2012 MLB Regular Season Running Thread

Might as well make this more of a Cubs jack, since everyone else is fulfilling in their self-indulgent wankery.

Still very disappointed with the direction the front office chose to take. This is a full tear-down and rebuild job, tanking multiple seasons, and that's something a big market team should never have to do. Epstein has more or less admitted in interviews that the pressure to win in Boston every year was getting to him, so he bailed to an owner that would let him take a few years off.

That said, I think they are doing a brilliant job pursuing that strategy. Most of the Cubs' ownership I've seen in the past would have done half-measures. The farm system was already starting to emerge last year, with a lot of interesting low-minors talent, but the new front office has added three prospects (including Rizzo, who makes his debut tonight) who are legitimately better than last year's No. 1 prospect, and last year's top pick (Baez) has had an excellent pro debut and should move into that top five as well.

This time next year (after the draft), I expect the Cubs to have a consensus top farm system. Their position players are that good already. When the rankings come out next spring, they should have four top-50 prospects (Almora, Soler, Baez, Jackson) and four more who are either top-100 or borderline (Vitters, Lake, Szczur, Candelario). It's interesting that all eight of those guys are position players. If I were doing an organizational top 10 today, I might get to No. 12 or 13 before I listed a pitcher.

Then, in the next month, they should be going on a massive fire sale. They will strip the team bare of anything remotely useful and make sure they crush the Padres in the race for the worst record. Dempster and Garza, at least, are gone and should bring back some solid prospects.

If you are tanking, the worst record this year is doubly appealing. Not only do you get the No. 1 overall pick, but you get the largest signing cap in international free agents (with the option to add up to 50% to your caps via trade). I expect the Cubs to add the 50% to their pool and just abuse the IFA market, getting the top foreign prospect and the top domestic draft pick in the same year.

To which I say: woopdie-fucking-do, Theo. Of course you'll have the best farm system when that's all you focus on while other teams are actually trying to win major league baseball games.

 

Stain, Toronto went from a system ranked in the 20s to a consensus Top 10 in under three years. It can be done, but it makes the natives restless. People don't want to wait five years to play with toys.

 

I'm going to Camden Yards tonight as the Angels come to town. Been my first time going to an MLB game in a while.

It would have to be Matusz pitching. Sigh.

 

You know I will.

 

Trout's whole hometown (OK, maybe not quite, but a lot of them) will be there, so say the local papers.

 

There is a seat behind 16 rows home plate for $45 on Stub Hub right now.

 

I'll be able to slap palms with them. 18 rows behind home plate here.

I considered going down there without a ticket and negotiating a good seat, but I want a low-anxiety trip. Just picking up the light rail in Timonium and letting them do the work.

 

I like the Cubs strategy. He's trying to build something sustainable. I suppose doing it while finishing 82-80 this year would have increased the degree of difficulty, if you're into that kind of thing, but also decreased the chances of long-term, sustained dominance in the Central.

 

Well, yeah, it can easily be done. Most systems move in and out of the top 10 like that just because of promotion.

My question isn't whether or not he can build a top farm system. It's whether that farm system can be transitioned into major league success. Yeah, the Rays did it. But if it were that easy, they'd be joined in the playoffs by the Royals and Indians the last few years.

If you want to make a Cubs fan cry, here's an old Baseball America chat from February 2003, which was the last time the Cubs had a consensus top farm system in baseball:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/features/chat020703.html

When he took over, he talked a lot about "parallel fronts," which I found encouraging that he wasn't going to do what he's done. In MLB, building the farm system and building the major league team aren't mutually exclusive, especially if you are good at drafting and development, which is supposed to be Epstein's calling card.

 

With Gerrit Cole up to the Eastern League now, I was thinking about something.

I understand that if you're dominating hitters in Class A, like the Carolina League or the California League, that doesn't necessarily convert to getting major league hitters out. You have too many overmatched hitters in high A, guys who have no chance of playing higher.

But if you get to Class AA and you're ringing up nutty numbers -- a 10-plus K/9 rate, a 1.5 ERA, etc. -- do you really need that AAA stop?

I'd suggest that history shows that if you're dominant in AA, you're throwing major league-level pitches.

 

Possibly AA hitters need to see AAA pitching more than AA pitchers need to see AAA hitters.

 

I heard a lot of talk back in the spring when they would talk about Harper that AAA can sometimes hurt a young player. Where AA tends to be home to the up-and-comers, AAA sometimes tends to be a lot of has beens and just not good enoughs. Top prospects, I've heard, get a better gauge of their talent at the AA level.

That probably doesn't make a lot of sense the way I spelled it out, but I've definitely heard what you're talking about Shotglass.