The Diamondbacks mismanaged their draft pool, tweets Jim Callis of MLB.com. The club took Dansby Swanson with the first overall pick and inked him at the last possible moment. In doing so, they spent $1.7MM less than their pool allowed. As MLBTR’s Steve Adams tweeted, the club could have spent up to $2.328MM more without losing a future draft pick. While a franchise shouldn’t spend that money just to spend it, they should have a few over-slot picks in the early rounds in order to make the most of limited resources.
- The Rockies originally planned to promote top prospect Jon Gray for Sunday’s start, but they’ve backed off that decision, writes Nick Groke of the Denver Post. His last outing at Triple-A was a three-inning stinker in which he allowed four runs and six hits. The club will wait for a future opportunity to call upon their top pitching prospect. Eddie Butler will take tomorrow’s start.
- Former Padres GM Josh Byrnes steadily built the farm system during his tenure with the club, writes Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Now current GM A.J. Preller is being second guessed for his bold decision to dismantle the farm for win-now talent. The club could be one year closer to a more organic revitalization, but now the farm system is shallow. Massive offseason overhauls have a bad track record – ask the Marlins and Blue Jays (and the White Sox). It’s also worth noting that Preller may have wanted to reshape the farm system to his preferences.
- The Giants have built one of the best infields in the sport, notes Jonah Keri of Grantland. The home grown crew includes several surprising contributors. Brandon Belt was a well-regarded prospect – especially among sabermetric circles. However, Brandon Crawford’s offensive emergence was unexpected. Joe Panik is deceptively well-rounded. Matt Duffy was supposed to back up Casey McGehee. Instead, he’s arguably the best rookie in the National League, a class that includes Kris Bryant and Maikel Franco among others.
The Diamondbacks draft is embarrassing for the organization. The worst part, I’m not sure the front office even realizes how big of a blunder it was.
Maybe Larussa is still secretly employed by stl….. Conspiracy theory….lol…..call the FBI
I couldn’t agree more.. LaRussa was a good manager (bit overrated imho) but his personality alone should have made him a bad choice for the top spot in an organization.. But to not only have a rookie executive in the top spot, he brought in a rookie GM.. The Diamondbacks had a better team than they looked last year.. All they was needed to get healthy and change managers.. I will never figure out how they managed to pull off the Robbie Ray for Gregorius trade.. From signing Lopez and losing the ability to chase top talent this year, and next. Then pretty much giving away a pitcher equal to or better than Lopez, in Toussaint (makes me wonder if they would have been included in the Cahill trade had Toussaint been available).. Not acquiring a catcher in the offseason after salary dumping Montero because they alone felt O’Brien was their catcher of the future.. Hellickson has been pretty terrible (79 era+) while Williams looks like a solid prospect for the Rays if they would have just kept Miley this trade wouldn’t have been necessary).. Giving Bolsinger to the Dodgers for a few bucks.. He might only pitch 4 innings per start but he would be an awesome addition to any bullpen.. And finishing with this embarrassment of a draft.. The Diamondbacks are in for a tough couple of years while LaRussa/Stewart figure things out.. Sorry about the long rant but that front office is just awful..
as a Phils fan, it’s nice to see another team screwing up everything they touch.
Matt Duffy is arguably having a better year than Kris Bryant? Who…..who’s arguing that?
Duffy: .297 AVG, .802 OPS, 2.8 WAR, 77 Games
Bryant: .266 AVG, .842 OPS, 2.7 WAR, 79 Games
Its not as far fetched as you would expect.
Bryant’s Fangraphs WAR is 3.4 I guess it’s closer if you don’t like his defense, but Fangraphs does.
maybe im wrong but an .842 ops trumps an .802 ops every day of the week and twice on sunday…..and war is highly overrated in my opinion
Well, per bWAR, whoever wants to argue Matt Duffy > Kris Bryant for ROY would have a valid argument.
If you asked every GM and manager in baseball which they would rather have, all but 2 would say Bryant and those 2 are not a certainty.
That isn’t the question though. As a Giants fan, I’d much rather have Bryant. But their play so far has been roughly equal.
You can add RedSox to teams in which offseason reshapings didn’t work. Overhauling didn’t immediately turn WhiteSox and RedSox into winners, but they didn’t deplete their farm systems to do what they did (neither used any of their top levels).
I think the RedSox overhaul in the offseason was poorly misguided, considering their 3 of their 4 top acquisitions (Panda, Hanley and Castillo at the end of last year) were offensive based.
Agree – Whitesox was too because it was premature. They didn’t have the foundation laid. I don’t see either Sox in a huge hole because of it, but they each lost a year.
And both could sell off some stuff in the next 10 days.
Agreed.. Losing your ace and then chasing bats doesn’t make much sense..
What good is a farm when it doesn’t translate into production at the big league level?
Now everyone is saying Preller shouldn’t have traded Ross, Wisler, Turner, etc. and in a couple years if Ross or Wisler go the way of TJS, wind up like Randall Delgado, Joe Kelly, Kyle Drabek, Trevor Cahill, etc then he’s a genius. Plenty of young arms that were promising and showed potential fizzled out 3-5 years later for a variety of reasons.
Preller was brought in for drafting and international signings.
