2015 Farm System Rankings (Law 6th/Fangraphs 6th)

cajunrevenge said:
Its a half assed rebuild that will probably have half assed results.They should have traded everyone but Freeman and been bad enough for a few years to get some top 3 draft picks. Invest highly in the draft and international prospects. Whatever we did we should avoid signing 30+ year old mediocre players to 4 year deals.
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So we should have rolled with a 80 million payroll or less when out budget is clearly over 100 million? How does that make any sense?

We needed someone to play RF anyways and Markakis was the best player available and is signed to a relatively short deal.
 
sturg33 said:
They didn't have to be bad. They had premium talent right here in house and they sent them packing. They will have to pay for premium talent to replace them one way or the other.
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They would have had to be bad in 2016 when Jason and Justin are playing elsewhere and we have no in house replacements, no prospects to trade for replacements, and not much money to sign replacements.
 
Carp said:
So we should have rolled with a 80 million payroll or less when out budget is clearly over 100 million? How does that make any sense?

We needed someone to play RF anyways and Markakis was the best player available and is signed to a relatively short deal.
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I will keep that in mind for 2017 when we are desperate to get rid of his contract.
 
cajunrevenge said:
I will keep that in mind for 2017 when we are desperate to get rid of his contract.
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It's certainly possible. But he's been a picture of health to this point in his career and has been as consistent of a hitter as anyone could expect. Even still, 11 million per yr is not that critical and would be much easier to move than the other albatross contracts we've dished out.
 
cajunrevenge said:
Since the goal is to have a great farm system maybe we should have kept Andrelton and Wood in the minors so our rankings would be higher.
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Not for farm "rankings" but that actually isn't far off from the right idea. Both could have used more polish in the minors and were rushed up because of perceived need. It has worked relatively well with Wood, maybe due to his additional time spent after being sent down multiple times. Simmons on the other hand needed (needs) some more work with the bat. BUT his glove work is what got him to the ML and will keep him there. Could he have been much better during his career with the bat if the Braves had shown more patience? We'll never know.

The Braves have been very quick with the trigger to rush anyone who looks like they may have a pulse to the majors in recent history. I think this was clearly related to the financial situation and the internal decision to not try to rebuild but instead retool on the fly all the time. About the only guys to come up and look to be a finished product from the start in the last 7-8 years that I can remember has been Freeman and Kimbrel. EVERYONE else has spent a significant time learning on the job things they should have learned in the minors. In some cases it has worked out ok (Heyward) and in some cases the player cratered (Francouer). But I wonder what a player like Heyward might have been for the Braves if he had not been rushed.

The players ALL want to go to the show. They don't think about what arriving early could potentially do to their career. It's up to the controlling club to show good judgement and be the adult in the relationship and I don't think the Braves have been doing that.
 
Carp said:
So we should have rolled with a 80 million payroll or less when out budget is clearly over 100 million? How does that make any sense?

We needed someone to play RF anyways and Markakis was the best player available and is signed to a relatively short deal.
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I think I've discovered a litmus test for how posters feel about current management/strategy: would you describe Nick Markakis's four-year contract as "relatively long," or "relatively short?"
 
Somehow...someway...every thread materializes into a discussion about Heyward or Markakis.
 
thethe said:
Somehow...someway...every thread materializes into a discussion about Heyward or Markakis.
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And it'll be debated until JHey signs his new deal and if it's "only" 20+ million per, we will hear chants of "see we could have kept him." In the end, we had to rebuild a farm system that flat out stunk. Crappy drafts and bad contracts later, the "Barves Way" wasn't working. Whatever this hybrid rebuild is, it was needed.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
Not for farm "rankings" but that actually isn't far off from the right idea. Both could have used more polish in the minors and were rushed up because of perceived need. It has worked relatively well with Wood, maybe due to his additional time spent after being sent down multiple times. Simmons on the other hand needed (needs) some more work with the bat. BUT his glove work is what got him to the ML and will keep him there. Could he have been much better during his career with the bat if the Braves had shown more patience? We'll never know.

The Braves have been very quick with the trigger to rush anyone who looks like they may have a pulse to the majors in recent history. I think this was clearly related to the financial situation and the internal decision to not try to rebuild but instead retool on the fly all the time. About the only guys to come up and look to be a finished product from the start in the last 7-8 years that I can remember has been Freeman and Kimbrel. EVERYONE else has spent a significant time learning on the job things they should have learned in the minors. In some cases it has worked out ok (Heyward) and in some cases the player cratered (Francouer). But I wonder what a player like Heyward might have been for the Braves if he had not been rushed.

