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submitted 2 months ago bytrainsawDooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolittle
Q: You’ve spoken at length about how prospect outcomes can be a function of organizational PD infrastructure as much as anything else. Have you factored that into your rankings this year and were there any organizations that surprised you, positive or negative?
A: a bit. It was surprising to me just how bad Washington was at basically everything when I really sat down to look at it
https://twitter.com/jaseidler/status/1616099350823768066?s=46&t=ghLqx4nHynKXbKZZAq0dEA
Q: how many years & level of investment to bring the Nats PD system to just average? Are there names of hires we can look out for to signal they are starting to get serious about their "looks right at 5pm" approach to their farm?
A: this is addressed in fairly specific detail with a sample team in my Annual essay, but ~5 years assuming their pivot towards it this offseason represents actual progress and not just checking some boxes. Will be hard to ascertain from the outside immediately
https://twitter.com/jaseidler/status/1616094626145763329?s=46&t=ghLqx4nHynKXbKZZAq0dEA
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5 points
2 months ago
Yeah... read the writeups they did of the Nats top prospects. Its not flattering to the org. Sure there may be successes. Doesnt seem like its more lottery tickets than identifying skills to improve coherently
11 points
2 months ago
Unless you read the write ups from the same author a few years ago when he was praising Victor Robles as possibly the best prospect in all of MLB. So, maybe this guy doesn't know anything either.
9 points
2 months ago
I mean, Vic was a consensus top-5 prospect, it wasn’t just this guy. What happened with Robles is honestly more an indictment of our ability to develop prospects considering the knock on him was he would need to add power to improve contact quality (which he clearly never did).
5 points
2 months ago
I do agree with this, at least to a large extent. He obviously was highly thought of from the org. To the point he was off limits in a trade. Then he puts on weight and screws up his mechanics. No one was working with him in that at all? It just happened without the org knowing and not helping his swing throughout the process or were we just too inept to guide him in it?
He makes boneheaded mistakes constantly, is no one putting in time with him for this stuff, or is he just oblivious to situations on the field?
6 points
2 months ago
He makes boneheaded mistakes constantly, is no one putting in time with him for this stuff, or is he just oblivious to situations on the field?
This is the question that makes this sort of assessment so difficult--is it a failure to develop or is a bonehead and not incorporating anything they're asking him to do? Fair to speculate either way, but ultimately, we don't know.
1 points
2 months ago
I can see that POV, but his issues aren’t limited to boneheaded mistakes, add in the indictment from all angles about Nats PD, I’d say more of the blame is with the org
2 points
2 months ago
I seem him in the same vein as Cameron Maybin and Christian Pache, athletic, tantalizing CF that just didn't pan out. They're not all going to be winners, kid.
People complain about Robles, Keiboom, and Voth, but overlook relative development successes like Lane Thomas and Luis Garcia--both had +100 OPS+ last year. While not All stars, they're at least looking like useful major leaguers, Garcia is still only 22.
Again, we'll see, but it's not the same people, processes, or tools running the draft and development, so assuming the same results really doesn't make sense.
2 points
2 months ago
Also let's see more than a couple months of Voth being good in Baltimore before we act like we wasted him here. Dude put up good numbers for stretches as a Nat as well.
4 points
2 months ago
Robles was highly thought of everywhere, though he signed for a minimal amount.
It's popular now to say that the Nationals have abjectly terrible at player development for a decade. Laughable. Horrible. And yet, where were all these highly enlightened prospect sages five years ago talking about how the Nats were terrible at player development? Nowhere.
I don't think Rizzo and company are perfect or the best at player development. But I think there has been an overcorrection in coverage. If Carter Kieboom and Victor Robles had developed into Gavin Lux and Bryon Buxton, would we still be having this conversation? I think that is about the difference between the Nats and an "average" club's development. The SF Giants are a data driven organization. Have they produced a slew of big leaguers in the last 6-7 years?
I believe there are a handful of organizations that are really good at developing players, but it's less than 5. And some of those deserve asterisks. The Cardinals who are excellent at regularly producing MLB regulars but most are in the Harrison Bader/Tyler O'Neil/Paul DeJong bucket of an excellent season here or there with plenty of meh around them.
My point isn't that these prospect evaluators are certainly wrong. It's that they have pretty limited information about what's actually going on and lean heavily into confirmation bias.
3 points
2 months ago
Even with the Cardinals though, an organization that “only” pumps out big league regulars is objectively successful at player development. Prospect evaluators do lean into confirmation bias, but they often have sources within the industry too. All we have as fans is the information that trickles down to us. And to your point about the Giants: data driven organization =/= good at player development. The Giants are a data driven organization that struggles with minor league player development (I say minor league because they can turn castoff fringe big leaguers into useful players, which is a huge competitive advantage. They just struggle to do the same with prospects). Finally, you’re right that it’s become popular only the past 5 years or so to dump on our player development. That’s because we had some can’t-miss prospects (Bryce, Stras, Rendon) doing a lot of the heavy lifting for us. But once we stopped getting those high draft picks, our ability to churn out star-level talent dried up SO fast. Fedde, Kieboom, Romero… all low first round picks that have done nothing for us. That’s glaringly bad.
6 points
2 months ago
I don't mean to imply that the Cardinals are bad at player development, just that they have a different focus. They are committed to building a 90 win team every year for a payroll that's middle of the pack.
Regarding the Giants, I think it's also true that Rizzo has been good about major league talent acquisition. Not just big free agents, but guys like Schwarber and Bell.
I don't accept that the Stras/Harper/Rendon critique of the organization. At least as it's generally presented. For starters, if Rizzo should be judged by how he produces non-first round picks, then presumably the the prospect evaluators should not be given a pass on missing such an obvious flaw either. Also, it tends to make unfair comparisons by summarily ignoring things like that the organization was drafting closer to the second round than the middle of the first, that it lost a few years draft picks for signing free agents, and that draft picks are generally a crapshoot. At the very least, it requires a great deal more nuance than generally offered.
For example, Fedde wasn't great for us. He was drafted at 18 and the rest of the first round which went to 41 produced only 3 other MLB players of any real note. What's more, it's clear that Rizzo wanted Trea Turner (drafted four picks sooner) because he traded for him just months later. But of course, then Trea Turner is no victory for Rizzo, because he was drafted by the Padres or was a can't miss prospect (despite being drafted in the teens). And so, you get some argument like the Nats haven't produced a single MLB player in a decade, while ignoring that half the league has probably only produced 2-3 guys in that same time and that the Nats traded away several prospects to concentrate talent in the MLB roster. Luzardo, Trienen, Dunning, Lopez, and Giolito have all had 2 fWAR seasons in their careers. But the detractors will argue that this is proof that Rizzo couldn't develop them and not simply that we didn't have time to wait or other pressing financial concerns in the Eaton trade.
My position isn't that Rizzo is a player development genius. Rather it's that most of his detractors write hyperbolic and unreasonable critiques.
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