Stop the Insanity

[elrod enchilada]

I am not the expert many of you are on the baseball draft, but I am a "draftnik" for pro basketball, and have more than a passing interest in the NFL draft. I am also a fanatic Tribe fan.

It strikes me that the Indians should pretty much stop drafting pitchers in the first 5-10 rounds. I look at the past few years and it is a total waste of picks. Dillon Howard, Cole Cook, Jake Sisco, Kyle Blair, Jordan Cooper: barf bag, anyone? We have a parade of total stiffs, and then our best prospects come in the lower rounds or trades: Cody Allen, Soto, Barnes, McAllister.

My point: the degree of difficulty in drafting pitchers is absurdly high, at least for the Tribe scouts. Stick to position players. Develop the hell out of them after using the first ten rounds to draft them. (Here is another crazy idea: draft one or two guys who project to hit more than 15 home runs in a season.) Then roll the dice in the lower rounds and make trades for pitching prospects. Sign thirty 16 year old pitchers in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Taiwan every year. Just stop torching top 5 and top 10 picks on guys who the moment you see them make you want to hurl chunks.

[daingean]

Can't say I agree with you but I do see your point. Drafting guys like Sowers, Guthrie, and Huff were tagging guys that were close to being ready for the majors (but with low ceilings) and that philosophy is one that I'm not in favor of. Getting back to your point, we also see enough misses on position players in the first 10 rounds.

I hope the Tribe does more to embrace drafting tools (i.e. the Natinals or Rays philosophy) than being closest to being ready.

[Edible14]

Their track record with position players is awful as well, until maybe the last three years or so. Drafting pitchers is hard because there's just so much bust potential usually (will he develop a 3rd pitch, will he be able to handle the transition to pitching every 5 days, will he stay healthy, etc.). But it needs to be done. The Indians need to draft and develop pitchers... that's why they're so mediocre right now! Did you know that there are 14 teams in the majors that have scored fewer runs than we have (5 in the AL)? Meanwhile there's only 3 teams that have allowed more runs (1 in the AL - the Twins). You can't have a rotation this bad and expect to be good.

[daingean]

Their track record with position players is awful as well, until maybe the last three years or so. Drafting pitchers is hard because there's just so much bust potential usually (will he develop a 3rd pitch, will he be able to handle the transition to pitching every 5 days, will he stay healthy, etc.). But it needs to be done. The Indians need to draft and develop pitchers... that's why they're so mediocre right now! Did you know that there are 14 teams in the majors that have scored fewer runs than we have (5 in the AL)? Meanwhile there's only 3 teams that have allowed more runs (1 in the AL - the Twins). You can't have a rotation this bad and expect to be good.

Not only that but injuries kill a pitchers at a higher rate than position players. Drafting and developing players has to get better. Most of the Indians successes have come from trades (Sizemore, Lee, Choo, Asdrubal, Santana, Hafner) than have come via the draft/international FA in recent years. The '90's teams were a combination of draft (Belle, Ramirez, Thome, Jaret Wright, Nagy), international FA (Colon) and trades (Visquel, Baerga, S.Alomar, Mesa, Fryman, Lofton).

With the exception of the CC, V-Mart and the Cliff Lee trades, most of Shapiro's trades have been successful (kudo's has to go to the scouting department on those). The drafting on the other hand was awful (I know injuries destroyed picks like Aubrey, Miller, Whitney, Martin).

[danh8]

The insanity is all the complete failure of our 1st round picks since 1998. We haven't drafted one player since 1998 that has made a real impact on our major league team since Sabathia. You want to point at one major reason this organization is a failure, that's it. Doesn't matter whether we draft a position player or pitcher... I'd ventiure to guess that not one other major league team comes close to that level of failure with their 1str round selections of the course of the last 14 years...

What is even more shocking ...nobody holding responsibility for this failure has been fired. More to the point ..they have been promoted.

[martyinnewyork]

Excellent point, Dan. I'm not sure if its a case of drafting the wrong players or simply not being able to develop them. Seems we draft a guy, then immediately start tweaking his delivery or stance or swing, which more often than not doesn't seem to help. Also, their goal seems to be to draft guys who are pretty safe bets to reach the majors but not to have much impact. Injuries haven't helped.