The players ALL want to go to the show. They don't think about what arriving early could potentially do to their career. It's up to the controlling club to show good judgement and be the adult in the relationship and I don't think the Braves have been doing that.
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From my observation, one of the biggest differences in the player development mentality with the change from Clark to DeMacio is that the DeMacio regime seemed to move guys up a lot quicker. Not necessarily all the way to the big leagues, but also up the ladder in the minors. Peraza is another guy who they've moved quickly and we'll see if he's ready for Gwinnett (or the majors) this year. I've always thought that guys need to get their feet under them and "challenging" them with tougher competition if they're not ready can really backfire and cause the development of bad habits. I think the case of Freeman (who spent a whole year in AAA) and Heyward (who was only there for a week at the end of 2009) is an interesting one. Heyward is very toolsy and I think he was absolutely ready for the bigs in terms of athletic talent, but I often wonder if he should have started 2010 in AAA and honed his fundamentals a bit more.

As per Markakis, that signing is still the biggest head-scratcher of the off-season to me.
 
I think its a great point about the philosophy with players in the minors. Heyward never seemed to be able to adjust to the how major league pitchers threw to him. You have to wonder if he would have learned some of these skills in AAA which the veteran arms that often fill out opposing rotations. But, with Clark back in the fray I have more confidence in that hte players that come from the farm will be ready to contribute moreso than in the past few years.
 
dak said:
Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs also has the Braves farm system ranked #6. He has Albies and Ruiz ranked higher than most.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/evaluating-the-prospects-atlanta-braves/
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So far a tremendous job with a hybrid rebuild. Team is not far from being a WC team and has completely rebuilt the farm system in one year. Best thing that could happen is to have a meh year while the players on the farm improve and then get a top 10 pick. Then you go into the 2016 ready to rock and roll.
 
I really don't think any franchise in the game would have kept Heyward at AAA for any considerable length of time in 2010. Some undoubtedly would have kept him down for a few weeks to push back the service time clock, but we had a massive hole in right field, a competitive team on the verge of a playoff berth and Heyward had just finished clobbering the holy hell out of AA. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago he would have spent some time in AAA, but in the MLB of 2010, that guy plays in the big leagues.

Simmons is a different, slightly more difficult case, and he was undoubtedly rushed a bit. But again, the big league club was in the middle of a 94-win season and spent the season in a legitimate race for the division despite a massive sucking chest wound at shortstop. I'm not going to say that we would have missed the playoffs without Simmons- we ended up winning the Wild Card by six games, and no one is that good. But contending teams just don't run Tyler Pastornicky, Paul Janish and a game but out of position Martin Prado at shortstop.
 
The proof will ultimately be in the pudding. I liked the returns we got in the La Stella, Carpenter and Kubitza trades. Did not think we got good value in the Heyward, Upton and Gattis trades. Let's see how it all pans out.
 
nsacpi said:
The proof will ultimately be in the pudding. I liked the returns we got in the La Stella, Carpenter and Kubitza trades. Did not think we got good value in the Heyward, Upton and Gattis trades. Let's see how it all pans out.
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Lol. Cool.
 
Keith Law just had 6 Braves on his top 100:

24. Peraza
47. Mike Foltynewicz
66. Albies
82. Jenkins
93. Ruiz
100. Fried

Wow, can't believe Sims didn't make the list. Wonder what he saw from him this year.
 
thethe said:
Keith Law just had 6 Braves on his top 100:

24. Peraza

47. Mike Foltynewicz

66. Albies

82. Jenkins

93. Ruiz

100. Fried

Wow, can't believe Sims didn't make the list. Wonder what he saw from him this year.
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I think its been said before he just missed, as in like 3 or 4 spots.
 
I'm intrigued by Ruiz. We may end up feeling better about the Gattis deal than about the other big talent offloads. Fried and Miller have a lot to say about that, I guess.
 
Yeah, I liked the Gattis trade. I was fond of Gattis, as we all were, but circumstances conspired to make him just a really awkward fit for where we were as an organization.

I'm (pleasantly) surprised to see Law so high on Peraza.
 
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