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

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

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. 

Some are yes…the Coastal Carolina head coach just went off about this in a press conference the other day.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

Some are yes…the Coastal Carolina head coach just went off about this in a press conference the other day.

Cool, not something I've been paying attention to.

I figured since college baseball players mostly don't even get full scholarships they would be getting beer money out of the NIL.

[RZNJ]

24 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

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

I’m going to guess the Dodgers and Cardinals without looking first.  

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

Cool, not something I've been paying attention to.

I figured since college baseball players mostly don't even get full scholarships they would be getting beer money out of the NIL.

I think it’s clear it’s not the same as basketball or football but there are a few.  The CC coach mentioned someone getting 2 million.

But I don’t think they are getting so much that they would choose that and 3 years of school over starting their careers right now.

[Just Regular]

Some of why I'm not worried much about Holliday are the Gunnar and Mayo success cases - SIGBOT obviously skews college but it has been good picking big winners on the rarer instances it goes prep.    It takes a lot of Elias scout googly eyes to outrun that sweet sweet age 19-21 performance data.

Luhnow was with STL from 2003-2011 with Elias and Sig on staff much of then - 2009 Matt Carpenter maybe kind of a poster child for the big college win late from that era.

For flavor, Matt Adams, Jon Jay, Allen Craig, Tommy Pham* some others that made it.

Haskin's time is mostly up, but it still isn't impossible he could push Connor Norby to be a right-handed reserve outfielder behind the blue chips, and we can guess the Orioles will be slow to let him go regardless.    Next month and winter will separate the wheat from the chaff somewhat.

I learned today Adam Ottavino was a 1st round pick of STL when Elias/Sig were there...

*I wonder if Pham showed any martial arts skills to scout Elias back in those days.

[emmett16]

54 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

The Orioles definitely have their philosophy and metrics they look for in hitters and pitching. The results have spoken on the pitching side so far and as I showed, there is  not a ton of successes, especially lately with drafting college bats after the first round.

While I have no opinion of Boddy's knowledge of pitching development, at the end of the day, where are the results? You can look at a computer screen and compu-data all day long, but until you start developing real major league pitchers, it's just data babble.

We've had all this technology and not a single pitcher has suddenly become an outstanding major league pitcher. Heck, not one has made it yet.

I've watched guys and see guys with some good pitches, but they struggle with consistency. Now most minor league pitchers struggle with consistency which is why they are in the minors, but it would be nice to have a few guys that you could point to and say, see, we developed that guy into an impact major league reliever.

It's been 5 years of drafting and the closest pitcher Elias has drafted to the major leagues is probably Kade Strowd (though Brandon Young could be interesting at some point this year in the pen -Note Young was a 2020 COVID free agent signee vs a draft pick, but would have been drafted).

 

 

[Flash- bd]

5 hours ago, RZNJ said:

Tony talked about college position players (excludes Hernaiz and Gunnar) starting with the 2020 draft (excludes everyone you mentioned).

Fair. Just think if we limit the scope so much then it becomes pretty easy to cherry-pick for whatever point you're going to make. 

But yeah, no one can argue that our college hitters post-1st round since 2020 haven't been working out and so for we've yet to develop much on the pitching side from what we've drafted. These to me just feel like minor critiques though, in the whole scheme of things. If we limit scope so much on the positive side we can make all kinds of statements that feel ridiculously positive, too. 

But yeah, fair critique, in the end we're here to discuss the minutiae. Just would put things in perspective as well (which I know is being done). By any measure, on the whole, our drafting (and everything else) under Elias has been remarkably successful. 

[emmett16]

I think Tony’s piece is a fair critique.  I also think their methods are a work in progress and they will continue to learn and hone their drafting and development process.  There are some college guys (EBJ, Fabian, Etzel, Horvath) in the system that could still “pop” and be big time prospects but time will tell.  Norby, Stowers, & Ortiz may turn out to be a solid group of post-first rounders as well.

 I believe this draft will be very telling…will they change up and go for more pitchers? Or will they continue with the bat approach? 

