Baseball America Top 30 Reds prospects updated

[757690]

But these are developing minor league players. By definition they are incomplete, in development. Grading them out every step of the way is just silly IMO.

Let’s just see how it plays out as these guys reach the age and experience levels expected before they are ready for the big leagues.

I’m judging them solely on whether they have the potential to make all the losing worth it, on their ceiling. And I’m not seeing it. Sure, someone might surprise, but it would mean they exceed their potential.

[RedTeamGo!]

You know what I mean. I was going to use baking a pie, but I try and avoid sweets.

Lol! I was genuinely confused. I’ve never made stew.

[CRDB40]

I agree. Hence, the problem with tanking.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the Reds didn't even "tank", or tank well.

1) They didn't trade off veterans at high points to bring in a slew of young prospects - and generally targeting younger, higher upside players instead of closer to MLB/lower upside types. Under Jocketty & Williams, the Reds have always seemed to value the closer-to-MLB types that don't move the meter as much than the high-upside/farther away prospects.

2) By not trading many of those veterans until it was "too late", they didn't "earn" higher draft positioning in several years. Now, while you might not think that matters, because of the crapshoot that a 1st round pick can be, a higher pick does give you a better choice of higher upside players. More importantly, it also gives you a larger bonus pool, which can then be spread out to multiple high-upside guys. In my mind, it's a failure that throughout this entire "rebuild", the Reds only picked Top 3 two times.

3) They didn't invest in the international market in any meaningful way. If you want to talk about a missed opportunity, that's where a huge piece lies. To not develop the relationships with the trainers internationally, so that you can sign some of these players, is awful. Pretty much every team that has gone through a thorough rebuild has been incredibly active in the international market. Cubs, Astros, Rays, etc., have a heavy presence every year. The Reds are just now trying to do that apparently, which is a complete whiff.

4) The insistence by ownership to field a "appearances-only" competitive club is asinine. Casty & Co can never fully embrace a tank, so they chain the team to year in and year out mediocrity and outright suckage. Everyone knows when the team can or can't compete - except the guys making the moves. Band-aids, hole patches, and a few stitches here and there to keep it breathing.

Tanking can be a viable strategy, but like pretty much everything else the Reds have done, if you half-ass it and don't commit, you simple stay stagnant.

[M2]

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the Reds didn't even "tank", or tank well.

1) They didn't trade off veterans at high points to bring in a slew of young prospects - and generally targeting younger, higher upside players instead of closer to MLB/lower upside types. Under Jocketty & Williams, the Reds have always seemed to value the closer-to-MLB types that don't move the meter as much than the high-upside/farther away prospects.

2) By not trading many of those veterans until it was "too late", they didn't "earn" higher draft positioning in several years. Now, while you might not think that matters, because of the crapshoot that a 1st round pick can be, a higher pick does give you a better choice of higher upside players. More importantly, it also gives you a larger bonus pool, which can then be spread out to multiple high-upside guys. In my mind, it's a failure that throughout this entire "rebuild", the Reds only picked Top 3 two times.

3) They didn't invest in the international market in any meaningful way. If you want to talk about a missed opportunity, that's where a huge piece lies. To not develop the relationships with the trainers internationally, so that you can sign some of these players, is awful. Pretty much every team that has gone through a thorough rebuild has been incredibly active in the international market. Cubs, Astros, Rays, etc., have a heavy presence every year. The Reds are just now trying to do that apparently, which is a complete whiff.

4) The insistence by ownership to field a "appearances-only" competitive club is asinine. Casty & Co can never fully embrace a tank, so they chain the team to year in and year out mediocrity and outright suckage. Everyone knows when the team can or can't compete - except the guys making the moves. Band-aids, hole patches, and a few stitches here and there to keep it breathing.

Tanking can be a viable strategy, but like pretty much everything else the Reds have done, if you half-ass it and don't commit, you simple stay stagnant.

I'll add it's hard for a lower market team to tank successfully. A critical part of tanking is having an enormous pile of money on hand to buy what you don't have once it's go time. For instance, the Cubs bought themselves a pitching staff. The Reds were never going to have that kind of money, so they had to get creative ... and they weren't creative.

[DocRed]

It seems like bad news to me that Hunter Greene is still our #2 prospect. That no one has been able to overtake him even in his absence. But that may just be because he's a bit out of sight, out of mind for me this year with the injury. And I'm probably overthinking the impact of TJ surgery at his age to how that should affect his prospect status and the rest of his career.

Overall, not a particularly exciting list, though.

I wouldn't look at it that way. More like, the success rates of TJ surgery are really approaching that of ACL's in todays age or sports medicine.

[757690]

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the Reds didn't even "tank", or tank well.