[OhioBaseball]

I am not the expert many of you are on the baseball draft, but I am a "draftnik" for pro basketball, and have more than a passing interest in the NFL draft. I am also a fanatic Tribe fan.

It strikes me that the Indians should pretty much stop drafting pitchers in the first 5-10 rounds. I look at the past few years and it is a total waste of picks. Dillon Howard, Cole Cook, Jake Sisco, Kyle Blair, Jordan Cooper: barf bag, anyone? We have a parade of total stiffs, and then our best prospects come in the lower rounds or trades: Cody Allen, Soto, Barnes, McAllister.

My point: the degree of difficulty in drafting pitchers is absurdly high, at least for the Tribe scouts. Stick to position players. Develop the hell out of them after using the first ten rounds to draft them. (Here is another crazy idea: draft one or two guys who project to hit more than 15 home runs in a season.) Then roll the dice in the lower rounds and make trades for pitching prospects. Sign thirty 16 year old pitchers in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Taiwan every year. Just stop torching top 5 and top 10 picks on guys who the moment you see them make you want to hurl chunks.

Thanks for the different perspective.

HS pitching is a very high risk, high reward game. You can go back to see top 1st and 2nd round pitchers of each draft and see lots of talented arms that project as 2 and 3 starters if all works out. Only a small few actually reach that level. Regarding the Indians, you look at guys like Sisco and Lovegrove -- if you take about 6 of those kind of guys, you may get ONE good 2 or 3 MLB starter for a couple years. You cite McAllister as a later round pick, but he was a 3rd round pick out of high school (Yankees). He's turned out well.

One thing that I remember a good scout saying years ago, was that his team had good cohesion with his player development staff and that was extremely important. I mean, good scouting is good scouting, but 18 and 21 year olds need to be developed and if scouts give their player development staff guys that they are not accustomed to developing then you won't have success. Give your instructors guys they have track records at developing well.

Another thing that bothered me about the Indians over the years is that if you take HS pitchers, you've got to expect that you'll fail more often than not. Those of us that followed this stuff over the years remember the Dan Denham/Alan Horne/JD Martin/Jake Dittler draft (all HS arms). None of those guys turned out and after it became clear those guys weren't going to turn out, that the Indians went very safe for about a decade. Anyone that understands risk knows that you're inevitably going to be burned, but risk takers need to be able to absorb the bad times knowing that if you continue course at some points its going to work out as long as you have some competence. The Indians got burned one year, and that was enough for them. Had they continued to take risk, they probably would have taken a few All-Stars since then but one year of failure was enough for them to change course. Decades or financial and economic research on risk would indicate that such a decision was short-sighted at best.

[Hermie13]

The insanity is all the complete failure of our 1st round picks since 1998. We haven't drafted one player since 1998 that has made a real impact on our major league team since Sabathia. You want to point at one major reason this organization is a failure, that's it. Doesn't matter whether we draft a position player or pitcher... I'd ventiure to guess that not one other major league team comes close to that level of failure with their 1str round selections of the course of the last 14 years...

What is even more shocking ...nobody holding responsibility for this failure has been fired. More to the point ..they have been promoted.

1998? Go back to 1992. Drafting Paul Shuey (a guy we made a reliever in his FIRST PRO SEASON) drafted 2nd overall. In the Hart GM era we had 14 first round/supp round picks and only 6 of the 14 ever made the Major Leagues, let alone did anything once there. CC was that one great pick in the middle and seems to make everyone forget about how bad we drafted under Hart. Jaret Wright would be the 2nd best in the Hart era and as scary as it sounds, Paul Shuey would be the third best 1st rounder (at least did something at the ML level I guess). Our first round failure is more going on 20 years, not just 14.

[elrod enchilada]

Ohio baseball-- Barnes and McAllister were both top 10 picks...by other teams. I am all for trading for pitching prospects; we are pretty good at that. Soto looks legit, too. But, Lord, spare me any more Kyle Blairs or Cole Cooks or Will Roberts or Jordan Coopers. My life is too short. Roll the dice after round 10 on all the pitchers you want, because from what I can see the guys the Tribe drafts after the tenth round are as good or better than the top-10 pitcher picks, almost from the moment they sign their professional contracts.