Originally Posted by princeton
I constantly make that argument.
I like to predict, to project, and to make fast decisions. you seem to prefer to argue that we just don't know everything, and to stick with broken things for years in hopes that they'll right themselves. Certainly with this approach, you're less likely to toss out a baby with the bathwater. I just can't believe that there's a baby in that cesspool. More importantly, I find this approach pretty boring in a chatroom. Take a stance, be willing to be wrong, don't argue against everyone's predictions. And if someone takes Linecum over Stubbs (which I did NOT), pat them on the back and say you da man, because that was a righteous choice no matter what Stubbs goes on to do. Effective young pitching always ranks.
I suspect that successful GMs are great fortune-tellers, not great "wait-and-see" guys. My track record on projecting the busts within the 19-20 year-old set shocks even me, but I don't think that it's due to any great skill on my part, rather I think that it's due to the Reds' very predictable developmental ineptitudes. If they ain't got "it" when they arrive, they ain't going to get it here.
I'm detecting signs that the Reds at least now seem to understand that the developmental program is a huge problem, but they've acted V-E-R-Y slowly to fix it. I think that they were stunned by Homer Bailey's problems enough to cash out Naehring, finally. They are dangling Homer now, when he was a no-touch very recently. They can't really sack Terry Reynolds since he brought in two of the "4", but he was a very odd choice for that job, which demanded a long, successful track record. Finally, the fact that they brought up Homer when he really wasn't dominating suggests that some of the same problems will occur. We'll see. Most of the other pitchers haven't been pushed severely, so I'm not getting a full picture yet.
Chris Buckley will help development some because he's providing more players that aren't clear stinkers, even if he hasn't scored in the first round yet. But I suspect that we'll still have many more than our fair share of those that fail-to-thrive. Both Krivsky and Buckley are adding really tall pitchers, at the expense of short RHPers, so it's nice to see that they're on the same page.
your free throw analogy is a poor one. Coffey didn't shoot 2 out of 5, for a full season he served meatballs like he was the Olive Garden. I agree that he won't do this again-- he'll be released first. His performance, and the short halflife of hefty RHPers in general, suggests a drastic change. Weight loss and yoga are my prescription.
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