So the farm system has had a disastrous start

Plympton91

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Oct 19, 2008
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Low-Salary-Range Factors
The salary range for MLB scouting directors can vary significantly. Among the primary influencing factors are track record, team size and location. An average salary for an MLB scouting director with a small staff and a few years of experience is $35,950, at the time of publication, according to Mymajors.com. Some scouting directors only work a few months of the year.
A 22-year-old new hire with a bachelors degree and no experience gets $52,000 a year at my place of employment and largely works a 40 hour week with 3 weeks vacation, 2-1/2 weeks paid sick leave, and 10 federal holidays.

MLB is running a sweatshop.
 
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StuckOnYouk

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Jun 26, 2006
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The Westmoreland and Flores tragedies certainly have hurt in terms of not just current minor league talent but under 30 talent.
Westmoreland would have been 28 this year. He could have feasibly been into his 4th or 5th year in the bigs right now sharing space with Betts and Benintendi.
What could have been. 5 tool player top 10 MLB prospect talent.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Dec 22, 2002
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The Westmoreland and Flores tragedies certainly have hurt in terms of not just current minor league talent but under 30 talent.
Westmoreland would have been 28 this year. He could have feasibly been into his 4th or 5th year in the bigs right now sharing space with Betts and Benintendi.
What could have been. 5 tool player top 10 MLB prospect talent.
Unfortunately, every team has these stories. Jose Fernandez, Oscar Taveras, Nick Adenhart come to mind in recent years. The game has been robbed of some serious talent.
 

sean1562

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A 22-year-old new hire with a bachelors degree and no experience gets $52,000 a year at my place of employment and largely works a 40 hour week with 3 weeks vacation, 2-1/2 weeks paid sick leave, and 10 federal holidays.

MLB is running a sweatshop.

yea seriously. I do not work in an important job that takes any skill whatsoever and I make more than that. IDK why I even care about sports sometimes, everyone working in the industry other than the players is underpaid and maltreated.
 

MikeM

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Does this happen? I'm sure it does, but I can't think of any examples offhand, and I remember that even a player as good as JD Martinez didn't fetch much in return when the Tigers sent him to the D'Backs last summer. The main current example I can think of is Moustakas (who will likely be moved this summer although Olney pointed out this weekend that there are a lot of 3Bs available and probably not much market for them), and KC certainly isn't a big market team.
With the recent changes to the QO system I don't think there is much of an "advantage" to be found there. Rental returns that aren't essentially more qualified as salary dumps are already trending down , and the select type of quality/elite quys that might still generate a worthy return to warrant the strategy/risk generally aren't going to be sitting on 1 year FA deals to begin with.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I think that NY amped up their scouting in recent years
Do you have any numbers on how the scouting was amped up and when? Seems to me just from anecdotes that most of the big market teams are investing heavily in scouting/analytics/etc. - whatever it takes to get an edge. For example, just to bring this back to the thread title, this 2015 article about Dombrowski's reshuffling of BOS's scouting department said, "One thing Dombrowski noted upon his hire was the wealth of [scouting] personnel at his disposal, a luxury he didn't have in Detroit."

It's funny because one team on the other end of the scouting resource spectrum is the Os, and look where they are.

And as I am typing this response, it strikes me: you know those legendary scouts who can find the next Roy Hobbs in the grasslands of Nebraska or Guatemala or North Korea? In thinking about this, if a scout like this actually existed, he or she would literally be the most valuable person in baseball. And yet they get paid like dirt. Pretty amazing.
 

moondog80

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Sep 20, 2005
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And as I am typing this response, it strikes me: you know those legendary scouts who can find the next Roy Hobbs in the grasslands of Nebraska or Guatemala or North Korea? In thinking about this, if a scout like this actually existed, he or she would literally be the most valuable person in baseball. And yet they get paid like dirt. Pretty amazing.
Maybe this means that scout doesn't actually exist, that they are all (in the eyes of baseball execs anyway) pretty much the same once they hit a certain level.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Dec 22, 2002
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Has anyone taken a look at individual scouts over the years and seen if any tend to hit more then most?
There used to be a poster on here who looked into all that information and came back with the conclusion they all hit and miss at about the same rate.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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There used to be a poster on here who looked into all that information and came back with the conclusion they all hit and miss at about the same rate.
Philly Sox Fan. Wonder what happened to him.

I believe the Ravens have officially stated that they don't believe that there is any science to drafting and that the drafting is like door-to-door selling: success is usually a function of how many opportunities one gets, not because of any repeatable skill.
 

nvalvo

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I think a big market team could use its revenues to pay minor leaguers a higher wage too, offer catering, exercise equipment, and trainers for all their minor league players. I know the Redsox minor league system used to have a lot more perks than the Rays. Whether it is still true, I dunno.

Even that is a pretty insignificant amount of money to these teams though. It seems like any advantage to be had now is around the margins, and even low payroll teams could find ways to match.
Could they, really?

I'm sure there is some latitude, but if Henry et al could just unilaterally raise the pay for the Sox minor league affiliates without league sign-off, wouldn't that violate the entire principle of the new draft slotting rules?
 

richgedman'sghost

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Anybody know what happened to Philly Sox Fan? This topic seems like it would be right up his alley. I looked in the SOSH archives for the series of articles he wrote on the Sox drafting system from a historical perspective. I think the last article he wrote for SOSH was in 2010 or so. Anyway he is dearly missed around here?
 

