White Sox... 3rd worst farm system in baseball

[PorkChopExpress]

Originally Posted by SoxNation05

Flowers got busted of PEDs shortly before the Sox acquired him.

Originally Posted by blandman

People always forget this, I'm glad you brought it up. When I hear the expectations from the team, I cringe because I know its based on things he did artificially.

First of all, Flowers was suspended back in 2006 (August). Sox acquired him in December 2008. That's not exactly "shortly before the Sox acquired him." Second, after 2006, assuming he was no longer using PED's his numbers (AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS) were:

2007 - .298/.378/.488/.866
2008 - .288/.427/.494/.921
2009 (AA-AAA) - .297/.423/.516/.939
2010 - .220/.334/.434/.768
2011 - .261/.390/.500/.890

He was a 20-year-old and had barely played professional ball before he was suspended, and assuming he's been clean following his suspension, I don't think his numbers since then can be considered artificial, and they look good. I would have high expectations based on them for his first season with regular playing time. In fact I do. I look forward to seeing what he can do for us this year.

[Hitmen77]

Originally Posted by WhiteSox5187

That's the kind of attitude that can get you a job with the White Sox front office.

Pretty much.

Originally Posted by kittle42

That's fine - neither do I - but there are people who get paid to do that, and some are writers who analyze and report on it.

Methinks some folks (not necessarily you, Dump) would have much less of an issue with the entire analysis of minor league systems if the Sox were, say 3rd instead of near the bottom.

People wouldn't get worked up about subjective minor league analyses if the real-world outcome didn't closely match these rankings. People can say that the Sox being ranked #30 or #28 means nothing....but what does mean something is the very real result of the Sox haven't very little internal talent helping the team for quite a few years now.

If the only people who are allowed to discuss this problem are experts who have an inside knowledge of the minor leagues, then we may as well shut down this site.

Originally Posted by SoxNation05

Courtney Hawkins came in at #68 on MLB.com's top 100 prospects.

They speak pretty highly on the kid. It's nice having a potential impact position player in the system. Besides Beckham's short stay in the minors I can't think of a solid position player that we have had in the minors. Dayan Viciedo, Brandon Allen and Chris Carter come to mind but I think Hawkins' overall potential trumps theirs.

As far as I can recollect, the last position player that came through the Sox system who had reasonable success in the majors was Aaron Rowand.....and he was drafted by the Sox 15 years and first came up 12 years ago.

Chris Young has had some success in MLB. At least we got Javy Vazquez for him. Beckham has been underwhelming, but not a total bust. We'll see what Tyler Flowers does this year.

Of course, there's also Alexei and Viciedo from Cuba. That seems to be the one lone bright spot of getting talent from Latin America.

Originally Posted by Lip Man 1

Dirty:

It's more than just spending on U.S. players.

It's spending on good coaches, it's spending on getting the best scouts (even if that means getting them from other organizations), it's spending on getting the minor league operations up to par with the way the Sox want it done. Have been to Great Falls for example and let's just say they need some work on the facilities. It means spending money on international talent that is not subject to draft specifications.

Lip

Agreed.

[Hitmen77]

Originally Posted by Lip Man 1

List of Aussie born MLB players. No listing for Greg Halman (although I don't know how old this list is)

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/play...?loc=Australia

Lip

Shane Lindsay pitched in 4 games for the White Sox in 2011.

[blandman]

Originally Posted by rdivaldi

This is all conjecture and hindsight. The only concern about Beckham going into his second year in the majors was about his defense. There was zero talk about possible issues with his swing. Everyone thought he would be able to hit the ball at the major league level after his first successful season. That goes for people in and outside of the organization.

There were people outside the organization after the draft who thought his upside wasn't even an everyday player, so I doubt half a season did much to dissuade that.

[doublem23]

Originally Posted by Hitmen77

As far as I can recollect, the last position player that came through the Sox system who had reasonable success in the majors was Aaron Rowand.....and he was drafted by the Sox 15 years and first came up 12 years ago.

Pretty much. Rowand was drafted in the 1998, since then here's the entire list of position players the Sox have drafted, signed, and have gotten to the Majors. I'm excluding guys who were drafted but didn't sign and were drafted again later by other teams. This is THE ENTIRE LIST for the last 15 years in order of career WAR to this point. Players bolded are the ones who reached the Majors still with the Sox... May want to send women and small children into another room, boy, is this going to be ugly...

