FanPost

A cautionary note amid our celebration

Will McDonald over at Royals Review has written a thoughtful piece asking whether the competitive edge associated with emphasizing the draft and minors has waned. (Given that many view the Royals' system as having the most talent in baseball, this is a useful vantage point.) His basic point is that this strategy has become the common wisdom, meaning that the Red Sox and Yankees are playing this game too. And if the Pirates are playing the same game as the Red Sox and Yankees, the Pirates are likely to lose. So where might the edge come? One would be to use advanced statistical analysis--including an understanding of how unreliable small samples are. It's pretty clear that NH is doing this, but only a few laggards are not. Another is to improve the development process. Here there's some hope. I'm not hearing of other teams focusing on fastball command as much as the Pirates, though I'm unaware of any other innovations. Perhaps the bright side is that only the Cardinals in the NL Central seem to have adopted the "spend heavily on amateur talent" model.

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