Archive for February, 2010

I promise to have some thoughts about this in the next few days but here’s the list (full article requires subscription).  The only thing I’ll say in passing is that I feel like Adron Chambers is getting a bit of  a bandwagon effect from the internet which can act as an echo chamber at times.  Otherwise, I don’t see a lot of reasons to hate on this list.  Kevin Goldstein does, on balance, very good work and I love the format he uses in this series.

Updated 2/24/10 – 9:00pm

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This is one of those Latin America signings that are darn near impossible for us to evaluate from the outside.  BA has the report on the 17-year-old right fielder who has a “plus-plus arm”.

Baseball America

I must have missed this from about a month ago, but Jim Callis of Baseball America put together a “grade point average” for the last four draft grades Baseball America has given out. This should give us an indication how the Luhnow era is going. Go to the link if you would like to see how the all major league teams, but for our purposes let’s look within the NL Central to see how the Cardinals did against their division rivals.

So the Cardinals were slightly below league average, while the Cubs and Astros were rather odious.  Odious is putting it mild for the Astros, who were the worst of the worst. When handing out draft grades, Baseball America is looking for bottom line results; guys who made it to the majors and are producing, or hot prospects that they strongly believe will make it. It’s not a scouting director’s fault if his team goes cheap, and they surely don’t have any control over when their team picks.

To try and account for this, let’s fudge around a bit to try and neutralize. I’m sure there’s probably a better way to do this, but for now I’m simply going to divide each teams original GPA by their average amount spent and then multiply that by a new budget that will be the same for each team. The average team in the NL Central was $5M.

If there’s one thing the Reds have done well, it’s drafting players. With these “neutralized” rankings, the Cardinals have done as well, per dollar as the Brewers, who are well known for their strength in drafting players. The Pirates have had to spend a little bit more money, being they draft a lot higher than your average team due to their perennial stenchocity. They’ve had some painfully bad whiffs. (Daniel Moskos over Matt Wieters, anyone?)

To help you adjust in your head a little more, here is where the team had its highest draft picks during this span.

The Pirates had the most high draft picks due to their perennial poopiness, and really have had little to show for it. The Reds and Brewers also have benefited from picking in the top half of the draft.

Finally, here is the amount of Top 200 picks each team had to choose from with each year.

No wonder we liked the 2005 draft so much. Not only did the Cardinals go “high ceiling” in that draft, they had a lot of picks to play with that year. As it turns out, the Cardinals have had more picks than their competitors, but it hasn’t really helped them in the rankings.

What can you say about the 2007 draft for the Astros? They had no 1st or 2nd round pick, because Ed Wade just had to sign Carlos Lee for 6-years, $100 million. And he just had to sign a 40-year old Woody Williams.  Both players helped the team go 73-89 that year, job well done. The Astros didn’t have a pick until the 3rd round, and they didn’t sign that pick, or their 4th round pick.  This super-work apparently gets you a two-year extension from Drayton MacLane.

I know this isn’t a perfect way to look at things, but hopefully it gives you an idea of how Luhnow has played the cards he’s been dealt.

(Credit where credit is due, I pretty much stole this post idea from FutureSox.com)

Shelby Miller made the list, ranking 50th overall. Miller was the lone Cardinal representation. In other news, the Cardinal team color will remain red.

Brett Wallace ranked 27th.

In other news, Scott Bittle is probably toast. Take it away, Strauss -

Bittle’s issues are believed significant. His shoulder issue is most obvious toward the anterior (front) part of his shoulder. If surgery is required, it likely would be similar to the capsule-tightening procedure former Cardinals lefthander Mark Mulder required in 2006. Mulder made one abbreviated start with the club in two seasons after the surgery and last week at least postponed a comeback attempt.

Yep, he’s fried.

In case there was cause for concern, Chris Lee, photog for the STL P-D provides evidence that Mike Folli has safely arrived in Jupiter.

Whew!

(Do click on the Cardinals section for the first spring training albums by Lee, which are superb as usual.)

Another pre-season Prospect Ranking, this time coming from The Scouting Book.

A bit about ‘The Scouting Book’

We don’t discount old-school scouting reports, and we don’t discount modern sabermetric statistics: we bow out of that entire argument and try to deliver values that come from both the head and the gut at the same time.

Likewise, we don’t reject the opinions of others. In fact, they’re incorporated in our summaries. In addition to the obvious inputs from such places as Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, SI and ESPN, our contributors and sources include professional scouts, baseball writers, online fantasy baseball consultants, and more than a couple of hobbyist sabermetricians who spend too many days tramping around minor league ballparks.

More info here. Rankings after the jump:
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You may have seen Luhnow’s recent conversation with Joe Strauss. Luhnow went on the defensive regarding the latest prospect rankings out there, most of which have been thrashing his farm system. Specifically he called out Keith Law, saying -

‘I’ll put our analysis up against Keith Law’s all day long and after five minutes the debate will be over.’

To which Law retorted-

‘Now we know: Not only do the Cardinals need better prospects, they need better analysts, too.’

In defense of Luhnow, Joe Strauss isn’t nicknamed El Diablo without reason. He has made no bones about his doubts in Luhnow’s ability to draft top-shelf talent. It could be Strauss has got under his skin, and as a card-carrying member Hyperventilating Prospect Geek Fraternity, I understand. I say this tongue-in-cheek. From my dealings with Strauss over twitter, he can be condescending and just plain ornery at times, but overall  he’s pretty reasonable and I’d say is a good guy. (I can’t believe I just typed that!) I’m glad he speaks his mind, even if I don’t always agree.

But it’s not just Keith Law that is dumping on the Cardinals’ farm system. Everyone is. Baseball America, Kevin Goldstein, John Sickels, you name it. The system is understandably down after all the trades, trades that helped the Cardinals win a pennant. What Luhnow should be saying, while being careful not to knock his players, is “When I took this job, the Cardinal farm system was ranked near the bottom of the pack every year. We made some trades that helped our team win the NL Central, and we could not have done that without our ability to draft and acquire top-end talent. I am confident that within time, that I can again rebuild the farm system back to respectability. I’ve done it before”.

I chuckle a little bit when I read the annual article on Josh Kinney’s return to the bullpen — this time it’s penned by BJ Rains at the Globe-Democrat.  It’s not that I dislike Kinney, it’s just that he seems to have developed the reputation of a good reliever without ever actually being . . . well, you know,  good.

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I have a hard time worrying about the Brendan Ryan news and, now that the children have been consoled, let me tell you why.

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Intrigued by this comment, I wanted to take a very brief look into the Cardinals relievers for the last three years.  Given the aggressive nature that the organization handles prospects and the rapid nature at which you’d expect relievers to rise through an organization, 2007 would be the absolute earliest we could have any expectation of seeing Jeff Luhnow’s fingerprints on the major league pen.

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