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Monday, January 17, 2005 |
Pickoff Moves
WTNY Catches A Dodger
"Excuse me for gloating Yankee fans," opens Bryan Smith in Wait Til Next Year, "but I don’t get to do this very often."I found the handling of Navarro, who prior to the 2004 season was universally regarded as their top prospect, laughable. It’s hard to blame a player’s performance on upper management decisions, and I’m not doing that here, but any choice that could slow the development of such a talented player is ludicrous. There is a reason this farm system has been in the dumps for the past few years, and blaming it on their trades is not sufficient."DePodesta got himself, maybe, Paul LoDuca v. 2.0, and a much younger version, too. We'll see how that works out, but I'm optimistic.
More WTNY: Top Prospects, 1-75, and Honorable Mentions
Just after I published the above, I found Bryan had launched his list of top prospects in the minors, and unsurprisingly, they have a lot of Angel and Dodger minor leaguers:Honorable MentionsAngels: Erick Aybar, Johnathan Broxton, Jeff Mathis (with an extended discussion of what went wrong here), Steven Shell
Dodgers: Andy LaRoche, James Loney, Dioner Navarro
61. Angels: Ervin Santana
74. Dodgers: Mike Megrew ("a September debut should not be ruled out")
Neyer Revisits College-vs-Prep Draft Fracas
Rob Neyer whacks at the bugbear of drafting college-vs-prep pitching and finds -- surprise! -- the same thing James found years ago, yet he ultimately waves the white flag, saying "I'm not advocating one strategy or the other [of drafting exclusively college or high school pitchers]." Interesting reading, but I think he's trying too hard.The Unscientific Dipstick
Peter White at Mariner Musings picks the Angels to take the division, which is mighty nice of him. I don't see it, myself, but that's mainly because I've found myself more or less unmotivated to try and make such predictions until Baseball Prospectus publishes their PECOTA numbers for 2005. But, since Tom and I got into a while ago, it seems a little sad to let potentially useful information go to waste, and I may try for something similar using ZiPS presently. It's that time of the year.Signings
Various and sundry signings around baseball over the weekend:- Erubiel Durazo, and the A's, for one year and $4.7M.
- Chad Fox and the Cubs, to a minor league deal with a spring training invitation. Cubs fans seem enamored of Jim Hendry for picking up guys like Aramis Ramirez and Nomar Garciaparra, but when the team's biggest problem -- the bullpen -- goes unfixed two offseasons running, something's fishy. Does the "o" word -- overrated -- begin to apply?
- Roger Clemens and Johan Santana have accepted arbitration.
- Finally, Rotoworld executive editor Matthew Pouliot has a nice review of the offseason's free agent movement, including projections for those not yet landed. Looks like the uptick in player salaries caught him by surprise, too.
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