Is it time to restructure the scouting department

[brewers888]

Other than Hiura and possibly Grisham this organization hasn't produced any position players of note in years. I was happy when Montgomery was doing the drafting and he hit on some pitchers like Woodruff and hopefully Burnes but we haven't hit on any bats.

 

Tod Johnson has not impressed me at all so far though it is still early. We really should have kept Montgomery in charge of the draft since he did a good job drafting in Arizona and for the limited time that he led our drafts. If we actually had some good position players in our system we wouldn't have to sign guys like Smoak and Sogard to man first and third base.

 

Attanasio was obviously intent on cutting payroll last offseason which didn't leave Stearns with much money to spend but the guys he did sign are all quite underwhelming. If we can't produce better players than Smoak what are we doing in regards to drafting and developing players. We can sugarcoat things all we want and say that the system is underrated but pretty much every objective source has our system as the worst in the game. If we are going to continue to compete on a yearly basis we need to produce our own talent. It just might be time to hire some better scouts because the ones we have are just not doing a good enough job.

[sveumrules]

14 of 41 first round picks in 2016 have made it to MLB so far, the best has been Dakota Hudson (2.2 WAR).

 

7 of 36 first round picks in 2017 have made it to MLB so far, the best has been Hiura (2.3 WAR).

 

4 of 43 first round picks in 2018 have made it to MLB so far, none has more than 0.2 WAR.

 

Might need to give it some more time.

[adambr2]

Grisham is missed badly right now. Hopefully Urias fulfills his potential because if Grisham develops into an All-Star caliber outfielder that one is going to sting.

[Eye Black]

Grisham is missed badly right now. Hopefully Urias fulfills his potential because if Grisham develops into an All-Star caliber outfielder that one is going to sting.

I agree that Urias has to prove a capable major league starter, but I won’t be shocked if Eric Lauer ends up being the Brewers “headliner” from that trade with the benefit of hindsight. I am hopeful that Lauer is the type of pitcher that will get much better with continued experience, and finally give the Brewers a solid young-ish (mid-20’s) left handed starting pitcher.

 

Regarding Grisham, I have watched about half of his at-bats this season and I do think he has truly unlocked something. He is currently top 10 in all of baseball in WAR (yes, tiny sample). He also looks like a much stronger center fielder than I admittedly thought he was capable of becoming.

[dlk9s]

Dammit, we lost that trade after a week!

[CheeseheadInQC]

There is a bit of an ugly stretch in 2017 after the first two picks, and it doesn’t help that of the other hitters drafted only Ward has really shown promise. Still, though, considering the injuries suffered by three of the first four pitchers they drafted, getting Francis, Bettinger, Lazar and File isn’t bad on that end.

2018, outside of Gonzalez, who was hurt last year, the only real disappointment in the top 10 rounds has been Gray, who was always an upside play and still has time to develop. 2019, you’d have to either focus on a prep catcher who suffered either from soft contact or bad luck or a reliever who pitched at Colorado Springs to get a disappointment.

You might end up being right, but outside of the one bad stretch of the 2017 draft, I don’t know that the evidence supports it yet.

[brewers888]

If the scouting director is doing such a fine job why do we have the worst farm system in baseball with not one big time position player prospect. When Turang who profiles about as well as Arcia with the bat is considered the best prospect in the system it says that we have done a terrible job in the draft as well as our Latin signings.

 

Stearns has made some fabulous trades including trading what looks like mostly filler for Yelich yet our drafting leaves a lot to be desired and I know that Stearns is not the one picking these players. I think we are too focused on up the middle athletes and not enough on drafting good hitters.

 

If we had done a better job drafting and developing position players we wouldn't have to sign the likes of Smoak, Sogard, and Gyorko to handle the offensive corner positions. Montgomery should be put back in charge of the draft with his solid track record with Arizona and Tod Johnson needs to be demoted.

[sveumrules]

If we had done a better job drafting and developing position players we wouldn't have to sign the likes of Smoak, Sogard, and Gyorko to handle the offensive corner positions.

 

Stearns & company arrived in 2016. The Brewers won the 9th most games in MLB from 2016-19. Consistently picking at the back end of the draft is a contributing factor to the farm system rankings.