Also- Jace Peterson offers almost the exact same production Spangenberg has given us this year.
Peterson .252/.330/.351 3HR 37 RBI 8 stolen bases. 84 games
Spangenberg- .254/.304/.356
2 HR 11 RBI 67 games
Also, so far Ross xfip 2.06 but Wisler 4.43.
“Preller was brought in for drafting and international signings.”
And you know that how?
Because when he was in the process of interviewing that was a highlight of why he had the edge cause of his experience being involved in those areas when he worked for Texas. This website and others talked about it.
Here you go. The website pointing out Prellers extensive background in the international market as part of the scouting department leads to my statement of he was brought in for his draft and international expertise.
espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11317413/san-diego-padr…
All the article said was that he’d be a “difference maker” in bringing people into the organization after noting his past experience. If a manager is hired that was an ex-infield coach, does that mean he was brought in to coach the infielders? How many international players did Preller bring in this past off-season?
The point is that a GM is brought in to be a GM. If his success depends on drafting and his international experience…..well…..just look at the trades he was allowed to make.
This is straight from the article.
“Preller was hired as general manager on Wednesday. He developed a reputation as a hard-working, hard-charging scouting and player development executive over the past 10 years with the Texas Rangers. He has extensive international scouting experience, particularly in Latin America.”
Notice how that is his area of expertise- drafting and international background.
So because he didn’t spend heavily this year it negates his ability and the reason he was brought in? Ever think he didn’t rate this years pool of talent as highly and plans to spend in 2016? He signed international players this year. Henry Henry and Kelvin Melean, Kevin Alarcon, Reinaldo Illiraza, Andres Munoz..
Melean was the 26th best prospect and Munoz was the 29th best. So he grabbed 2 top 30 international players in his first international signing period.
This all according to gas lamp and Friars fan base.
As for the trades- you mean Matt Kemp and Derek Norris for Jesse Hahn who’s looking at another TJS probably and Grandal? Grandal is a horrible defensive catcher who’s only quality is pitch framing. He can’t stop balls and can’t throw people out. He got offense but offense and bad defense doesn’t keep you behind the plate long. Norris may not be overall offensively great but he’s a better defender behind the plate.
What about Upton for all those prospects? Well like I said earlier Jace Peterson has offered the same production as spangenberg. Dustin Peterson and Mallex Smith are in the minors and Fried is still recovering from TJS.
What about Rene Rivera and Ryan Hanigan for Will Middlebrooks? Two back up catchers with no offense. At least Middlebrooks has power.
Matt Wisler for Craig Kimbrel? Wisler needs more time and we will see what we get when we trade Kimbrel.
The only loss was Joe Ross and Trea Turner. Joe Ross has pitched 3 games. Not exactly superior sample size there. And Trea Turner is wait and see. Minor numbers look great but let’s wait till he’s in the bigs.
If Preller was brought in for drafting and international signings then why did he sign players that took away his two top draft picks and did not spend all the money available to him in the international signing period that ended July 1st?
Right now all but one of his trades are a joke.
Even if Kemp has the same monster 2nd half that he had last year, he will still end up with a bWAR of 0.8. About the same as calling up Liriano or Dickerson. Grandal on the other hand is having a great year with 14 home runs and hitting 24 points higher than Kemp and at his current pace will end the year with a bWAR over 3. Kemp is over 30 now so he is guaranteed to decline in performance. Grandal is 26 and at his peak this year and the next 2.
Myers is hurt, has started only 34 games this season, 5 of those at 1B, and isn’t expected back until mid to late August if everything goes right. He is only 24, but wrist injuries take a long time to heal. Just ask Alonso or any other player that had similar surgery. Myers will not be the same until next season at the earliest. Ross is a major league starter today and Turner will be next year. Bad trade at this point even if it was those two straight up for Myers. Unfortunately it wasn’t straight up for those two.
Middlebrooks is hitting .213 and playing bad defense.
Norris is hitting .234 and is a bad catcher in terms of game calling and pitch framing. Hahn is hurt now, but gave the A’s 16 games of 3.35 ERA ball which would rank #1 on the 2015 Padres and his injury will not require TJ surgery.
Kimbrel is just human with an ERA of about 3.00. BJ Upton is still horrible at the plate and owed an ungodly amount of money. Maybin is finally healthy and playing like it and Wisler is showing promise in his first taste of the majors. Right now his 3.10 ERA would be 1st on the Padres.
The only trade that is relatively sane was for Justin Upton and we will probably move him in the next 2 weeks, because we cant contend even if we play 10 games over .500 in the 2nd half and we cant afford to resign him.
We have an unsustainable payroll commitment for next season with $76.5 million committed to Shields, Kemp, BJ Upton, Kimbrel, Gyorko and Amarista. That is with a payroll that Fowler said they had to stretch to make at $108 million. That doesn’t take into account the 6 free agents to replace and the 9 guys including Cashner and Ross that will get raises in arbitration.
there is no way matt duffy is a better rookie in the national league than jace peterson,kris bryant or chris heston…Chris heston had a perfect game against the mets,kris bryant has done nothing but carry the cubs and jace peterson is the best 2ND Baseman the braves have had in the last quarter century
OT: Maybe an admin person can fix this, but my Giants feed is showing posts like this one from six months ago or so.