impatience and has nothing to do with properly placing a hitter in his "correct" environment. The Brewers could easily start a player in Helena, promote to WI (like with Erceg), and then if still successful promote to A+ (like the Cubs did with Schwarber). That's the way the vast majority of teams do it and that's what I think is best from a player development standpoint because it gives the young man a successful base to build off of as they move up.

 

Regardless, Kirby has less than 13 innings pitched professionally which weren't awe inspiring by any stretch, and hasn't pitched in real game in over a year, he should start in WI and work his way up in 2017.

[homer]

Every other team? That's way too much of a blanket statement, many fans of other organizations are asking similar questions.

"

 

I think that's the key here. I don't follow any other teams so I have no idea how they promote the bulk of their players but I have a feeling the Brewers are probably not much different than most organizations in how they promote.

[CheeseheadInQC]

Weren't some of the aggressive placements this year because of imbalance in the A ball rosters, basically having not enough players who deserved to be in A+ while having too many who deserved to be at Wisconsin to fit on the roster? Were this not the case, guys such as Hanhold and Derby might have started at Wisconsin and Collymore and Cuas almost certainly would have. It looks like there could be the opposite problem next year, with some pitchers being held back because of there are only so many open rotation spots in A+.

 

As for Ray, the placement was definitely aggressive, but after a slow start he seemed to adjust. His stats for August were pretty darned good. Is there really enough there to say that the A+ placement did a disservice to his development?

[TheCrew07]

As for Ray, the placement was definitely aggressive, but after a slow start he seemed to adjust. His stats for August were pretty darned good. Is there really enough there to say that the A+ placement did a disservice to his development?

 

I'm not sure any of us have the answer right now, and of course every player comes with somewhat unique mental skills, I don't mean to suggest intelligence, but rather a combination of instinct, confidence, and toughness. I'm not exactly sure how to put into words so I'll go to a military analogy to help illuminate my point.

 

Just about every young man who applies for SEAL training has all of the physical tools necessary to do the job and have been outstanding to even get to BUDs (BUD/S), so the only difference between those guys is their mental approach. There are people that just somehow know they are better and tougher than anyone else, they carry themselves differently (like a Ryan Braun or Brett Lawrie in the baseball world), riding the fine lines between extreme confidence, over confidence, and arrogance. Some have that quiet confidence where they just always expect to excel, failure just isn't an option. Other people have to find that thing within themselves, discovering that they can push themselves farther than they initially thought possible starting to quickly ascend as both a person and soldier. The rest just don't have the ability to keep overcoming adversity, keep pushing forward at the level necessary to succeed in that environment, and never will.

 

Coming back to baseball where does Ray fit in that into scheme mentally? If he has one of those special personalities it can work to push a player into a such a challenging initial assignment and he'll have a very successful 2017 season in AA. However, I think if the idea is that any player can do it simply because of their draft position, then that's a poor assumption. I prefer to start everyone at the same level and let them ascend at their own pace as I've been involved in some poor decisions moving up players too soon which negatively impacted their athletic development.

 

Howie Long said something interesting that's always stuck with me. He said to consider physical talent 1 elevator and mental talent another. For professionals the talent elevator is going to stay peaked until the mid 20s and then slowly move from it's initial position towards the ground floor. The mental elevator starts near the ground floor and ascends at a pace depending on how quickly players can absorb information and experience. Peak performance for an athlete occurs where ever those elevators meet or get within close proximity to each other. It's a somewhat crude analogy, but it's easy to understand and clearly illustrates the point.

 

Once someone's confidence is shot, that's it, and that's why I'm mostly concerned with safeguarding an athlete's confidence first. Some players will fail no matter how low they start, but I'd like as many as possible to start their careers with some level of success to fall back on.

 

My gut feeling is that Ray will be okay but that doesn't mean our expectation should be that every college player drafted in the first round starts out at A+. It certainly didn't do much for Jungmann and Bradley, I think that's something to be evaluated on a case by case basis rather than a blanket policy.

[MrTPlush]

Top five drafted college players should start at A+. When Kirby gets healthy, I expect him to be in Brevard after maybe a quick stop in Wisconsin. On average, A+ is for 21 year olds.

 

Hmm that's an interesting statement. Do you by chance know the last Top 5 college bat to start at A+? It was Christian Colin...in 2010. So that seems weird no team ever does what should be done.

 

Also no, the average age is nearly 23 for A+.

[CheezWizHed]

Ironically, I noted the exact opposite last year after the Brewers traded Fiers and Gomez because all four players that we got in return were very young for their level (and succeeding).

 

So I think the key isn't about promoting aggressively, its success in getting players to achieve at the higher levels. Simply pushing them into higher levels without adequately preparing them obviously isn't a good thing.

 

And I was pretty stunned that they left Malik at A+. He was abysmal there and hadn't played an inning of A ball. I can understand that you might have a logjam at A-ball and think he could survive A+, but once it was obvious that he couldn't they should've done something different.

[zjl3]

Ray was the only college bat to start at A+. Nobody else, including Senzel, Lewis, Puk, etc., was promoted so aggressively.

 

You can't use the "too much talent at Wisconsin" excuse because Ray could've easily spent some time in Arizona or Helena BEFORE going to a+.