1. Chris Young - 2001 - 13.4 WAR
2. Mike Morse - 2000 - 5.1 WAR
3. Ryan Sweeney - 2003 - 5.0 WAR
4. Gordon Beckham - 2008 - 3.5 WAR
5. Chris Stewart - 2001 - 1.7 WAR
6. Jeremy Reed - 2002 - 1.1 WAR
7. Chris Getz - 2005 - 0.8 WAR
8. Brent Morel - 2008 - 0.5 WAR
9. Donny Lucy - 2004 - 0.1 WAR
10. Jordan Danks - 2008 - (0.2) WAR
11. Brian Anderson - 2003 - (0.6) WAR
12. Chris Carter - 2005 - (0.6) WAR
13. Brandon Allen - 2004 - (1.2) WAR
14. Josh Fields - 2004 - (1.4) WAR
15. Andy Gonzalez - 2001 - (1.9) WAR

[asindc]

Originally Posted by doublem23

Pretty much. Rowand was drafted in the 1998, since then here's the entire list of position players the Sox have drafted, signed, and have gotten to the Majors. I'm excluding guys who were drafted but didn't sign and were drafted again later by other teams. This is THE ENTIRE LIST for the last 15 years in order of career WAR to this point. Players bolded are the ones who reached the Majors still with the Sox... May want to send women and small children into another room, boy, is this going to be ugly...

1. Chris Young - 2001 - 13.4 WAR
2. Mike Morse - 2000 - 5.1 WAR
3. Ryan Sweeney - 2003 - 5.0 WAR
4. Gordon Beckham - 2008 - 3.5 WAR
5. Chris Stewart - 2001 - 1.7 WAR
6. Jeremy Reed - 2002 - 1.1 WAR
7. Chris Getz - 2005 - 0.8 WAR
8. Brent Morel - 2008 - 0.5 WAR
9. Donny Lucy - 2004 - 0.1 WAR
10. Jordan Danks - 2008 - (0.2) WAR
11. Brian Anderson - 2003 - (0.6) WAR
12. Chris Carter - 2005 - (0.6) WAR
13. Brandon Allen - 2004 - (1.2) WAR
14. Josh Fields - 2004 - (1.4) WAR
15. Andy Gonzalez - 2001 - (1.9) WAR

I think that list reflects the Sox refusing to overpay in the draft. We will see within the next five years if that philopsophy was the primary reason why the Sox have such a sad failure rate when it comes to drafting and developing. I'm particularly interested in seeing in the short term how Jared Mitchell progresses, if at all.

[SoxNation05]

Originally Posted by doublem23

Pretty much. Rowand was drafted in the 1998, since then here's the entire list of position players the Sox have drafted, signed, and have gotten to the Majors. I'm excluding guys who were drafted but didn't sign and were drafted again later by other teams. This is THE ENTIRE LIST for the last 15 years in order of career WAR to this point. Players bolded are the ones who reached the Majors still with the Sox... May want to send women and small children into another room, boy, is this going to be ugly...

1. Chris Young - 2001 - 13.4 WAR
2. Mike Morse - 2000 - 5.1 WAR
3. Ryan Sweeney - 2003 - 5.0 WAR
4. Gordon Beckham - 2008 - 3.5 WAR
5. Chris Stewart - 2001 - 1.7 WAR
6. Jeremy Reed - 2002 - 1.1 WAR
7. Chris Getz - 2005 - 0.8 WAR
8. Brent Morel - 2008 - 0.5 WAR
9. Donny Lucy - 2004 - 0.1 WAR
10. Jordan Danks - 2008 - (0.2) WAR
11. Brian Anderson - 2003 - (0.6) WAR
12. Chris Carter - 2005 - (0.6) WAR
13. Brandon Allen - 2004 - (1.2) WAR
14. Josh Fields - 2004 - (1.4) WAR
15. Andy Gonzalez - 2001 - (1.9) WAR

Wow.

Great post dub.

[kittle42]

Originally Posted by SoxNation05

Wow.

Great post dub.

Waiting for someone to convince me that those failures haven't hurt the franchise.

