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What grade would you give our MiL system?


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Grade the Orioles MiL system  

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  1. 1. Grade the Orioles MiL system



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I gave it a C based on the strength of our MI prospects, Avery and Britton. After that, this system leaves alot to be desired. No more blue chip P prospects. No power hitters with a good shot at sticking in the majors.

That said, there is alot of potential left in the system. Almost all of the over slot picks from '09 were injured last year, and could still rebound. Hobgood could start to live up to his potential as well.

Also, we shouldn't ignore that this system has graduated alot of players in the last two years. Tillman, Arrieta, Matusz, Bergy, Hernandez, Reimold and Wieters. Plus, add in our other young guys like Jones and Pie and there isn't an overwhelming need at alot of positions on our roster. Sure, we need a 1B, 3B and SS at the ML level, but that is what FA is for.

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I gave it a C based on the strength of our MI prospects, Avery and Britton. After that, this system leaves alot to be desired. No more blue chip P prospects. No power hitters with a good shot at sticking in the majors.

That said, there is alot of potential left in the system. Almost all of the over slot picks from '09 were injured last year, and could still rebound. Hobgood could start to live up to his potential as well.

Also, we shouldn't ignore that this system has graduated alot of players in the last two years. Tillman, Arrieta, Matusz, Bergy, Hernandez, Reimold and Wieters. Plus, add in our other young guys like Jones and Pie and there isn't an overwhelming need at alot of positions on our roster. Sure, we need a 1B, 3B and SS at the ML level, but that is what FA is for.

I keep seeing this excuse and while there is some validity there, the bottom line is we have had some poor drafts(IMO), haven't bveen involved in the International scene for the last 5 years(getting better though) and have lost some draft picks due to poor FA signings.

In other words, if they did a better job and put more emphasis into amateur talent, we could have lost those guys and still had a solid system...similar to what a team like TB has done.

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I keep seeing this excuse and while there is some validity there, the bottom line is we have had some poor drafts(IMO), haven't bveen involved in the International scene for the last 5 years(getting better though) and have lost some draft picks due to poor FA signings.

In other words, if they did a better job and put more emphasis into amateur talent, we could have lost those guys and still had a solid system...similar to what a team like TB has done.

It's not an excuse, but it should be mentioned. It should be better for the reasons you mention, but I brought it up because it should provide a little bit of slack for this organization. It's hard to graduate that many players to the majors and still have a good minor league system. My concern comes when Britton graduates and we don't really have a great SP prospect in the system anymore.

This is all the more reason to be very stingy with our FA signings and offer arbitration to Koji and Millwood. Get those extra picks whenever you can. Also, we need to be ALOT more involved in the international scene, though I agree it does appear to be getting better.

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It's not an excuse, but it should be mentioned. It should be better for the reasons you mention, but I brought it up because it should provide a little bit of slack for this organization. It's hard to graduate that many players to the majors and still have a good minor league system. My concern comes when Britton graduates and we don't really have a great SP prospect in the system anymore.

This is all the more reason to be very stingy with our FA signings and offer arbitration to Koji and Millwood. Get those extra picks whenever you can. Also, we need to be ALOT more involved in the international scene, though I agree it does appear to be getting better.

I do agree it should be mentioned...But I think its something that would hardly be mentioned if the FO had done a better job of building the system up around those guys who have graduated to the majors.
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Are we grading the players in the system, or the system (i.e., coaches, quality of instruction and development, etc.?

Assuming we are grading the players, I'd say C-. If there had been a D+ grade, I might have said that. We're in a bit of a down cycle at the moment, but we could be looking pretty good at this time next year, because Britton is about the only top prospect who is likely to graduate in 2011 and there a lot of guys who could be bouncing back from injuries.

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It's a very middle-of-the-pack system, IMO. I gave it a C, but that might be a bit generous. Yes, we graduated a fair amount of talent over the past two years, but that really served to expose the lack of depth in what was, in my opinion, a slightly overrated system.

Now we don't have the Wieters/Matusz type of blue-chipper heading the list, and Bell has technically graduated as well. Our top 5 pick from 2009 has at this point failed to prove the consensus wrong and solidify himself as a top prospect.

We've got a couple of solid B+ guys at the top of the list, followed by a handful of raw, toolsy, young guys with upside and a handful of more advanced but lower ceiling pitchers. There's plenty of reason to think that several guys could have break out seasons in 2011 to really bump up their (and our) stocks, but at this point I'm not sure just how highly you can rate guys like Avery, Hoes or Givens. We had a few solid performers in 2010 (Mahoney and Adams in particular) but I don't consider either to be serious prospects.