1) They didn't trade off veterans at high points to bring in a slew of young prospects - and generally targeting younger, higher upside players instead of closer to MLB/lower upside types. Under Jocketty & Williams, the Reds have always seemed to value the closer-to-MLB types that don't move the meter as much than the high-upside/farther away prospects.

2) By not trading many of those veterans until it was "too late", they didn't "earn" higher draft positioning in several years. Now, while you might not think that matters, because of the crapshoot that a 1st round pick can be, a higher pick does give you a better choice of higher upside players. More importantly, it also gives you a larger bonus pool, which can then be spread out to multiple high-upside guys. In my mind, it's a failure that throughout this entire "rebuild", the Reds only picked Top 3 two times.

3) They didn't invest in the international market in any meaningful way. If you want to talk about a missed opportunity, that's where a huge piece lies. To not develop the relationships with the trainers internationally, so that you can sign some of these players, is awful. Pretty much every team that has gone through a thorough rebuild has been incredibly active in the international market. Cubs, Astros, Rays, etc., have a heavy presence every year. The Reds are just now trying to do that apparently, which is a complete whiff.

4) The insistence by ownership to field a "appearances-only" competitive club is asinine. Casty & Co can never fully embrace a tank, so they chain the team to year in and year out mediocrity and outright suckage. Everyone knows when the team can or can't compete - except the guys making the moves. Band-aids, hole patches, and a few stitches here and there to keep it breathing.

Tanking can be a viable strategy, but like pretty much everything else the Reds have done, if you half-ass it and don't commit, you simple stay stagnant.

Good post, but I strongly disagree with point #4.

The Reds made no attempt to field a team that even appeared to be competitive during the tanking years. They slashed payroll and had a rotation full of retreads and not ready rookies. The only reason why they had anyone making a decent salary at all was because they couldn't dump their contracts.

[CRDB40]

Good post, but I strongly disagree with point #4.

The Reds made no attempt to field a team that even appeared to be competitive during the tanking years. They slashed payroll and had a rotation full of retreads and not ready rookies. The only reason why they had anyone making a decent salary at all was because they couldn't dump their contracts.

Yeah, they had some retreads and rookies in there, but they also didn't move Cozart when they should have, Hamilton when they should have, Iglesias when they should have, etc. Duvall, Gennett, Harvey, etc.

Again, they didn't commit to it fully because Castellini still wanted a "competitive team", or at least appear that he wasn't throwing in the towel by trading those guys, and others. If you're not going to make any attempt to be competitive, then you scorch earth and trade every valuable veteran you have. The Reds didn't do that, because they didn't want it to appear that way.

My take, could be wrong.

[757690]

Yeah, they had some retreads and rookies in there, but they also didn't move Cozart when they should have, Hamilton when they should have, Iglesias when they should have, etc. Duvall, Gennett, Harvey, etc.

Again, they didn't commit to it fully because Castellini still wanted a "competitive team", or at least appear that he wasn't throwing in the towel by trading those guys, and others. If you're not going to make any attempt to be competitive, then you scorch earth and trade every valuable veteran you have. The Reds didn't do that, because they didn't want it to appear that way.

My take, could be wrong.

A rotation lead by Tim Adleman is about as scorched earth as a team can get, imo. I can’t see how anyone, not even Cast could convince themselves that the Reds from 2016-18 had even the appearance of being competitive. They did a fine job of making the Reds as unwatchable as possible, imo.

If you look at who they kept and who they traded, it was clear that money was the deciding factor. They kept anyone cheap, and traded any every decent size contract they could. The problem was that some of the guys with big contracts were unmovable.

[CRDB40]

A rotation lead by Tim Adleman is about as scorched earth as a team can get, imo. I can’t see how anyone, not even Cast could convince themselves that the Reds from 2016-18 had even the appearance of being competitive. They did a fine job of making the Reds as unwatchable as possible, imo.

If you look at who they kept and who they traded, it was clear that money was the deciding factor. They kept anyone cheap, and traded any every decent size contract they could. The problem was that some of the guys with big contracts were unmovable.

They traded any decent sized contract they had during those years? Cozart, Hamilton, Duvall, Iglesias were all bargains with cost to production standpoints during the '16-'17 years. Scott Feldman should have been dealt. Gennett, Harvey last season should have been traded.

They ended up trading Bruce, Phillips, etc. Really only Votto and Bailey didn't move at that juncture. If Bailey had been pitching well, they could have moved him. His contract versus a typical productive starter wouldn't have been prohibitive.

There were only a few unmovable guys. There were several others that should have been moved, and yet weren't.

Why? Castellini wanted to extend Cozart for awhile. He didn't want to trade Hamilton. The only reason you don't trade Raisel, Duvall, Gennett, and Harvey during those times is that you don't want to appear to be "giving up" or tanking. It wasn't any sort of cost prohibitions.