Edited June 5 by emmett16

[nvpacchi]

18 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.

I think this is it.  The bust rate is far greater without an equal boom rate to make it a zero sum game.  A college guy can likely have the same ceiling as a prep player, but with more data you can more easily filter out the guys with a higher probability to bust.  Although with the Perfect Game juggernaut growing that gap may be lessening year by year, and maybe eventually we see more of a dive into prep players?

 

I think it needs to be reiterated how much has been accomplished in overhauling a player development and analytics department that was in the basement.  Just finding an entire coaching staff and scouts and analysts that align to the same ethos as Elias and Sig doesn't happen in one offseason.

They tackled the hitting side first, makes sense, payoff is faster, and the results speak for themselves with the line of guys still waiting in AAA.

Pitching is just an entirely different beast, and their drafting history demonstrates that they likely weren't ready to make a concerted effort to test their hypotheses until the 2023 draft.  7 pitchers drafted in first 10 rounds since Elias's first draft (before 2023), tough to draw conclusions on that until we begin to see how the 2023 class progresses.

[emmett16]

23 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Cool, not something I've been paying attention to.

I figured since college baseball players mostly don't even get full scholarships they would be getting beer money out of the NIL.

Thats about to change in a big big way.  
 

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/reports-ncaa-considering-lifting-scholarship-limit-as-part-of-lawsuit-settlement-talks/

Edited June 5 by emmett16

[RZNJ]

7 minutes ago, Flash- bd said:

Fair. Just think if we limit the scope so much then it becomes pretty easy to cherry-pick for whatever point you're going to make. 

But yeah, no one can argue that our college hitters post-1st round since 2020 haven't been working out and so for we've yet to develop much on the pitching side from what we've drafted. These to me just feel like minor critiques though, in the whole scheme of things. If we limit scope so much on the positive side we can make all kinds of statements that feel ridiculously positive, too. 

But yeah, fair critique, in the end we're here to discuss the minutiae. Just would put things in perspective as well (which I know is being done). By any measure, on the whole, our drafting (and everything else) under Elias has been remarkably successful. 

True. He killed it in the 2019 and 2020 drafts.

Rutschman/Henderson/Stowers/Ortiz/Hernaiz

Kjerstad/Westburg/Mayo

Cowser/Norby

Holliday/Beavers

??

There was almost nowhere to go but down.   

[emmett16]

26 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Some are yes…the Coastal Carolina head coach just went off about this in a press conference the other day.

Full scholarships for entire roster is going to happen.  The bigger schools will be offering money for 4 year commitments.  Players will be able to get paid + get a full ride.  

[Ripken]

Of course, the Angels are a dumpster fire of an organization, but they drafted all (20) pitchers in 2021.  While it will probably never happen, it would be interesting to see what Elias could add to the org with a heavily pitching oriented draft.

[foxfield]

1). I think Tony’s post isn’t meant to criticize it’s meant to analyze. And as such it is not only fair but it is worth delving into. 
 

2). I don’t care arms or bats hs or college. Just make your team better. 
 

3).  The Orioles have certainly gotten better. 
 

4). The Orioles have had the top 2 players drafted in 2019, 2020 and 2021 drafts have all reached the majors. You know how many other teams can say that?  One. 
 

I think they will have to adjust from what they did to rebuild a pretty terrible franchise into what it is. I am also confident that those changes will be made. 
 

That doesn’t change the fact that they haven’t drafted a pitcher who has made the show…but if they were drafting pitchers and none of them made it it would be a bigger deal. 
 

@Tony-OH Thanks for taking this deep dive. I do think the two things most needed from Elias going forward are what you speak of here and then being able to manage the roster to stay competitive.  But clearly he crushed the rebuild. 

[DrungoHazewood]

50 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.

Tony, I wasn't trying to counter your points. I was just trying to put this in context. That success is drafting/developing the occasional non-first rounder. No matter the organization they're not at all likely to hit on most of their picks after round one, and even in round one the success rate is lower than commonly believed.