[shingo10]

Originally Posted by kittle42

Waiting for someone to convince me that those failures haven't hurt the franchise.

I surely won't convince anyone but just for the sake of conversation everyone who was in bold (minus Gonzales) did contribute to the team throughout the years and a lot of the ones that weren't in bold were used to acquire more valuable pieces (ie Reed in the deal for Garcia).

Not great but I'd venture to say its probably comparable to a lot of teams..maybe even good teams.

[WhiteSox5187]

Originally Posted by doublem23

Pretty much. Rowand was drafted in the 1998, since then here's the entire list of position players the Sox have drafted, signed, and have gotten to the Majors. I'm excluding guys who were drafted but didn't sign and were drafted again later by other teams. This is THE ENTIRE LIST for the last 15 years in order of career WAR to this point. Players bolded are the ones who reached the Majors still with the Sox... May want to send women and small children into another room, boy, is this going to be ugly...

1. Chris Young - 2001 - 13.4 WAR
2. Mike Morse - 2000 - 5.1 WAR
3. Ryan Sweeney - 2003 - 5.0 WAR
4. Gordon Beckham - 2008 - 3.5 WAR
5. Chris Stewart - 2001 - 1.7 WAR
6. Jeremy Reed - 2002 - 1.1 WAR
7. Chris Getz - 2005 - 0.8 WAR
8. Brent Morel - 2008 - 0.5 WAR
9. Donny Lucy - 2004 - 0.1 WAR
10. Jordan Danks - 2008 - (0.2) WAR
11. Brian Anderson - 2003 - (0.6) WAR
12. Chris Carter - 2005 - (0.6) WAR
13. Brandon Allen - 2004 - (1.2) WAR
14. Josh Fields - 2004 - (1.4) WAR
15. Andy Gonzalez - 2001 - (1.9) WAR

I am not a big fan of WAR but how in God's name did Andy Gonzalez put up a WAR of even 1 let alone 1.9?!

[doublem23]

Originally Posted by WhiteSox5187

I am not a big fan of WAR but how in God's name did Andy Gonzalez put up a WAR of even 1 let alone 1.9?!

His career WAR is actually -1.9, I was just using accounting format to help distinguish from the dashes I was using to break up the columns.

Given that he only played in 91 career games and had 257 career PA, racking up nearly -2 in WAR is a pretty impressive display of badness. That would translate into roughly a -4.5 WAR over the course of a full season and generally speaking, 4-5 WAR (in the positive direction) is reserved for All-Star caliber players.

Moral of the story: Andy Gonzalez sucks

[Domeshot17]

Futhermore, lack of prospects hurts the ability to acquire MLB talent. For a baseball GM, Players are essentially a Zero-Sum Game. When you have nothing of value, you can rarely pick up anything of value. It is one thing to use the farm to trade for proven talent. Its another to ignore it completely.

[kittle42]

Originally Posted by Domeshot17

Futhermore, lack of prospects hurts the ability to acquire MLB talent. For a baseball GM, Players are essentially a Zero-Sum Game. When you have nothing of value, you can rarely pick up anything of value. It is one thing to use the farm to trade for proven talent. Its another to ignore it completely.

This is the big thing, and much more important than a prospect actually panning out, in a sense. Minor league perception trumps major league production.

[Domeshot17]

Originally Posted by kittle42

This is the big thing, and much more important than a prospect actually panning out, in a sense. Minor league perception trumps major league production.

Thats just it. Minor league prospects, top ones, don't get there by being a Jose Quintana or a Hector Santiago or a Brian Omogrosso. Guys who are MLB filler, who fill the 5th SP spot, or the Mop Up Bullpen role. Every team has those. Some have better years than others.

It is the pitchers with 2-3 major league pitches, out pitches, and hitters who have projectable power etc. Guys who have the potential to impact the game, those are what carry value.

If you notice, we haven't had that major trade over the last couple of years. We have had all these retread pick ups like Youklis and they have not been getting us to the playoffs. We have nothing other teams really covet anymore. That has to change.

[Nutriaitch]

Originally Posted by asindc

I'm particularly interested in seeing in the short term how Jared Mitchell progresses, if at all.

what's the latest on Mitchell?


he still has a lot of fans down this way.