2) Why would you look at BA for hitters over the more robust and more encompassing OPS stat? In that, Cruz is 31 and Chambers is 34 (neither top 3rd for ranked players.) With cox at #48 and Kozma at #55 that gives us an average for our ranked players of #42 — An average in the bottom half! And we are as good as any org?

3) In pitching, we are only slightly better Using ERA (not a very telling stat but I cant say there is anything better easily calculable; though if given the choice I would take WHIP – also not good but maybe better) the 19th and 30th ranking. That its one at the 1/3 mark and the other below the 50% mark. Averaged together these players rank 24.5. that puts them just slightly in the top half. And we are as good as any org?

4) Simple random chance would seem that we would have someone in the top 25% of ranked players if we were doing as good as any other organization. Particularly when 2 of our hitters rank in the bottom 3rd. Overall we appear to be about average. Nothing wrong with that. Probably not “showing as well as any program out there” but certainly not the worst either.

5) It is hard for me to compare our players to toher teams as I don’t know enough about the other teams and there players. Given that, all I can look at are the stats of our players and where they rank. And the dont rank highly nor do they rank poorly. I’m sure there were several teams that did much better than our players (as well as some that did much worse).

6) I’m not a negative nancy when it comes to our farm system. I’m probably way above average in my thinking about how good our farm system is. I go through lots of paper bags. I’m not necessarily high on all the players we sent but on others I’m extremely high (it is me who has been comparing Chambers to Desmond Jennings ( atop 25 prospect in all of baseball) and have been doing so for months – long before the AFL) But realistically our contingent in the AFL was only so-so. This was a combination of who we sent and some players who dissapointed a little, mixed in with a couple that did OK. But good or bad, I will call it like I see it and without many first hand reports I’ll use stats to do that (and I think I;ve made my case well with them).

7) See riotmute’s post below!

But the same GM made a disastrous miscalculation of Dan Haren’s value 6 years later.

I don’t know if any organization consistently values its prospects correctly and accurately projects their development. Atlanta, a pretty astute organization, sold low on Wainwright. The Dodgers, who for a while were the best at signing and developing young players from Latin America, completely missed Pedro Martinez’s potential — they thought he was frail and would break down.

The Cards probably missed some opportunities to sell high on Bryan Anderson and Daryl Jones when they were considered top-100 prospects. But Mo appears to have sold high on Brett Wallace. There’s certainly no formula I’ve seen that predicts these things with any accuracy.