Pickles

Eh. Lot of words and doesn't really say anything.

More like Ray Parker.

These seem pretty incongruous.

If he can't command and he can't change speeds, he can't pitch in the MLs. Hopefully, you just saw him on an off night, in the doggest of dog days.

This is true too. There is opportunity cost with each roster spot.

I second this. I liked Pie. He was a great guy to give a chance. He had his moments but ultimately didn't pan out. Mateo is probably destined to the same fate. But he deserves an opportunity. At this point, I personally would be giving him chances over Stewart.

I got to be honest: I wish he'd be less chatty with reporters about his strategy in the batter's box.

Ok, well we're talking about the same thing here at least. I guess a lot of it depends on how good someone is at picking talent. Still, Frobby's outline suggest less than half, or even a third, of the time there are two guys who will have more value than the 18. Let's just cut the difference and say if you pick PERFECTLY you'll be correct 40% of the time. Well, I haven't seen anybody pick well enough that those odds don't drop real fast and real drastically. I think in absence of a global top 10 guy, you probably have to take the other 18 except in rare specific circumstances. (I realize when you brought this up you were talking about Adley and Grayson, who are both global top 10 guys. And I think this O's system might be one of the exceptions to the rule.

You get what I'm saying here though @Sports Guy? There are twenty prospects. Legit ones. Good enough to get on a Org top 20 list. (And yes that value does vary.) You get to pick two of them. Any two of them. We'll call them 1-2 because that is your preference. I get the other 18. I believe I'll get the better value the majority of the time. One could probably go stronger than that.

But then that would be their prospect ranking, which doesn't change anything. It's still a matter of preference.

That's yet another interesting thought experiment. I'd probably agree with this because prospect #2 is more likely to outperform prospects 11-20 than prospect #1 is to outperform 1-9, largely because of the drop between the values of 2-10 vs. 11-20.

Ok, so we are having two different conversations. That's fine. I guess that's why you took such exception to my phrasing. I whole-heartedly agree with you that with the benefit of hindsight, and talking about players and not prospects, it isn't rare at all.

Are we having two different conversations here? I'm talking about prospects not players. So yeah, looking at a group of 20 prospects with the benefit of hindsight, and taking the two which provided the most value vs. the other 18 is not what I'm talking about. I'm saying you get the two best prospects. You don't get to know in advance if they pan out or not. So it's not players 1 & 2 vs. players 3-20. It's prospects 1 & 2 vs. prospects 3-20. I brought this up with Frobby because his analysis provided a very rough guesstimate to how often one prospect would be worth 9 others. But it's more than fair to point out that doesn't really answer the question, unless we can likewise determine how often that best player was indeed the best prospect. I concede that the odds shift drastically in your favor with the benefit of hindsight and picking what becomes the two best players. But that's not what I'm talking about.

Don't forget the 40 WAR guy has to be the #1 spot in this scenario. If the 40 WAR guy is the #5 prospect, the diversifier still wins. Which is kind of the whole point. Right? (Being a little more diplomatic as a lesson for Sports Guy): I would also very much like to investigate the idea that 80% of the value of a farm comes from the top ten guys. Is there data for that?

Well, we're splitting hairs here. But I overspoke before. We were initially talking about 2 vs 18, which I think leans more to the 18 more than the 2, even more so than the 9 vs the 1. There's arguments to be made for both sides if you are arguing generalities.

By the way, with hindsight, I concede it is certainly easy to find top prospects who were better than the next 9, or whatever. Yes, with the power of hindsight, all this speculatin' stuff doesn't matter.

Always a charmer. LOL. Using the adverb "exceedingly" is probably excessive. I still think it's rare enough, and Frobby's rough estimate suggests it certainly isn't common. Mind you, I'm not talking about draft picks. I'm talking about guys established enough- or high enough pedigree- to be listed be seen, for the most part, as legitimate prospects.

Yeah, that would probably affect my way of thinking. Certainly, where I'm at in the ML win cycle would have a huge impact on that decision too. The better I was at the ML level, the more likely I would be to take the quality over quantity. And the worse I was, the opposite is probably true.

Well then you'd lose money 70% of the time. There's not right or wrong answer here. It's an interesting thought experiment. But it is extraordinarily rare that one prospect would be more valuable than 9 others by the time they've progressed as far as these lists.

It certainly depends on the quality of the quantity. There are some farm systems where it's a no-brainer to take Adley and Rodriguez. The O's comp I used earlier was from 2009, which is probably the last time our farm system was as deep as the current version. Wieters/Matusz vs. Tillman/Arrieta/Britton/David Hernandez/Reimold/Joseph The quantity here wins out. It's certainly an interesting thought experiment.

But applied to the real world and not just theoretical guesses, essentially, the 18 is probably the better bet.

You get Wieters and Matusz. I get Tillman, Arrieta, Reimold, Britton, David Hernandez, and Caleb Joseph. I'm pretty sure I take the second group.

Anybody acting like it's a slam dunk is just wrong.

That's a good thought experiment. If Hall and Kjerstad were healthy, I'd almost certainly take the bottom 18. The only thing that even makes me waiver is the fact that Adley seems to be a special prospect.

This is likewise false. You keep repeating the same falsehood.