With prospects like Neftali Feliz, Martin Perez, Tanner Sheppers, Justin Smoak, Julio Borbon and Jurickson Profar, yea I'd say the Rangers would be a good team to model yourself after. And I didn't even include Texas' young players who lost their prospect status last year like Derek Holland and Elvis Andrus.
why? ever since they blew up that team that went to the world series, we've been crap. average at best. we need to shake things up a little bit.
A good part of the team that went to the World Series is no longer in baseball for one reason or another. They had one winning season (maybe it was a fluke, who knows) and one crap season. Give it some time.
The thing about baseball is that the "rebuilding" rate is much slower than both basketball and football. In basketball, one good high lottery pick will instantly upgrade your talent significantly. In football, the hard cap makes retaining players very difficult for top teams. I mean, how did we construct our great teams of the late 90s/early 00s? We consistently had one of the best farm systems in the MLB to produce the following Biggio - 89 Bagwell -90 Wagner - 96 Reynolds - 92 Hampton - 95(traded as a young major leaguer) Berkman - 98 Lidge - 98 Alou - traded for solid prospects at the time Randy Johnson - traded for, among others, future all-star pitcher Garcia Beltran - traded for solid prospects at the time etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately, Drayton decided somewhere in during our run that minor league is worthless and stopped paying premium for picks. Which led to the stoppage of cheap young talent flowing into the big leagues. As well as giving us any trade chip for ML talent. In response, Drayton overpaid in FA by leaps and bounds(think how many top prospects we could've signed for Lee's contract?). Which led to a downward spiral of decreasing talent yet increasing payroll. At the very least, Ed Wade kind of stopped that. And why I like him for now.
Buck was a pretty legit prospect at the time! Almost ML ready catcher who could hit was the label if I remember right..
Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, some other average player, some other guy who had one decent year, Zack Greinke. Baseball Knowledge 201: 3 Guys You Drafted Means You Have a Good Front Office
Kansas City's problem wasn't really the front office - they had a great track record finding prospects. Their problem was a lack of funds to work with. A front office is measured against what they have to work with. The Yankees are going to measured by a different standard than the Pirates, because they have a ton more money to pour into both the major and minor league teams, for example.
Buck was I believe the Astros #1 prospect at the time. Granted, the Astros farm system by then was pretty eroded, but he was still considered a legit solid catcher prospect. And Dotel, despite his problems, was still arguably the best setup man in baseball. Remember one of the best bullpens in recent history with Lidge/Dotel/Wagner?
Since you don't give Wade credit for helping shape the Phillies, what would he (or any GM) have to do in Houston to satisfy you? Even if you give the Phillies front office the credit, isn't the GM in charge of hiring the front office guys? What different things did Hunsicker do in Houston that Wade didn't do in Philadelphia?
right. but to say we didn't give up much in prospects is a poor statement given that Buck, at the time, was a very legit prospect
Of course you were going to have to give up players that were perceived as having trade value. You were getting Carlos Beltran, an all-star caliber CF. The best way to tell whether a move was a good deal is in retrospect. I am pretty sure that Red Sox Nation wishes that they would have had Jeff Bagwell playing 1st instead of 3rd in the minors and had not dealt him for Larry Andersen. Every team has some trades that look like a steal and others that look like they got had.
No one's arguing that it was a successful trade for the Royals or not. It had to do with a response to my original statement that our contending roster was built on our farm system. And my point was that our farm allowed us to get players like Beltran and Alou(who was traded for even less successful prospects) for those playoff runs. Whether these prospects blossomed or not is immaterial. The Astros had plenty of failures through the farm. Elarton was a hyped up prospect who never got anywhere. Redding didn't really do anything. Muleasky was supposed to be our big power-hitting catcher. Prospects may fail or may succeed. It's a coin toss. But lack of prospects means you have to overpay for established major league crap. Which is what has been happening to us in the past years.
you can say that in other sports. In baseball (when dealing with prospects), it has to do with perceived value of the prospects at the time. Because EVERyone involved understands the risk that many prospects don't pan out.
And these prospects have lead them where_____________ I stand by statement the Astros will make the playoffs again before the Rangers do.
