2019 Rays Farm System

[Pickles]

Perhaps I could have put this in the original thread covering the recently released BA rankings, but that seems to be going in several different directions, and I wanted to introduce a little analysis.  So as we know the O's have 8 players on the current BA list, and that is an extraordinarily high number, topped in recent years only by the 2019 Rays farm system.  I thought it might be useful to see how those players' careers have progressed.  The obvious caveat is that it's only been 4 years so many of these players have more career in front of them.  Career WAR is provided in parenthesis.

SS Wander Franco (6): The obvious bluechipper.  Has lived up to it.

P Brent Honeywell (- 0.2) Going to be 28 upcoming season.  Hasn't pitched in majors since 2021.  Now with the A's.

P Brendan McKay (-0.1) Hasn't pitched in majors since 2019.  Appears to be out of organized ball.

C Ronaldo Hernandez Yet to reach majors.  AAA in Bos org last year.  Part time DH with a sub 300 OBP in AAA.  25 this upcoming season.

P Matt Liberatore (-0.5) Made major league debut last season with St. Louis.  Pitched to almost 6 ERA.

OF Jesus Sanchez (1.8) Part-time player on the Marlins.  Does not look to be a starting caliber player.

UTI Vidal Brojan (-1.1) 25 years old upcoming season.  Still with Tampa.  Doesn't appear to be a major league caliber player.

2b Brandon Lowe (11.8) The other big success on the list.   Injured last season, but has two top 10 MVP finishes in his young career.

1b Nate Lowe (6.5) A solid regular.  However, for Tex and not Tampa.

A couple things jump out to me:

The Orioles' strategy of focusing on positional talent seems well thought out.  Besides Hall and Grayson, whom he inherited, the rest of the O's list is positional talent acquired by Elias.  If we look at the Rays' experience we can see why.  The Rays had 3 pitchers amongs their guys, including their 2nd and 3rd guy.  They have gotten nothing from any of the pitchers.  In fact, none of them has produced positive WAR, and none of them are still in the organization.  Such an outcome for the O's pitchers would be a bitter pill to swallow.

They fared better with their positional prospects, the Lowes and Franco, developing into impactful ML players.  However, they still had their misses.  Hernandez, yet to reach the majors and not looking like much of a prospect currrently, Brojan, still in Tampa but negative WAR two years running, and Sanchez, positive WAR but really a 4th outfielder at best in MIA, haven't made any meaningful contribution, and seem unlikely to in the future.  So even positional players in the top 100 are not going to pan out a significant portion of the time.  Not to extrapolate it out entirely, but in this case it was 50%.  Of intersting note, it was their two lowest ranked prospects who actually returned the value, excluding the blue chipper Franco.  Not to derail my own thread, but it doesn't take a lot of squinting to see why Elias would not be comfortable just handing ML jobs to prospects, of the non-bluechip variety,  in a year in which he wants to compete.

There's still a lot of WAR to be produced by the players on that list.  However, it is mostly all going to be produced by the players we would already deem "successful."  It doesn't take too many years to see who is going to make the transition from prospect to major leaguer.

Lastly, and I guess I could make a poll, but would you deem yourself satisified/not satisfied if the Orioles current crop turned out in the same way the Rays did?

Personally, I'd call myself unsatisfied.  I want SOMETHING from Grayson and/or Hall, and I think the O's prospects, and maybe this is only hindsight, but I think they're more talented than the Rays' guys.

[Ripken]

Nice review.  Prospect failure rates (maybe that's harsh but) are always high.  While I believe our guys to be a better overall quality than 2019 Tampa, it's all the more reason to package some farm pieces for proven MLB players.  I hope Elias is able to make a couple of impactful trades this year.  I'm still where I was last summer: we need a top end starter and a MOO bat, even if the promotions this year perform well.  Obviously many agree, which has led to frustration despite these promising times.

[Frobby]

It’s good to remember that a few of Tampa’s guys were pretty early in their MiL careers when this list was made.  They still have time to become good major leaguers.  Our list has 7 guys with AAA experience.  

That said, I’m sure not all our guys will become starter-level major league players.   I sure hope that more than half do, and that both Rodriguez and Hall become impactful (even if Hall is a reliever).  
 

[sportsfan8703]

You’re leaving out a few things. They traded Liberatore for Randy Arozarena. 2021 AL ROY. They traded Hernandez for SP Jeffrey Springs. Oh and Nate Lowe is “ok”, he won a silver slugger last year. 
 

So in three years they have gotten two AL ROYs.  Brandon Loww All Star.  A sliver slugger. Jeffrey Springs was worth 3.6 WAR last year. How many people want to trade 3 of our top 7 for Pablo Lopez?  Brujan is 24 yo. The book is far from written on him. 
 

So in reality they took those 9 and currently have Franco, Arozarena, Springs, B. Lowe, Brujan, and some younger prospects. 