 

Based on the limited impact players drafted since 2016 have had in MLB to this point & considering the Brewers already have one of the most impactful thus far in Hiura, I guess it just seems unrealistic to me to think we would have one of these guys lined up at multiple positions.

 

The only clear whiff at this point is Ray/Erceg in 2016, but there's still Burnes plus Feliciano/Henry & some other dark horses in there to maybe salvage some value still.

 

Since then the higher picks have mostly had good results or its still just way too early to tell.

[CheezWizHed]

Stearns has made some fabulous trades including trading what looks like mostly filler for Yelich yet our drafting leaves a lot to be desired and I know that Stearns is not the one picking these players. I think we are too focused on up the middle athletes and not enough on drafting good hitters.

 

We used to have a very deep and well respected MiLB club that was built by a mixture of draft picks and trades. Many of those players either graduated to the MLB club or were traded away. But as you said about the Yelich group, they were mostly fillers. There have been a couple people that have blossomed after being traded away, but we mostly have made the right decisions on players.

 

Don't forget a big part of our former MiLB depth came from trading away MLB players for MiLB player packages - Lucroy (Brinson, Ortiz, Cordell), Jean Segura (Diaz), Adam Lind (Freddy Peralta), etc... If you had only looked at the players we drafted back then, MiLB ranking would've been worse. We emptied the MLB level to fill the MiLB pipeline, then emptied the pipline to fill the MLB level. The real question is how quickly we can rebuild the MiLB pipeline without emptying the MLB level.

[SomewhereInTime]

If the scouting director is doing such a fine job why do we have the worst farm system in baseball with not one big time position player prospect. When Turang who profiles about as well as Arcia with the bat is considered the best prospect in the system it says that we have done a terrible job in the draft as well as our Latin signings.

 

Stearns has made some fabulous trades including trading what looks like mostly filler for Yelich yet our drafting leaves a lot to be desired and I know that Stearns is not the one picking these players. I think we are too focused on up the middle athletes and not enough on drafting good hitters.

 

If we had done a better job drafting and developing position players we wouldn't have to sign the likes of Smoak, Sogard, and Gyorko to handle the offensive corner positions. Montgomery should be put back in charge of the draft with his solid track record with Arizona and Tod Johnson needs to be demoted.

 

I'm with you on the latin signings. That aspect of player acquisition has been nothing short of a disaster for decades. That's been a Brewer issue though and not exclusive to this regime.

[adambr2]

Dammit, we lost that trade after a week!

 

No one is saying that at all. I think most of us, myself included were in favor of that deal. However, I also loved Grisham, and obviously the Padres did as well, very much, since the general concensus at the time was that they took a lot less value in that deal.

 

However, it has been far more than a week since something has seemed to "click" with Grisham. It's certainly starting to look possible that he could become a special player. If that happens, it indeed would be a really tough loss for our future outfield especially having watched his development through our system over the years and seeing how far he's come in the last year.

[CheeseheadInQC]

If the scouting director is doing such a fine job why do we have the worst farm system in baseball with not one big time position player prospect. When Turang who profiles about as well as Arcia with the bat is considered the best prospect in the system it says that we have done a terrible job in the draft as well as our Latin signings.

 

Stearns has made some fabulous trades including trading what looks like mostly filler for Yelich yet our drafting leaves a lot to be desired and I know that Stearns is not the one picking these players. I think we are too focused on up the middle athletes and not enough on drafting good hitters.

 

If we had done a better job drafting and developing position players we wouldn't have to sign the likes of Smoak, Sogard, and Gyorko to handle the offensive corner positions. Montgomery should be put back in charge of the draft with his solid track record with Arizona and Tod Johnson needs to be demoted.

 

Turang's first full season was decidedly above average given his draft position and position. Outside of the truly elite prospects, few really excel going to A ball in their first year out of high school. If you've got a problem with Johnson's drafts, I'm guessing that you had a problem with them on draft day, because outside of that one stretch of the 2017 draft (which is offset by the development of some of the later picks on the pitching end), the numbers performance wise don't bear it out.

