Elias: emulating the Rays?

[now]

9 hours ago, Frobby said:

An argument that makes more sense to me is that more pitchers are lost to injury, so you have to draft more of them to account for the attrition.  

I guess it's an endless argument, but I don't buy that logic since it means you're wasting more of your precious draft picks.

Draft 10 pitchers, lose 5 to injury... end up with 5 who might be prospects.
Draft 10 batters, lose 2 to injury... end up with 8 who might be prospects. Total viable prospects => 13.

Draft 16 pitchers, lose 8 to injury... end up with 8 who might be prospects.
Draft 4 batters, lose 1 to injury... end up with 3 who might be prospects. Total viable prospects => 11

Draft 6 pitchers, lose 3 to injury... end up with 3 who might be prospects.
Draft 14 batters, lose 3 to injury... end up with 11 who might be prospects. Total viable prospects => 14.

(or something like that, whatever the actual numbers are). Then you trade and buy to balance out your needs.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, now said:

I guess it's an endless argument, but I don't buy that logic since it means you're wasting more of your precious draft picks.

Draft 10 pitchers, lose 5 to injury... end up with 5 who might be prospects.
Draft 10 batters, lose 2 to injury... end up with 8 who might be prospects.

(or something like that, whatever the actual numbers are).

More jobs out there for pitchers than hitters so the success rate (if we are measuring success as making the majors) is going to be higher.

I also don't think half of pitchers wash out due to injury.

[Redskins Rick]

On 8/2/2020 at 9:34 PM, makoman said:

Look at Houston’s top pitchers last year. Verlander, Cole, and Greinke were acquired by trade, Miley a FA who made less than 5M (far less than he made with us the previous few years btw).

You don’t need to pay FA prices for pitchers if you can trade for them. You just have to trust that your GM is better than the other guy. When you give away a pitcher you want the Bedard deal, when you get a pitcher you want the Verlander deal. The point is you draft and develop a ton of talent and you can use it as needed. 

Verlander was a huge risk for them. He wasnt pitching well, on a fat contract.

They had an idea of what his problem was and felt they could fix him.

Hindsight shows they were right, and it paid off well for them.

I suspect there are many cases where this didnt happen like a team thought it would.

[Redskins Rick]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

More jobs out there for pitchers than hitters so the success rate (if we are measuring success as making the majors) is going to be higher.

I also don't think half of pitchers wash out due to injury.

I agree, some just wash out, because they suck when exposed to high quality batters.

[DrungoHazewood]

8 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I also don't think half of pitchers wash out due to injury.

I do. I think injuries are the primary reason that the conversion rate of draftees to the majors is so low.  The percentage of 28-year-old pitchers who haven't been impacted in some way by injuries is vanishingly small. 

Even if you're a 15th round pick you can probably touch 92 and have some kind of secondary pitch, which means you could be someone's 6th inning guy if you can stay healthy.  But they don't, so we don't quite have an endless supply of relief pitchers.

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, Roll Tide said:

A couple of one in a million shots are about the same thing! Yeah I'm exaggerating a bit but they are certainly long shots. Also I think he waited to long on Villar.

We don't know what was offered for Cashner and never know whether he was offered older guys that were closer to the bigs due to not wanting to have a 40 man addition.

I assume he wouldve taken a top 30 guy if offered .... but there was some dialogue about wanting younger players etc

What good is a top 30 guy?

Cody Carroll was a top 30 guy.

Much rather have someone with big upside who is a high risk player.

[Philip]

39 minutes ago, now said:

I guess it's an endless argument, but I don't buy that logic since it means you're wasting more of your precious draft picks.

Draft 10 pitchers, lose 5 to injury... end up with 5 who might be prospects.
Draft 10 batters, lose 2 to injury... end up with 8 who might be prospects. Total viable prospects => 13.

Draft 16 pitchers, lose 8 to injury... end up with 8 who might be prospects.
Draft 4 batters, lose 1 to injury... end up with 3 who might be prospects. Total viable prospects => 11

Draft 6 pitchers, lose 3 to injury... end up with 3 who might be prospects.
Draft 14 batters, lose 3 to injury... end up with 11 who might be prospects. Total viable prospects => 14.

(or something like that, whatever the actual numbers are). Then you trade and buy to balance out your needs.

I suppose the information is available for research, but we can’t afford to trade for Or sign a Verlander. We can afford Miley, Cashner, Jimenez and Cobb, But those were all disasters meanwhile, the pitchers that we’ve drafted Have cost us nothing. Even if Hall, for instance, is a total flop, he didn’t cost us anything, but Miley was a total flop and he cost us many dollars. There were lots of reasonable free-agent guys we could’ve signed but chose not to like Charlie Morton, but I stand by my point which is that It is more important to draft pitching.