[HammerTime]

Has Hunter Greene already been written off as a potential franchise player because he hurt his elbow at 18 years old?

Crazy how some people talk about him on here. You would think TJ was a death sentence.

[redsof72]

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the Reds didn't even "tank", or tank well.

1) They didn't trade off veterans at high points to bring in a slew of young prospects - and generally targeting younger, higher upside players instead of closer to MLB/lower upside types. Under Jocketty & Williams, the Reds have always seemed to value the closer-to-MLB types that don't move the meter as much than the high-upside/farther away prospects.

2) By not trading many of those veterans until it was "too late", they didn't "earn" higher draft positioning in several years. Now, while you might not think that matters, because of the crapshoot that a 1st round pick can be, a higher pick does give you a better choice of higher upside players. More importantly, it also gives you a larger bonus pool, which can then be spread out to multiple high-upside guys. In my mind, it's a failure that throughout this entire "rebuild", the Reds only picked Top 3 two times.

3) They didn't invest in the international market in any meaningful way. If you want to talk about a missed opportunity, that's where a huge piece lies. To not develop the relationships with the trainers internationally, so that you can sign some of these players, is awful. Pretty much every team that has gone through a thorough rebuild has been incredibly active in the international market. Cubs, Astros, Rays, etc., have a heavy presence every year. The Reds are just now trying to do that apparently, which is a complete whiff.

4) The insistence by ownership to field a "appearances-only" competitive club is asinine. Casty & Co can never fully embrace a tank, so they chain the team to year in and year out mediocrity and outright suckage. Everyone knows when the team can or can't compete - except the guys making the moves. Band-aids, hole patches, and a few stitches here and there to keep it breathing.

Tanking can be a viable strategy, but like pretty much everything else the Reds have done, if you half-ass it and don't commit, you simple stay stagnant.

I think you missed the biggest, most important one. When rebuilding, talent evaluation is at least tied for first among the most important qualities. You have to be smarter, more competent than the Cubs, Cards, Brewers. You can’t trade Jay Bruce at age 29 in a year he played in the all star game for Dillon Herrera and Max Wotell. You can’t trade Johnny Cueto for what they got. It goes on and on. There is some luck with trades, sure, but generally speaking, their success rate reflects who you are. They will only be as good as the people you have evaluating the personnel. Because fans don’t really have a stat to tell them how good their organization is at talent evaluation, they think all teams are roughly the same. They aren’t. None of that other stuff matters if you don’t have better talent evaluators than your competition.

[CRDB40]

I think you missed the biggest, most important one. When rebuilding, talent evaluation is at least tied for first among the most important qualities. You have to be smarter, more competent than the Cubs, Cards, Brewers. You can’t trade Jay Bruce at age 29 in a year he played in the all star game for Dillon Herrera and Max Wotell. You can’t trade Johnny Cueto for what they got. It goes on and on. There is some luck with trades, sure, but generally speaking, their success rate reflects who you are. They will only be as good as the people you have evaluating the personnel. Because fans don’t really have a stat to tell them how good their organization is at talent evaluation, they think all teams are roughly the same. They aren’t. None of that other stuff matters if you don’t have better talent evaluators than your competition.

Yeah, I didn't touch on that explicitly in there, but I would absolutely agree that's most important part of the talent acquisition stage. I was sort of implying it with the first point in that the Reds generally have targeted guys who were close to MLB instead of targeting higher-upside, generally younger/farther away prospects. It's how the Astros ended up with Yordan Alvarez, the Padres snagged Tatis Jr., etc. But, even then, just by targeting high-upside guys doesn't always imply the point you're making, in that evaluating those higher upside guys is also a science and some organizations are incredible at that versus others. And yes, until the Reds invest (or steal) player evaluators from other organizations, and improve their workings in that area, all of the asset acquisition isn't going to matter. Just like it's not going to matter if the Reds don't improve their prospect/player development areas as well.

Great point.

[DocRed]

FWIW Josiah Gray and Jeter Downs are both now in BA top 10 Dodgers prospects at 7 and 10 respectively. Both are having very nice years.

https://www.dodgersnation.com/dodger...st/2019/07/23/

[Alabama]

FWIW Josiah Gray and Jeter Downs are both now in BA top 10 Dodgers prospects at 7 and 10 respectively. Both are having very nice years.

https://www.dodgersnation.com/dodger...st/2019/07/23/

Just to show you how outclassed the Reds are as an organization: they have been in the World Series the last two years and still have a better system than the Reds. Lux is unreal

[Spanky]

Just to show you how outclassed the Reds are as an organization: they have been in the World Series the last two years and still have a better system than the Reds. Lux is unreal

it's amazing what can happen when the team is willing to spend money