 

The bigger issues seem to be both picking later in most drafts (I could be wrong, but I believe of the MILB current top 75 prospects, there are only three the Brewers could have drafted during that span with anything other than the Hiura pick: No. 54 Alek Thomas, No. 75 Josiah Gray and, drumroll please, No. 69 Garrett Mitchell), trading away a couple of competitive balance picks and, most of all, getting minimal return on the Latin signings. Hopefully a few of the guys in the lower minors (Rodriguez, Garcia, Parra, Perez, Medina) break that trend.

[Eye Black]

Dammit, we lost that trade after a week!

 

No one is saying that at all. I think most of us, myself included were in favor of that deal. However, I also loved Grisham, and obviously the Padres did as well, very much, since the general concensus at the time was that they took a lot less value in that deal.

 

However, it has been far more than a week since something has seemed to "click" with Grisham. It's certainly starting to look possible that he could become a special player. If that happens, it indeed would be a really tough loss for our future outfield especially having watched his development through our system over the years and seeing how far he's come in the last year.

Pretty much exactly this. Well said.

[HiAndTight]

If the scouting director is doing such a fine job why do we have the worst farm system in baseball with not one big time position player prospect. When Turang who profiles about as well as Arcia with the bat is considered the best prospect in the system it says that we have done a terrible job in the draft as well as our Latin signings.

 

Stearns has made some fabulous trades including trading what looks like mostly filler for Yelich yet our drafting leaves a lot to be desired and I know that Stearns is not the one picking these players. I think we are too focused on up the middle athletes and not enough on drafting good hitters.

 

If we had done a better job drafting and developing position players we wouldn't have to sign the likes of Smoak, Sogard, and Gyorko to handle the offensive corner positions. Montgomery should be put back in charge of the draft with his solid track record with Arizona and Tod Johnson needs to be demoted.

 

 

Turang's first season as a 19 year old he reached HiA and was around .300/.400 most of the year in Appleton.

 

 

It's just an incredibly flawed way to look at a prospect. Look at the number next to his hit tool and then go back and compare that to a former top 10 prospect who hasn't developed like most hoped and say, "see, that's proof that our system is terrible."

 

They're VERY different players. Turang is a far more patient hitter, takes a lot more walks, has elite speed. And I'm not even sure he's our #1 prospect at this point.

 

2nd-You've got THREE YEARS worth of results. That might be more telling if this was the NFL, but it's not, it's baseball. You need a helluva lot more time than that to expect to draft and develop players.

 

Also, pretty much every team has to sign guys like Smoak and Sogard to fill out their rosters.

[Austin Tatious]

I’m on the opposite side of the argument. I liked the draft this year. Garrett Mitchell may be in center before we know it. From last year, Small and Antoine Kelly are solid prospects. For all we know, Small is the next Dallas Kuechel. Lutz still is showing upside. Rasmussen has excellent upside. Ashby is a good pitcher. Hiura is a savant with the bat.

 

Montgomery drafted Corey Ray at 5 overall despite obviously not having a great hit tool. He can still hopefully put it together, but fifth overall was ill-advised. Tod Johnson has not had a poor thought process like that. He’s much more analytical. Montgomery might have a scouting eye but then you take over his reports and hand them over to the analytical guy who can make the big picture decision.

 

As for the ranking of the farm system, the rankings are always skewed to name recognition closer to the majors. A number of those guys end up AAAA guys yet they bring rankings up because of name value. There are always those limited upside guys who get a decent ranking like a lifetime achievement award.

 

The high upside young guys like, say, Antoine Kelly, Eduardo Garcia or Herbert Perez are dismissed and ranked too low because things can go wrong when you’re that far away. You could look at somebody like Ryan Cordell from a few years ago with a decent ranking and I’d take Perez over him. More unknown but far more more upside. Overall, if you look at the Brewer system from this year ten years from now, people might be surprised at how many strong players come out of it.

 

Obviously, beyond that, we’ve had a number of good players graduate and/or get traded to bring in high level talent. Recent graduates include Woodruff, Hiura, Peralta, Suter, Burnes, Arcia, Hader, Houser, et al. and a bunch of others have been traded like Yamamoto, Brinson, Grisham, Diaz, and on and on. That’s a lot of names. Of course you will need to reload.

