wade boggs chicken dinner said:
Thanks for doing this. What this table tells me is that it's almost impossible (Cubans notwithstanding) to have 26-29 year olds on your team unless you develop them yourself.
And the main reason we don't have any 26-29 year olds on our team? Because we haven't drafted and developed any position players since Ellsbury. Which is not to say that our drafts have been terrible - it's just that we've either haven't been patient enough, haven't had enough luck, or dealt them for an established veteran.
And while we've discussed this briefly throughout the years - ever since Theo's $100M player development machine statement - there is definitely contradiction between the concepts of "being in the playoff hunt" every year and "wanting to integrate one or two rookies per year." Watching one or two rookies flail for a year can quickly sink a team's playoff chances, but not giving them enough rope leads to blocking them with "established veterans." I am still interested in seeing whether the Red Sox have the patience to really try to integrate one or two rookies per year; if so, I suspect we're in for more last place finishes than first place ones.
I think you can shoot for that on average, especially if you're looking at 1 or 2 rookies a year out of the whole 25 man roster and not just out of the 9 everyday players. But, you have to do it in a way that allows for those rookies to fail without torpedoing your season. Also, you can't be dogmatic about what constitutes a rookie or what constitutes "breaking them in" -- for all intents and purposes they broke in 3 rookies as sink or swim starting options on day 1 -- Middlebrooks, Bradley, and Bogaerts -- with the plan apparently being to integrate a fourth if necessary -- Vazquez -- before the end of the season.
Another criteria is that if you're going to have 2 rookies breaking in to your everyday lineup, then maybe you ought to do so in a year where the other 7 spots don't have a bunch of question marks about health (Victorino was never healthy last offseason, Pedroia was also coming off surgery), age (Ortiz and AJP were prime candidates for decline), or readiness (Middlebrooks was hardly proven)
Still the overall concept of developing new blood is correct. I think if you say you're going to break in one starting player at a position where you have organizational depth to absorb a collapse (which the emergence of Holt now allows them to choose basically anywhere on the field), 1 rookie as a 5th starter (they have 4 options with Owens coming fast), and 1 rookie as a 12th man in the bullpen, you can meet their goals of working in rookies pretty regularly without torpedoing a season like this year if they all fail.
For 2015, they're still beating that prescription. They should still look at Bogaerts as a "rookie who is breaking in" but at least they now have the depth to absorb a second season of growing pains thanks to HOlt; they're obviously going to integrate Castillo but they can turn to Betts, Holt, or Bradley if he flunks -- that's two -- they're more than likely going to give a rotation spot to De La Rosa -- that's three -- and maybe one to Webster or Ranaudo -- that'd be four -- and they can have Hembree as the 12th guy out of the pen -- that'd be five.
So, the rest of the offseason should be devoted to filling the other 20 roster spots with the surest things they can find for those 20 roles. That doesn't mean sign an all-star for all of them, (e.g., Holt is a great 10th man, Workman is perfectly capable of being the 6th/7th inning righthander; figure out who's going to hit 7th and make that an above-average seventh place hitter, etc).