Cashman: Draft Is Most Important Day Of The Year
There’s an interesting feature by Alex Speier in the Major League Preview print edition of Baseball America, on newsstands now, entitled “GMs Need More Skills Than Ever Before.” Here’s a snip that really caught my attention:
Teams with limited resources had become adept at exploiting market inefficiencies, leaving teams with deep pockets to construct their clubs using free agency, the most inefficient of markets. Suddenly, the Red Sox were ready to pour big-market resources into the areas of scouting and player development, whose affordability had allowed small-market clubs to compete.
“Small-market clubs were more value driven out of necessity. They were more conscious of risk. They were more industrious, out of necessity. These days, I think that mindset and approach has infiltrated the big-market clubs as well,” Epstein said. “Scouting and player development as the core way to build a team. That’s not the unique province of smaller market teams anymore.”
The Yankees followed suit, particularly after Brian Cashman got operational control over New York’s baseball operations in 2005. He began plowing more money into both the draft and international amateur signings, and steered the club away from signing role players such as Steve Karsay and Rondell White, who cost the team both money and draft picks.
“In baseball, draft day is the most important day of the year. I know one of the reasons I think we’ve gotten back to having success is the fact that we made that day important again, protecting draft choices and not sacrificing them for a middle reliever,” Cashman said. “You increase your amateur talent budget because if I wind up being successful in having a number of players emerge in our draft, it will save me from adding $50 million or $60 million, $70 million or $100 million in the free agent market.
“I can turn from within and have a Phil Hughes and have enough remaining so that I can go sign a C.C. Sabathia.”
“People have become more educated in the game than ever. They’re looking for new measures to try to quantify what really is taking place on the field, testing theories. It’s terrific,” Cashman said. “We’re taking the game and trying to find every which way to measure what’s real and what’s not, and trying to make sense of it. That’s wonderful.”
So, if the Yankees are trying to build from within, using the draft and international signings, then where are all those prospects in their system?
There’s maybe five or six prospects in the Yankees farm system now who appear to be somewhat the pick of the litter. And, that’s just about the same as it was in Yankeeland before “Brian Cashman got operational control over New York’s baseball operations in 2005.”
All this talk about the Yankees being like the Red Sox, Rays, Twins, et al, in terms of adeptly working the amateur markets is just a bill of goods until we start seeing a robust prospect pipeline, no?
The Yankee bullpen this year will include either Hughes or Chamberlain, plus Robertson and likely Melancon at some point if not at the start. Other prospects were traded for reasonably affordable players such as Swisher, Vasquez, and Granderson, which has temporarily depleted the higher levels of the system. It is a fair return on investment in the draft, not brilliant but not terrible — and better than we saw earlier in the decade. At that point, the Yankees could not bid in trades for top talent on other teams (such as Josh Beckett) because they saw nothing int he Yankee system that they wanted in exchange. As a sign of the improvement, note that both of the Duncans are gone, and they were once considered among the better prospects in the organization.
And the other fa’s he signed didn’t cost draft picks?
Given the moves the Yanks have made since they finished in last place back in 1990, I don’t think that has been the case.
Raf wrote:
The other FA’s werent role players. theyre saying the stayed away from signing guys thatarent all stars or big time players and giving up draft picks for those guys.
The farm system is alittle bare right now cause they just gave away a bunch of their top talents to get more established players. another year or 2 and youll see the system with alot of talent i bet.
BOHAN wrote:
Quantrill, Gordon, Myers & Farnsworth, to name a few, were role players like Karsay.
@ Steve Lombardi:
So, if the Yankees are trying to build from within, using the draft and international signings, then where are all those prospects in their system?/i>
The answer to this question is the same as it was when you asked it the last time. Re-read the comments from that post.
lets be honest. this organization has been awful in drafting the past decade. name one position player they’ve drafted whos been an all star. either on the yankees or traded away.
@ Jake1:
All star games are a pretty useless metric as long as they are voted upon by the fans. Basically, you’re saying Cano sucks with this logic.
@ Corey Italiano:
Err my bad, didn’t read the draft part. But, who cares where they come from? (whether it be international FA or by the draft)
Jake1 wrote:
It doesn’t seem as if you understand that the value of minor league players is not just to fill holes in your roster, but to serve as assets in trades. Granted, the Yankees drafting over the past 5-10 years could have been better, but it is not possible to deny that players that they have drafted have been valued enough to trade for players they needed or potentially get players they wanted (most reports indicate that they could have had Santana or Halladay.) Jake, I’d direct you to the same comment section I directed Steve to. I covered it in greater detail than I care to (re) get into here. Taking a current snapshot of the farm system of evidence of it’s health over the last 10 years is tragically flawed.
That said, the current state of the farm system *is* weak, and although it’s not a reason for wagging a finger at 10 years worth of drafts, it’s something that should be addressed going forward.
name one position player they’ve drafted whos been an all star
This is an odd choice of a metric. All-Star voting is done by the fans. This is akin to saying “the Yankees had a terrible defensive team in XXXX (year) because no one won a gold glove. It’s an arbitrary popularity contest and not any sort of quantifiable measure of value.
jay wrote:
Bingo.
Jake1 wrote:
Be that as it may, it hasn’t had an effect on the ML club.