[Mass Haas]

The top of that first round in 2016 leaves a lot to be desired, lots of "misses" beyond Corey Ray.

 

Would love to see the next CBA include the option of trading draft picks (even if on a limited basis to protect GM's from themselves), how much fun would that be?

 

If in place in 2016, who's to say the Brewers wouldn't have traded down to grab local kid Gavin Lux?

[RollieTime]

I do think some type of shake up is needed. It is pretty sad when you actually sit down and try to think of what position players have actually had any type of decent multi year success for the Brewers since Braun graduated from the minors in 2007. I’ll give them some credit on the pitching front in recent years as doing a much better job of identifying and bringing in some pretty intriguing guys. I’m not sure how to find it, but could somebody compile a list of players that came up through the Brewers’ system that have even put up 5 WAR for Milwaukee? Is there even a single player that has?

[sveumrules]

I do think some type of shake up is needed. It is pretty sad when you actually sit down and try to think of what position players have actually had any type of decent multi year success for the Brewers since Braun graduated from the minors in 2007. I’ll give them some credit on the pitching front in recent years as doing a much better job of identifying and bringing in some pretty intriguing guys. I’m not sure how to find it, but could somebody compile a list of players that came up through the Brewers’ system that have even put up 5 WAR for Milwaukee? Is there even a single player that has?

 

From Braun's graduation through 2015, Stearns & company were not in charge of things, so I'm not sure how that reflects on them at all.

 

From Stearns & company's first draft in 2016 through now there have been two players in all of MLB to put up 5 WAR, Pete Alonso & Shane Bieber.

[RollieTime]

I do think some type of shake up is needed. It is pretty sad when you actually sit down and try to think of what position players have actually had any type of decent multi year success for the Brewers since Braun graduated from the minors in 2007. I’ll give them some credit on the pitching front in recent years as doing a much better job of identifying and bringing in some pretty intriguing guys. I’m not sure how to find it, but could somebody compile a list of players that came up through the Brewers’ system that have even put up 5 WAR for Milwaukee? Is there even a single player that has?

 

From Braun's graduation through 2015, Stearns & company were not in charge of things, so I'm not sure how that reflects on them at all.

 

From Stearns & company's first draft in 2016 through now there have been two players in all of MLB to put up 5 WAR, Pete Alonso & Shane Bieber.

 

Fair point. It’s more of a gripe of not being able to churn out any homegrown quality bats in such a long time. If we were able to at least have a couple guys every few year come up and be solid 2-3 WAR players, even if it’s just for a handful of seasons, it would go a long way in helping us field a competitive team with having quality young bats and being able to bring on veterans to round out the roster instead of the current strategy (not exactly by choice) of having very little homegrown talent and needing to spend $5+ million on multiple “ehh” players instead of maybe being able to use the money to bring in a good quality bat to hit in the top 5 of the order with a good mix of young talent mixed in.

 

It will be extremely difficult for us to be competitive year in and year out if the lineup consists of a bunch of journeymen/expensive for what they provide hitters.

 

I am still interested in seeing a list of hitters who have reached the 5 or even 3 WAR threshold since 2007 for their entire careers with Milwaukee that came up through the system. It is certainly not Stearns’ fault by any means. The lack of talent brought in through the draft is why we are where we are today. Stuck overpaying for veteran hitters instead of even finding a guy to make the minimum for 3 years that could just hit .240 with 20 homers.

[CheeseheadInQC]

I do think some type of shake up is needed. It is pretty sad when you actually sit down and try to think of what position players have actually had any type of decent multi year success for the Brewers since Braun graduated from the minors in 2007. I’ll give them some credit on the pitching front in recent years as doing a much better job of identifying and bringing in some pretty intriguing guys. I’m not sure how to find it, but could somebody compile a list of players that came up through the Brewers’ system that have even put up 5 WAR for Milwaukee? Is there even a single player that has?

Lucroy definitely. Cain depending on how you phrase the question. There was a significant stretch after the Greinke/Marcum trades where I think it was Gennett and Davis and that’s it as far as multi-year starters

[balsamlaker]

The team has actually gone through a restructure since Stearns arrived. If you read a few of the threads in the draft forum, you will see some of the data since Jack Z. including the very thin Seid-led years (6 years). The last two years have been very college heavy, which may or may not display an increased emphasis on analytics.

