Is Elias/SIGBOT and crew really good at drafting and development after the 1st round?

[wildcard]

15 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Yes, I'm trashing Elias at all, in fact, I'd love to hear he signed a 10 year contract here. I'm just bringing up some facts and concerns about their focus of drafting college hitters and their inability to draft and develop pitching.

Elias and company absolutely put the Orioles where they are with the drafting of Rutschman, Gunnar, Westburg and Cowser to a lesser extent. All of them have contributed mightily to the Orioles success and Ortiz got the team a year of Burnes which also will help.

But we can't turn a blind eye to the Orioles struggles in the bullpen right now and not look at why there is no real help in the system from the pitching side that they drafted and developed.

I just thought it was worth a conversation.

 

I think you mean NOT trashing in the first sentence.

[Moose Milligan]

What GM is notorious for finding significant talent consistently after the 1st round?

[Tony-OH]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Another way to look at this is picks by franchise/round.

The Dodgers' last significantly good 3rd round pick was Phil Nevin, in 1989. In the 21st century they've yet to have a 3rd rounder reach five wins.

The Yanks last got five wins from a 2nd round pick when they drafted Al Leiter in 1984. And being the Yanks they traded him at the age of 23 for the last few years of Jesse Barfield's career, so they really got almost nothing out of that.

The Red Sox drafted Jonathan Papelbon in the 4th round of 2003, and he was worth 23 wins. Aside from that they haven't gotten any significant value from a 4th rounder since 1990.

Since drafting Dan Haren (35 wins) in 2001, the Card's only 5-win 2nd round pick was Jon Jay (12 wins, 2006). They have the reputation of being one of the best orgs in baseball, and their 21 picks in the 2nd round since 2006 have totaled 7 wins in their careers. Or about 0.3 wins/player.

Again, you can do this all day long.

And you will probably, but my points stand. 

I noticed you haven't said one thing about them not drafting and developing pitchers. All you are doing is trying to poo-poo my points by talking about generics drafting outcomes which don't hold any weight to the points that I've made.

Nobody expects them to hit with every pick, or even the majority. That was not my point at all. Thankfully some got it.

You could potentially do something useful and look at all the pitchers that were drafted over the last five years that have made the major leagues or have become impact pitchers. 

The Orioles have drafted zero that have made the major leagues. ZERO! 

Now I'm sure you'll go back to the Drungo-lab and go find other organizations that have failed to produce a major league pitcher over a five year span, but the this is the only span of Elias and company. The Orioles have touted themselves as advanced in finding these pitchers and even thought so much about their "advantages" they basically ignored pitching until the 8th round and later thinking they could take guys nobody else really wanted and make them into guys.

That has failed so far. Arbruester is the guy who has made it the farthest and he's been getting crushed at AAA and has nothing to get lefties out, something that has been his problem from day one. Where is the development? Why is he still getting run out there as a starter instead of having him focus on being a 1-2 inning reliever and pitching more often to see how he looks on that role? 

The Orioles have gotten rid of most of the "old school" coaches and gone with the computer guys and I don't personally see many developments from the hitting or the pitchers outside of the guys with the extreme talent in the first place.

The guys with shady command still have shady command. Some of these pitchers are throwing 5 or more different types of pitches and wonder why they can't command their stuff more often. I see this with McDermott and Povich who have very good stuff, but they throw like 5 or 6 pitch types and end up inconsistent when a few aren't working.

Maybe have them focus on the two maybe three secondaries to master them, then worry about the other stuff.

 

 

 

[Sports Guy]

8 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

What GM is notorious for finding significant talent consistently after the 1st round?

Again, this isn’t really the point.

Tony is talking more about the process of how they draft.

Edited June 5 by Sports Guy

[forphase1]

11 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Ehhh, that’s a weak reason. You know this going into the pick and into the draft.  Plenty of later round high school players sign deals. 

You can just punt on picks or take college relievers that you don’t even need to give slot too.  There are tons of ways to sign HS overslot kids.

 

While this was certainly true in the past, with college players soon to be treated as employees, and paid as such, and the various NIL stuff, I do wonder if signing high school kids is going to become harder.  I honestly have no idea the impact, if any, this is going to have as most of the money is around football and basketball.  But depending on how things end up fleshing out moneywise in college it may become harder to get kids to sign with the MLB team.  Just another variable going forward.  

[Tony-OH]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Ehhh, that’s a weak reason. You know this going into the pick and into the draft.  Plenty of later round high school players sign deals. 

You can just punt on picks or take college relievers that you don’t even need to give slot too.  There are tons of ways to sign HS overslot kids.

 

These players have their numbers going into the drafts and the team know them. With NIL money, it's harder to sign the top High School guys because they know they are going to get paid well to go to college now. Saying that, they still have a number that will sign for and team just have to be willing to take that risk.

Again, we all know there are going to be more misses than hits. Nobody should expect every draft pick to hit. But when you see that you've had no success drafting college bats that had average to below average stats and they've failed to develop in the pros, maybe stop drafting those types. 

I like the Forret types of drafts picks because they have some development upside. Maybe focus more on the JC level for the kids that just developed later vs waiting to the 10th round to draft below average college types.

[Tony-OH]

11 minutes ago, wildcard said:

I think you mean NOT trashing in the first sentence.

Yes, thanks, I'll fix that.

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Again, this isn’t really the point.

Tony is talking more about the process of how they draft.

To be fair to Tony, he's talking about a few things.  I just was nitpicking one of the points.  