[Pickles]

2 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

You’re leaving out a few things. They traded Liberatore for Randy Arozarena. 2021 AL ROY. They traded Hernandez for SP Jeffrey Springs. Oh and Nate Lowe is “ok”, he won a silver slugger last year. 
 

So in three years they have gotten two AL ROYs.  Brandon Loww All Star.  A sliver slugger. Jeffrey Springs was worth 3.6 WAR last year. How many people want to trade 3 of our top 7 for Pablo Lopez?  Brujan is 24 yo. The book is far from written on him. 
 

So in reality they took those 9 and currently have Franco, Arozarena, Springs, B. Lowe, Brujan, and some younger prospects. 

Well, admittedly I did not follow out the transaction chain, as that would be significantly more work, but also because while important in the calculation for the Rays, it doesn't shine much light on the value the prospects provided of their own accord.

I simply wanted to see what kind of players the 9 developed into in a vaccum.  Now, it does suggests that some of the O's players at least won't pan out, and that trading from that stock is wise.  However, that's a double-edged sword.  Trade the wrong guys and keep the wrong guys, and you can end up with nothing.

[sportsfan8703]

Let’s say in 2025…Gunnar and Grayson have made an ASG. We got 9.0 WAR from Pablo Lopez, but traded away Cowser, Norby, and Ortiz. Hall was a 1.3 WAR reliever. Westburg has been a Util player, but solid regular. Holliday was top 3 in 2024 ROY voting. 
 

Would we be happy?  That’s probably optimal type outcome. 

[btdart20]

I'd also add that the risk profile (beyond the general pitching risks) for some of these guys is different than what we're looking at too.

McKay was a two-way player with control issues as a pitcher and contact issues as a hitter.  And he's a FB pitcher who throws a cutter.  Those are all some risk points that add up fast.

Liberatore's best pitch is a CB.  Not quite the low-risk pitch to lead with.  This was as much a draft placement as anything.  I think they saw that vs. the upside of Arozarena in the trade with STL.

Sanchez should never have been ranked in the top 100.  Is he really that much better than Haskin?  Probably has more power, but can he get that in the game?

Brujan is a speedier/less powerful version of Vavra.  The video game speed catches the eye.  But as we see with Mateo, getting on base has to be part of the game.

 

[MurphDogg]

34 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Let’s say in 2025…Gunnar and Grayson have made an ASG. We got 9.0 WAR from Pablo Lopez, but traded away Cowser, Norby, and Ortiz. Hall was a 1.3 WAR reliever. Westburg has been a Util player, but solid regular. Holliday was top 3 in 2024 ROY voting. 
 

Would we be happy?  That’s probably optimal type outcome. 

That is probably a 80-90 percent outcome. 

I don't think two years of Pablo Lopez is worth 3 top-100 prospects though, so hopefully that wasn't all you got for Cowser, Norby and Ortiz. 

I could see Cowser, one of Norby or Ortiz and a prospect ranked near 15-20 as a reasonable price for 2 years of Lopez.

[Sports Guy]

It’s why you can’t just assume all of these guys will work out.

[Can_of_corn]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

It’s why you can’t just assume all of these guys will work out.

But our guys are different.  Our sixth best prospect is going to outperform a guy that just signed a 200M dollar contract.

[Pickles]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

It’s why you can’t just assume all of these guys will work out.

Almost like signing a vet stopgap as insurance while acclimating some prospects to the roster isn't an incomprehensibly stupid thing to do in a year you would like to compete.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

It’s why you can’t just assume all of these guys will work out.

That’s why they got Frazier, right? 

I feel like the hit rate on players in the 76-100 range isn’t that high.  

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Almost like signing a vet stopgap as insurance while acclimating some prospects to the roster isn't an incomprehensibly stupid thing to do in a year you would like to compete.

 

Just now, Frobby said:

That’s why they got Frazier, right? 

I feel like the hit rate on players in the 76-100 range isn’t that high.  

I'd still rather see what they have and cycle through them if they struggle over bringing a stopgap in and pushing the eventual ML evaluation down the road.

[Sports Guy]

14 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Almost like signing a vet stopgap as insurance while acclimating some prospects to the roster isn't an incomprehensibly stupid thing to do in a year you would like to compete.

No it is.

[Pickles]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

That’s why they got Frazier, right? 

I feel like the hit rate on players in the 76-100 range isn’t that high.  

I'll see if I can't find it, and I surely encountered it on this board, but wasn't there a study floating around in the last year that had analyzed BA lists and found it was about a 50% fail rate for top 20 prospects.  Surely it is higher than that for lower ranked prospects.

Now, maybe our guys can beat that.  There's some reason to believe that.  Risk profile has been mentioned in this thread and our guys certainly have the advantage over the Rays' guys there.  Less pitchers and further along in their development.  Frankly, any study that wants to analyze bust rates, should be taking that into account.  There's a world of difference between a top 100 guy in AAA and a top 100 in the DSL.