[brewers888]

Other than Hiura they are too focused on up the middle athletes who don't profile well with the bat.

[harrydalton]

Follow the money. The Brewers do not spend the money on scouting like some teams do. They do not pay top dollar for Caribbean amateur players, or spend big money on Cuban or Asian pros.

 

They've done best recently drafting and developing upper minors pitching depth. Their best position prospects are mostly in the lower minors, but I am more optimistic there than I've been following the franchise since its inception.

 

I am disappointed, however, with their persistent failure

to draft for the infield corners despite long-standing need there. Up the middle prospects like they've focused on don't generally develop into power hitting 1b or 3b players.

[Jopal78]

It's too early to judge Stearns' amateur scouting personnel. Look no further than Doug Melvin's last couple of drafts and they look way better now than they did when he got canned.

 

Now that the dust has settled on Melvin's tenure he pulled legitimate major leagues from outside of the first round in multiple drafts. While missing on the top pick hurts his drafts, finding multiple players with a chance to be a quality major league players from outside of the first round probably qualifies most of these draft classes as a success.

 

2012: Mitch Haniger-1s (38th overall), Suter-31st (965 overall)

 

2013: Devin Williams-2nd (54th overall), Taylor Williams-4th (122 overall) Garrett Cooper--6th (182 overall)

 

2014: Woodruff-11th (326 overall), Jordan Yamamoto-12th (356 overall)--and given a $330,000 bonus too, Monte Harrison-2nd (50th overall), Cy Sneed--3rd (85th overall)

 

2015: Grisham was a 1st but Cody Ponce-2nd (55th overall) is now in the majors with Pittsburgh after some nice seasons in the upper minors.

 

The farm system sits where it does because of the moves the Brewers made to get Yelich, Villar, Moustakas, Swarzak, Neil Walker, Schoop, Gio Gonzalez, Soria, Lyles, Xavier Cedeno, and Pomeranz.

 

Look at the number of players the Brewers traded to get those veterans who are in the big leagues or have seen time in the big leagues: L. Brinson, M. Harrison, Yamamoto, Isan Diaz, Brett Phillips, Jorge Lopez, Cy Sneed, Eric Hanhold, Luis Ortiz, Cody Ponce, and Mauricio Dubon. Maybe none will end up being stars, but the point is they all made the major leagues and certainly would have been within the top 100 organizational prospects.

 

And this is not to mention the prospects they traded away who rank with their new organization's systems: KJ Harrison (34th Nationals), Johan Dominguez ( White Sox)

 

Bottom line it's too early for Stearns' drafts, the system is rated shabbily now because the system Melvin left them with was heavy on depth but light on blue chippers, has been traded away for veteran players who have pushed the major league club to three straight winning seasons and back to back play off appearances (and with a better than not chance to make it four straight winning seasons and 3 straight playoff appearances).

[CheezWizHed]

The farm system sits where it does because of the moves the Brewers made to get Yelich, Villar, Moustakas, Swarzak, Neil Walker, Schoop, Gio Gonzalez, Soria, Lyles, Xavier Cedeno, and Pomeranz.

 

Look at the number of players the Brewers traded to get those veterans who are in the big leagues or have seen time in the big leagues: L. Brinson, M. Harrison, Yamamoto, Isan Diaz, Brett Phillips, Jorge Lopez, Cy Sneed, Eric Hanhold, Luis Ortiz, Cody Ponce, and Mauricio Dubon. Maybe none will end up being stars, but the point is they all made the major leagues and certainly would have been within the top 100 organizational prospects.

 

And this is not to mention the prospects they traded away who rank with their new organization's systems: KJ Harrison (34th Nationals), Johan Dominguez ( White Sox)

 

Thank you. This is what I was trying to say a few posts back, but was too lazy to compile the entire list.

 

I'll emphasize something you eluded to also. Many of these players traded away made our MiLB squad rank really high... but haven't and probably won't have a big MLB impact. High ranked MiLB systems don't always produce many MLB players. We probably have fewer opportunities with our current system, but we might graduate a higher percentage of them.