Jays have a bottom 5 farm system
by ohmybosh on Dec 5, 2009 4:15 PM EST
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"28. Blue Jays: Toronto would be No. 30 if not for last summer's Scott Rolen trade, which brought needed pitching talent from the Reds. Toronto's top hitters, such as infielders Justin Jackson and Kevin Ahrens and catcher J.P. Arencibia, had poor seasons in 2009, and the Jays also failed to sign three of their first four draft picks this year."
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I was stunned when they drafted him.
I did a lot of reading about the draft prior to it, and don’t remember seeing his name once in the top 20, much less top 40. I was speechless. Then I thought, wait, we already have a bunch of first base types, why o why can’t we draft a toolsy player? Someone who can run a bit, and play defense. Enough of the lumbering first basemen with good eyes already. And here we are two years later and this guy is proving to be a stiff.
Can’t write him off yet, of course.
I think the Jays need some athletes in the system.
Time is a great teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all of it's students.
my question is as follows:
if Ricciadi left (1) the on-field Jays in disarray (2) bad bench manager decisions – Gibbons and then no succession plan post-Gibbons (3) the weak farm system and (4) messed up the Halladay trade situation — how awful was he? I mean, from that perspective, he must have been absolutely horrible.
I was always kind of neutral on JP whilst so many complained, but in hindsight, perhaps the complaints were justified. More and more it seems like his legacy is not a good one.
Wasn't Ricciardi
Supposed to be a very good talent evaluator?
I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby
Well...
Is a tough thing to complain about a system that had 3 or 4 starting pitchers graduate to the big team. Is there any team in the league that used so many team developed starting pitchers this past year. Some top batters had an off year but then we might have a first baseman in Dopirak that no one counted on and there are some outfielders in the low minors that moved up.
Yeah your minor league ratings kinda take a hit when you have that many people graduate.
All of sudden you can’t count Cecil, Zep, Romero, Snider, Lind amongst your minor league players/prospects and then the system doesn’t look so good.
Life as a Toronto Sports Fan?... *sigh*... It is what it is...
It is one of those things....
They always rate the Jays to have a bad farm system and yet many of the players on the team have come up thru the farm system. So what’s more important, ratings or results?
I know I should let silly ones go past....
but the Jays system has given us a ton of good players. There was a study last year that I can’t find right at the moment (and it isn’t worth the time to search) but had the Jays as one of the top three system for producing talent. Guys we’ve produced that have done things for us in the few years include Halladay. Romero, Marcum. McGowan,. Richmond, Cecil. Janssen, Rzep, Purcey, League, Carlson, Hill, Lind, Snider, Wells, Rios. Yeah I know, Rios and Wells had a bad year last year, but find me a couple of systems that have done that much without a top five pick in the last several years.
Yeah, I know, sucks. But in reality find another team that’s done the same.
The system does produce ML talent but under JP it failed to produce elite ML talent.
Of the names you list I’d say Doc is the only elite talent and he was not drafted by JP. Hill and Lind may continue to be elite and that would be great but are more solid then elite.
For the others Marcum, McGowan, Janssen all have had major injuries…with only Marcum seemingly over the injuries
I’d say that Marcum, Romero, Cecil, League, Carlson are all solid ML’ers and Richmond, Janssen too I guess…Purcey is a fringe ML’er and the rest are still unproven (Snider & Rzep)
The lack of elite talent could stem from the lack of a top 5 pick or the very conservative draft approach emplyoed by JP either way it would be nice to produce some elite players
Lind isn't elite? Hill? Snider has a shot...
blaming the GM for pitchers getting hurt is kind of like blaming the fans for losing. How many teams have picked ‘elite’ players, if elite is better than Lind, being in the bottom half of the draft?
Lind could be elite...
He’s had one great year so let’s hope he can keep it up. Same with Hill. If you ranked a GM based on his players one good year then JP wouldn’t be so bad…
that'd be the Bill James' "young player index"
or something like that.
I think you have to look at it from two angles
In terms of pitching, the Jays farm system has been pretty good. It has been able to produce productive pitchers on demand over the last few years. If all of the Jays pitchers are healthy, the Las Vegas team should be pretty good for pitchers because there isn’t enough room on the Jays for all of them.
However, in terms of position players, it’s pretty bleak. I think it’s pretty telling that when September came, there wasn’t much expansion of the Jays roster. It looks like we really don’t have OF, SS, or C prospects ready to challenge for a spot on the big roster, which is why we are looking to free agents to fulfill those roles. (Even if we did, there’s no guarantee that Cito would play them. (Oh, that’s another shot at Cito)). It just seems to me that we have a lot of position players on the top farm teams that would be decent utility players but not really outstanding at anything.
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