Thought I'd break this out since it's off topic from the Duran thread.
In 2016 alone Fangraphs had future major leaguers Aaron Wilkerson, Henry Ramos, Tzu-Wei Lin, and Kyle Martin listed as "of note players" These are basically 35 FV guys considered as coin flips for cups for cups of coffee who ended up making it to the majors. Wilkerson at least was used to acquire a rapidly worsening but potentially helpful Aaron Hill and Lin became interesting when they were able to develop him into a brief stop gap.
If you move one step up to 40+ FV - the guys Bloom has been acquiring in mass quantities, you have Jalen Beeks who was moved for one Nate Eovaldi. Much less of note was Pat Light who was acquired for the ineffective Fernando Abad who was a roll of the dice to maybe pick up a win down the stretch.
These minor leaguers aren't just added to help the Red Sox, they help other teams' bottom tier farm systems or make cheap owners happy and therefore allow the Sox to get rentals or better.
This is a very impatient fan base as @E5 Yaz noted, but I have come to appreciate previous GM's a lot more (Dombrowski in particular) to at least keep the line moving when the high ups couldn't afford to wait any longer. You need to keep making these deals to have a sustainably competitive team. I like Bloom so much because this is just what the franchise needs but ultimately what he ends up doing with this depth is what will keep him employed or not or others to continually cheerlead for him.
I respect the views of those who wish Bloom would push his chips in more to make the team better now, but my enjoyment of watching this team is looking forward to one who can continuously get what they need because of their embarrassment of farm riches, like the Padres and have a significant guy or two knocking on the door and forcing their case year after year.
You need these guys in order to help develop and either package them for better guys, use them as up and down/emergency fellas, have fringe league minimum salary 26th men to get under the cap or simply to fill the minor league ranks because someone needs to play down there. Otherwise you just have to keep amassing more and more guys and fellas.But what is the value of these depth guys? Most won’t turn out to be productive big leaguers and they likely don’t have a ton of trade value, right? Years ago I remember hearing about all the depth in the system and a looming 40-man crunch and no one significant was lost. It’s better to have interesting prospects than not but a lot of these guys are really far from the bigs and become less interesting as they progress (or, don’t progress).
In 2016 alone Fangraphs had future major leaguers Aaron Wilkerson, Henry Ramos, Tzu-Wei Lin, and Kyle Martin listed as "of note players" These are basically 35 FV guys considered as coin flips for cups for cups of coffee who ended up making it to the majors. Wilkerson at least was used to acquire a rapidly worsening but potentially helpful Aaron Hill and Lin became interesting when they were able to develop him into a brief stop gap.
If you move one step up to 40+ FV - the guys Bloom has been acquiring in mass quantities, you have Jalen Beeks who was moved for one Nate Eovaldi. Much less of note was Pat Light who was acquired for the ineffective Fernando Abad who was a roll of the dice to maybe pick up a win down the stretch.
These minor leaguers aren't just added to help the Red Sox, they help other teams' bottom tier farm systems or make cheap owners happy and therefore allow the Sox to get rentals or better.
This is a very impatient fan base as @E5 Yaz noted, but I have come to appreciate previous GM's a lot more (Dombrowski in particular) to at least keep the line moving when the high ups couldn't afford to wait any longer. You need to keep making these deals to have a sustainably competitive team. I like Bloom so much because this is just what the franchise needs but ultimately what he ends up doing with this depth is what will keep him employed or not or others to continually cheerlead for him.
I respect the views of those who wish Bloom would push his chips in more to make the team better now, but my enjoyment of watching this team is looking forward to one who can continuously get what they need because of their embarrassment of farm riches, like the Padres and have a significant guy or two knocking on the door and forcing their case year after year.
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