 

[Can_of_corn]

25 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I do. I think injuries are the primary reason that the conversion rate of draftees to the majors is so low.  The percentage of 28-year-old pitchers who haven't been impacted in some way by injuries is vanishingly small. 

Even if you're a 15th round pick you can probably touch 92 and have some kind of secondary pitch, which means you could be someone's 6th inning guy if you can stay healthy.  But they don't, so we don't quite have an endless supply of relief pitchers.

I'll disagree.  Obviously guys get hurt but I think most of the ones that wash out would with or without the injuries.  I suppose a few would make it to the majors, due to others getting hurt, if they stayed completely healthy but I don't assign much value to that.  Mostly I think it's lack of ability as they raise in levels.

[DrungoHazewood]

9 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'll disagree.  Obviously guys get hurt but I think most of the ones that wash out would with or without the injuries.  I suppose a few would make it to the majors, due to others getting hurt, if they stayed completely healthy but I don't assign much value to that.  Mostly I think it's lack of ability as they raise in levels.

I think there's a fairly high attrition rate for each age or year of pitcher.  If you started at age 10 and assumed that 5% of the pitchers get hurt in some way that essentially precludes them from being major leaguer, by 28 you end up with 40% of your original pool left.  I think 5% is way too low.  If it's 10% you only have 15% of your starting pool left.  At 15% injury rate you're left with 5% of the pool.

I've read that something like 45% of pitchers have some kind of noticeable injury in any given year.  Obviously not all serious enough to disrupt a career.

I think that if you could cut pitcher injuries to 50% of their current rate you'd have an essentially endless supply of good pitchers for 30 MLB teams.  They'd have to change the rules to keep the strikeout rate below 15 per nine.

[now]

1 hour ago, Philip said:

I suppose the information is available for research, but we can’t afford to trade for Or sign a Verlander. We can afford Miley, Cashner, Jimenez and Cobb, But those were all disasters meanwhile, the pitchers that we’ve drafted Have cost us nothing. Even if Hall, for instance, is a total flop, he didn’t cost us anything, but Miley was a total flop and he cost us many dollars. There were lots of reasonable free-agent guys we could’ve signed but chose not to like Charlie Morton, but I stand by my point which is that It is more important to draft pitching.

 

The part you're missing is the wasted draft picks. Busted pitchers don't "cost nothing"--they cost precious draft picks.

[Roll Tide]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

What good is a top 30 guy?

Cody Carroll was a top 30 guy.

Much rather have someone with big upside who is a high risk player.

Some prospects are drafted high and immediately hit a teams ranked prospects. Other develop and climb the prospect rankings. I would think Elias would be looking for the later.

[makoman]

31 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

Some prospects are drafted high and immediately hit a teams ranked prospects. Other develop and climb the prospect rankings. I would think Elias would be looking for the later.

Like the guys he got for Cashner?

[Philip]

1 hour ago, now said:

The part you're missing is the wasted draft picks. Busted pitchers don't "cost nothing"--they cost precious draft picks.

Well that’s true, but you’re explaining it wrong. A bad contract cost money. A bad trade costs prospects. A draft pick that doesn’t work only means you wasted the draft pick.The difference is that with the first two you are subtracting concrete assets that you already have, and with a bad draft pick, you are only losing something that you hoped to get.

The difference is obvious. And yes, pitching prospects have a high attrition rate.

That’s why you acquire lots of them, which is what Mike is doing right now. It is also why you should Draft a lot of them, and I’m not the only person who is disappointed that he is not.

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, Roll Tide said:

Some prospects are drafted high and immediately hit a teams ranked prospects. Other develop and climb the prospect rankings. I would think Elias would be looking for the later.

That’s exactly what he traded for.

[Il BuonO]

4 hours ago, Philip said:

I suppose the information is available for research, but we can’t afford to trade for Or sign a Verlander. We can afford Miley, Cashner, Jimenez and Cobb, But those were all disasters meanwhile, the pitchers that we’ve drafted Have cost us nothing. Even if Hall, for instance, is a total flop, he didn’t cost us anything, but Miley was a total flop and he cost us many dollars. There were lots of reasonable free-agent guys we could’ve signed but chose not to like Charlie Morton, but I stand by my point which is that It is more important to draft pitching.

Disagree. The Astros are not some big market behemoth. I think the last list I saw had them 8th or 9th in spending?

Adding guys like Verlander to get a team over the hump is worth the risk. If not then, when? The Orioles are not that far off the Astros payroll at the time that they can’t afford a meaningful acquisition if the situation arises.