I love Elias, but I share Tony's concern with hardly drafting any pitching.  And I'm sure there's a method to his madness there, it's just a bit hard to understand what that is looking from the outside.

[Can_of_corn]

17 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

Because you probably are much less likely to sign the HS Kid you mentioned

I think it's because you are going to have a worse idea of what the HS kid can do well.

Elias and Sig seem to highly value the additional data they get on College players.

[Sports Guy]

4 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

These players have their numbers going into the drafts and the team know them. With NIL money, it's harder to sign the top High School guys because they know they are going to get paid well to go to college now. Saying that, they still have a number that will sign for and team just have to be willing to take that risk.

Again, we all know there are going to be more misses than hits. Nobody should expect every draft pick to hit. But when you see that you've had no success drafting college bats that had average to below average stats and they've failed to develop in the pros, maybe stop drafting those types. 

I like the Forret types of drafts picks because they have some development upside. Maybe focus more on the JC level for the kids that just developed later vs waiting to the 10th round to draft below average college types.

The NIL money is great but they still need to go to class and wait at least 3 years to get their career started, which means longer until they become a FA, longer to get to arbitration, etc…

[oriolediehard]

11 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

And you will probably, but my points stand. 

I noticed you haven't said one thing about them not drafting and developing pitchers. All you are doing is trying to poo-poo my points by talking about generics drafting outcomes which don't hold any weight to the points that I've made.

Nobody expects them to hit with every pick, or even the majority. That was not my point at all. Thankfully some got it.

You could potentially do something useful and look at all the pitchers that were drafted over the last five years that have made the major leagues or have become impact pitchers. 

The Orioles have drafted zero that have made the major leagues. ZERO! 

Now I'm sure you'll go back to the Drungo-lab and go find other organizations that have failed to produce a major league pitcher over a five year span, but the this is the only span of Elias and company. The Orioles have touted themselves as advanced in finding these pitchers and even thought so much about their "advantages" they basically ignored pitching until the 8th round and later thinking they could take guys nobody else really wanted and make them into guys.

That has failed so far. Arbruester is the guy who has made it the farthest and he's been getting crushed at AAA and has nothing to get lefties out, something that has been his problem from day one. Where is the development? Why is he still getting run out there as a starter instead of having him focus on being a 1-2 inning reliever and pitching more often to see how he looks on that role? 

The Orioles have gotten rid of most of the "old school" coaches and gone with the computer guys and I don't personally see many developments from the hitting or the pitchers outside of the guys with the extreme talent in the first place.

The guys with shady command still have shady command. Some of these pitchers are throwing 5 or more different types of pitches and wonder why they can't command their stuff more often. I see this with McDermott and Povich who have very good stuff, but they throw like 5 or 6 pitch types and end up inconsistent when a few aren't working.

Maybe have them focus on the two maybe three secondaries to master them, then worry about the other stuff.

 

 

 

How about John Means, and by trade and developed Kyle Bradish?

[Can_of_corn]

7 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

These players have their numbers going into the drafts and the team know them. With NIL money, it's harder to sign the top High School guys because they know they are going to get paid well to go to college now. Saying that, they still have a number that will sign for and team just have to be willing to take that risk.

Again, we all know there are going to be more misses than hits. Nobody should expect every draft pick to hit. But when you see that you've had no success drafting college bats that had average to below average stats and they've failed to develop in the pros, maybe stop drafting those types. 

I like the Forret types of drafts picks because they have some development upside. Maybe focus more on the JC level for the kids that just developed later vs waiting to the 10th round to draft below average college types.

I haven't looked into it but are college baseball players going to be getting a decent amount of NIL money?  I assumed that the vast majority of it would be going to the more high profile sports. 

[RZNJ]

49 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

They certainly changed their philosophy a bit in the 2023 draft and I think that's because of the issues I pointed out. I truly think that they thought they could just take guys with good pitch shapes, velocity, and movement and develop them into major league pitchers.

But they found out there's a reason those guys are still available in the 6th round or after, and especially in the 10th round and after.

Same with the hitters. I think they relied on EV too much without taking into consideration the holes in the hitters games that resulted in less than stellar numbers in college. 

Now I know we both get that there are going to be many more misses than hits, but as I showed, the philosophy may need to change on hitters too and maybe take some chances on some high risk/high reward high school hitters and pitchers.

For me, I'd prefer a balanced approach where they took some college and high school guys. Even if the High School guys burn out quick or fail immediately. That's ok. It's going to happen. 

I mean Willems is a good example of a guy that is high risk and high reward. There is some talent in there, but also some holes (especially hitting off speed). But the upside makes him interesting still. 

The thing I don’t get is they’ve had more success with HS players after round 1 than with college players and yet haven’t drafted one HS position player in the last two drafts.   We can think of many college guys who look like they’re stalling out in AA.  Yet, Hernaiz and Henderson are in the majors, Mayo is on the cusp, and Willems looks like he has a chance.   
 

I do think we’re seeing a shift to a more diversified draft starting with last years.  It’s going to be interesting to see what they do this year.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, oriolediehard said:

How about John Means, and by trade and developed Kyle Bradish?

Means was prior regime, he debuted in 2018.

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think it's because you are going to have a worse idea of what the HS kid can do well.

Elias and Sig seem to highly value the additional data they get on College players.

And I feel this is valuable as well.  I don’t have an issue taking higher hit rate guys with earlier picks.

The funny thing is, you can argue that his 3 best picks are all HS kids, with only Adley being the guy who could end that argument and ironically, a HS kid went after Adley who is definitely a better player.