Moot point since I would like to see ONE title before I DIE.. *sobs *

bad drafting/development has also been a major factor in the recent string of bullpen failures—a dearth of power arms in the system means that we have to turn to journeymen like herges and chulk more often than we’d like.

We’ve had this argument before. Let me remind you how it plays out.

I go “Shapiro can’t make his good bullpen arms stop sucking”

You: “Well we should have had depth”

Me: " Pretty much everyone expert, or fan, thought the Indians bullpen depth was actually one of their strengths"

You: “Too bad, Shapiro should’ve known it wasn’t enough.”

Me: “How can we fire Shapiro when the prevailing expert opinion believed we did have depth?”

You: “Well that’s his job.”

Me: “Well Shapiro stacked the bullpen with pretty good depth in his opinion. How deep should he have gone?”

You: “I’m just a fan. It’s not my job to have answers to the questions i pose”

dude

look

on the active roster, there are 6 players total who were either drafted or scouted and signed as amateurs by the shapiro regime. they are: sowers, huff, jensen lewis, garko, francisco, and crowe. that’s it.

in other words, seven years of shapiro’s drafting/development have yielded a total of six guys who are contributing right now. three of those guys have negative VORP (huff, sowers, and crowe). another starts in LF with an OPS of .767. two are essentially bench players (garko and crowe). the last is a reliever with negative WXLR who has significantly contributed to the bullpen’s self destruction.

i can grant you that jensen has been a very productive reliever in the past, and throw rafael perez in that category as well (although he’s not on the active roster, he will be shortly). i’ll also take laffey into account (and i am a HUGE laffey fan). taking these guys into account, we’re still talking about two streaky relievers and a back-end starter/swingman.

and you’re telling me this is ok? one of, if not THE biggest aspect of a small market GM’s job is to run a competent amateur scouting/development machine, and in seven years ours has graduated the guys i named above (note that i included both latin signings and the draft). meanwhile, we have exactly two winning seasons during that period and one playoff appearance. you say that it’s alright to forego the draft/player development if you can be successful in other areas, which i agree with in the most basic sense, but whatever we’ve done well in other areas has not contributing to a winning product on the field. we are in fact a losing baseball team with a rotation and bullpen in shambles, and this has been the situation more often than not over the course of the last seven years.

re: the kerry wood thing. yes, technically anytime a team signs a free agent, it is because they cannot fill that position from within. however, we know how reluctant shapiro has been to spend big bucks on a closer. my point is that the failure to develop one from within forced shapiro to take an action he probably otherwise saw as an inefficient use of payroll dollars (and so far, the money used on wood HAS been basically wasted).

You’re equivocating the term "end result". Within the proper context of my argument, end result refers to the quality of our farm system

no. what you’re really saying is that you only want me to acknowledge the “end result” that supports your argument.

As I said, rehashing Jay’s point I believe, drafting is one of may aspects in building a good farm system. What Shapiro lacks in drafting prowlness he more than makes up for in his amazing trade abilities and Latin America scouting. But the bottom line is that almost every informed person or qualified expert agrees that the Indians have had very good farm system throughout Shapiro’s term. Hence my point that you’re arguing that Shapiro didn’t build a good farm system the way you wanted to do it. That’s just silly. As I pointed out, the amatuer draft is only one way that small market teams gain a competitive advantage. You have yet to make the argument why being good at the draft particularly is absolutely necessary. No one is making the argument that drafting well is unimportant.

i have two major problems with this argument

1) the measure of a good farm system is not the rating it receives from baseball america or baseball prospectus. it is the number of good major league players it yields for the parent team. What informed or qualified experts say is irrelevant.

2) Shapiro has drafted and scouted poorly, but has done well in swapping out vets for good prospects. This is generally how he has replenished the farm system during his tenure, and this is how our top prospects over the last several years have been acquired. I give him credit for doing well in this area, and always have. However, I really don’t see this type of system being sustainable, for two reasons:

a. Shapiro’s success in replenishing the farm system has been entirely predicated on being out of contention at the trade deadline, freeing up trade possibilities. If we’re in contention last year and we make the playoffs, we don’t move Sabathia or Blake, those guys walk in FA, and our farm system for 2009 looks a heck of a lot emptier with no LaPorta, Brantley, or Santana to anchor it. In other words, in order to build the current well-stocked farm system, the parent club has had to suck. Furthermore, these kinds of trades always involve swapping out major leaguers who have high short-term value—we are given the Sophie’s choice of helping our long-term chances at the expense of our short term goals, or vice versa. If you draft and scout well, you don’t need to rely on these trades to replenish your farm system, and the cost of holding onto a guy like Sabathia, Blake, or DeRosa is significantly less.
b. There is also the opportunity cost argument (again). Small market teams like the Indians cannot afford to forfeit ANY affordable opportunity to improve their organization. The draft is such an opportunity, and failing to capitalize on it means that we have lost out and hobbled ourselves competitively. Say that in 1985, Joe Schmoe the pension fund manager has the opportunity to invest $1000 in Microsoft but decides not to do so, and instead dumps that money into Alcoa stock. His fund might be better off today than he was then, but he still lost out big time. Your logic basically says that, since Joe Schmoe is still doing fine today, that 1985 decision shouldn’t matter when we evaluate how well he has done his job.

Obviously we’d like to draft better. But you’re not saying drafting well is important, you’re saying that drafting well is of paramount importance and a prerequisite of having a good farm system. Once again, I think that’s silly. The prospects are the measure of a farm system, not how they were acquired.

What’s silly is hinging your argument on the arbitrary meaning of terms like "paramount importance." I’ve made my point about why drafting matters. Whether it is of "paramount importance", I suppose, is for you to decide.

Yeah, we can perhaps blame him for evaluating the talent and quantity of his developing pitchers poorly — perhaps — but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s somebody better qualified to fix the problem, even if it’s of his own creation.

He can’t go to Cincinnati, though. They already have a GM who shouldn’t have been fired by his old team.