I'll weigh my opinions with consensus and go with a C, but I could see a lower rating if you disagree with Callis on Machado, are skeptical of Givens, Hoes and Avery, and have lost faith in Hobgood.

Not sure how someone could justify this being an above average system, but to each his own. Yes we've graduated some top talent but we haven't drafted well enough to mitigate the losses. Our high-ceiling guys don't have ceilings that high and our lower-ceiling college arms still carry a good amount of risk (injury, durability, stamina). Like Frobby said, we're in a valley of a cycle.

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Considering Jordan's been running the draft for a while, I'm operating under the assumption that 2010's production was an outlier on the low side due to injury and a couple of disappointments. I'm expecting that we have more talent than we've shown, and that will start to become clear in 2011.

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Considering Jordan's been running the draft for a while, I'm operating under the assumption that 2010's production was an outlier on the low side due to injury and a couple of disappointments. I'm expecting that we have more talent than we've shown, and that will start to become clear in 2011.

This might be true, and I'd expect performance in general to be better in 2011, but I think it's important to note that Jordan made a strategy out of targeting injured/injury-prone players for overslot deals in the later rounds. He invested fairly significant money on some guys who were passed on due to concerns over injury and durability. Some accountability needs to be there on his part for attrition.

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I think the system is a C....

However, I keep seeing people saying that our system doesn't have a true "blue chipper". Do you guys not consider Britton a blue chipper? Machado?

Britton is probably a top 20 prospect, if not very close to it. I think he was rated 11th overall pretty recently by a major publication(maybe mlb.com?). Machado is also probably top 20....Those are blue chip prospects in my book. Its not very often you get a Matt Wieters who ends up being the #1 prospect in baseball.....

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I think the system is a C....

However, I keep seeing people saying that our system doesn't have a true "blue chipper". Do you guys not consider Britton a blue chipper? Machado?

Britton is probably a top 20 prospect, if not very close to it. I think he was rated 11th overall pretty recently by a major publication(maybe mlb.com?). Machado is also probably top 20....Those are blue chip prospects in my book. Its not very often you get a Matt Wieters who ends up being the #1 prospect in baseball.....

I wonder if our system was ranked higher than it should be because of skewing by a top prospect.

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I think the system is a C....

However, I keep seeing people saying that our system doesn't have a true "blue chipper". Do you guys not consider Britton a blue chipper? Machado?

Britton is probably a top 20 prospect, if not very close to it. I think he was rated 11th overall pretty recently by a major publication(maybe mlb.com?). Machado is also probably top 20....Those are blue chip prospects in my book. Its not very often you get a Matt Wieters who ends up being the #1 prospect in baseball.....

Machado is a potential blue chipper..just don't know yet.

Britton isn't a blue chipper.

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I keep seeing this excuse and while there is some validity there, the bottom line is we have had some poor drafts(IMO), haven't bveen involved in the International scene for the last 5 years(getting better though) and have lost some draft picks due to poor FA signings.

In other words, if they did a better job and put more emphasis into amateur talent, we could have lost those guys and still had a solid system...similar to what a team like TB has done.

Why are the recent graduates seen as an excuse? How many teams still have their 2007 and 2008 first rounders stil in their system? Probably quite a few.

The BA chat on the Os system puts us in the 20-25 range. BA had us 25th in 2005. The difference between now and then, however, IMO, is huge. Our 11 to 30 guys back then were Walter Young, Dave Haehnel, Bob McCrory, Jacobo Sequea, Dennis Robinson, Edy Rodriguez, Fredy Deza, JJ, Aaron Rakers, Brian Finch, Scott Rice, Jarod Rine, Travis Brown, Lorenzo Scott, Mike Huggins, Brian Forysek, Richard Stahl, Ryan Finan, CJ Smith and Troy Neal. That's a lot of reliever wannabes. Only JJ was playing in his age 22 year (born in 1983) - everyone else was born in 1982 or earlier including 4 guys born in 1980 and two in the seventies.

The makeup of this year's crop should be substantially younger and flash more legit major league tools. I would grade the system a C, but there is a chance in a year's time with another solid strong draft and the development of some of our non-producers or injured guys (Townsend, Erbe, Hobgood, Givens, Bundy, Henry, Coffey) to see us vault several spaces. There are lots of C prospects with the potential to become much better.

Our system has suffered due to fairly average drafting, lack of internally signed international players and lack of draft picks (giving up two second rounders and a third since 2007 plus no supplemental picks for ourselves). The above is not a good combination.

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