RIrooter09

Alvin
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Jul 31, 2008
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Anybody know what happened to Philly Sox Fan? This topic seems like it would be right up his alley. I looked in the SOSH archives for the series of articles he wrote on the Sox drafting system from a historical perspective. I think the last article he wrote for SOSH was in 2010 or so. Anyway he is dearly missed around here?
According to his profile he was active as recently as 11 minutes ago, but hasn't posted anything since 2015.
 

The Mort Report

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I think a big market team could use its revenues to pay minor leaguers a higher wage too, offer catering, exercise equipment, and trainers for all their minor league players. I know the Redsox minor league system used to have a lot more perks than the Rays. Whether it is still true, I dunno.

Even that is a pretty insignificant amount of money to these teams though. It seems like any advantage to be had now is around the margins, and even low payroll teams could find ways to match.
I’m sure this is absolutely true, but it has zero effect on what prospects are there. The only guys that get to pick their minor league teams are long shots anyways. You could have a world class amenities but if you can’t draft/trade/evaluate talent it won’t matter

But it does bring up a curious point. I’m making this very broad, but if all things were equal in talent evaluation, shouldn’t teams like the Red Sox and Yankees have a higher success rate since they can offer their prospects more information and tools to succeed?
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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Mar 11, 2007
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Definitely seems that the Sox can't develop arms any longer. They've had contributions to the ML system by Barnes recently and that's about it as far as pitchers developed through the Sox mL system.
They've had a few under the radar signings that have spent time in the mL system that have contributed in Wright and Valazquez and there seem to be a cluster of decent 7th inning type arms that could reach a Barnes-like potential. But there's nothing coming through (or came through) that looks to be a solid regular starter or a guy with potential closer stuff.
What sort of small trades can the Sox do that can bring in very young pitchers (or general players for that matter... although I think identifying hidden talent that can be developed that is being currently missed by other teams is more likely for a pitcher than a regular) through small trades. Can the Sox deal someone like Wright or Valazquez or even Pomeranz to a borderline team at the deadline for some unimpressive but very young and raw talent on other teams low minors squads that can be developed into major pieces of the ML team?
 

chawson

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What sort of small trades can the Sox do that can bring in very young pitchers (or general players for that matter... although I think identifying hidden talent that can be developed that is being currently missed by other teams is more likely for a pitcher than a regular) through small trades. Can the Sox deal someone like Wright or Valazquez or even Pomeranz to a borderline team at the deadline for some unimpressive but very young and raw talent on other teams low minors squads that can be developed into major pieces of the ML team?
I'm not sure the Sox can do this with any of the guys you mention, for various reasons. Wright is too volatile for a borderline team and I'd think has too few years of control for a bad team. Velazquez seems smoke and mirrors-y and not someone a team wants going through the lineup more than once. Pomeranz, a free agent in five months, is someone we need this year if he's worth playing at all.

I could maybe a "small trade" of the type you mention happening with Brian Johnson, but then we'd be exchanging floor for ceiling. Johnson's peripherals suggest he's capable of putting up a season like the one Sabathia's having. That would be a really useful #5 starter next year, and allow us to put money elsewhere.
 

Pozo the Clown

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Sep 13, 2006
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They've had a few under the radar signings that have spent time in the mL system that have contributed in Wright and Valazquez...
Wright was acquired via a trade with the Indians on July 31, 2012 in exchange for the immortal Lars Anderson.
 

EdRalphRomero

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Oct 3, 2007
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It does seem like the Sox will have some out-of-options players to deal that could take a small step toward rebuilding the farm. Swihart, Johnson, and Wright probably all have more value to another team than they do to the Red Sox. If they are all traded for single A lottery ticket types, maybe they get a return of one that ultimately hits.
 

rhswanzey

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Oct 17, 2017
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Anybody know what happened to Philly Sox Fan? This topic seems like it would be right up his alley. I looked in the SOSH archives for the series of articles he wrote on the Sox drafting system from a historical perspective. I think the last article he wrote for SOSH was in 2010 or so. Anyway he is dearly missed around here?
These articles were awesome - I completely forgot about those. He had signing bonuses and signing scouts for a LOT of players back when there were fewer data sources for us online.

Made me think of this article by Kiley McDaniel: (Fangraphs, 1/9/18, "The Status of the Scouts vs. Stats Debate")

One of the clubs with which I worked tried to “scout the scouts” and see if it was possible to identify empirically who the best scouts were, or even their relative strengths. With most scouts working on one-year deals, you’ll likely promote/demote them at least once and give them four or five new contracts before you even know if they were good in year one. If they were, then they may have changed as an evaluator since then. Or, by virtue of keeping them around for five years and promoting them — and thereby creating a narrative that they’re good — you’ve raised their price before knowing if they are worth that price. It’s very possible the evidence would be hazy enough to suggest the money would be better spent on two hungry entry-level scouts instead.

On the amateur side, you’d need something like a half-dozen years of a scouting director’s entire draft board before you had a statistically significant idea of how good he was. In some organizations, you’ve already fired his replacement by the time you find out how good the first guy was. It’s essentially impossible to prove how good a scout is in a timely enough fashion that it would constitute actionable information.

A 22-year-old new hire with a bachelors degree and no experience gets $52,000 a year at my place of employment and largely works a 40 hour week with 3 weeks vacation, 2-1/2 weeks paid sick leave, and 10 federal holidays.

MLB is running a sweatshop.
You guys taking resumes?