We believe that the basis for having a good organization in major league baseball is to have a very good player development program. Especially if you are a smaller market team.
Although we think every major league team could spend tons of money on players (after all, they are all millionaires or billionaires), many teams have a philosophy of not spending, a lot of them because the bang isn’t worth the buck.
For every Corey Seager or Marcus Semien from the newly crowned world champion Texas Rangers that works out, you have a Javier Baez or Jason Heyward.
However, in building a farm system, fans need to understand that the payoff rate for prospects is also not good.
We like to do this every winter, but let’s take a look at the Guardians’ farm system from 2018, five years ago. A system that ranked in the middle of the pack among major league teams, at #15.
Who has worked out, who hasn’t. Here is the list from Baseball America:
1). Francisco Mejia
2). Triston McKenzie
3). Bobby Bradley
4). Nolan Jones
5). Shane Bieber
6). Yu Chang
7). Willi Castro
8). Greg Allen
9). George Valera
10). Will Benson
In our books, there is one all-star type player from this list, and that’s Bieber, who won a Cy Young Award in the COVID shortened season of 2020. He’s 60-32 lifetime, made two all star appearances and thrown 200 innings twice. He has had injury issues in two of the last three seasons.
Although we think McKenzie is very good if he can stay healthy, and he was good in the second half of 2021 and in ’22 (11-11, 2.96 ERA), right now, there is concern over his elbow. But, if he can pitch, he’s a very good starting pitcher.
Mejia was the most highly regarded prospect, but we don’t think the organization felt he could be a full time catcher and traded him to San Diego for Brad Hand. In over 1000 big league at bats, he has a 678 OPS (.239/.284/.394). He never reached what was projected for him.
The book is still out on Jones and Benson, both of whom had very good seasons after being traded by Cleveland after the ’22 season. Jones had a 931 OPS for Colorado, but we worry about a strikeout rate that is over 30% in his time in the big leagues.
Benson had an 863 OPS with Cincinnati, but he fanned in 31.3% of his at bats. High strikeout rates don’t bode well for long term success in the majors.
Bradley, Chang, and Allen never found extended success in the majors, and although the latter two played in the bigs last season, neither are on 40 man rosters heading into the winter.
Castro was traded to Detroit, but had his best year with the Twins this season as kind of a super-utility player, playing six positions, and had a 750 OPS with 33 stolen bases.
What was funny to us was that we’ve been talking about Valera for so long. He had an 816 OPS between AA/AAA in 2022, but fell to 718 at Columbus last season, fighting a lot of injuries. He has pop and patience, but the batting average in his minor league career is just .242, but he gets on base 36.3% of the time.
So, out of the top ten, the successes are Bieber, McKenzie, Jones, Benson, and Castro, although the latter three should be re-evaluated at this time next year.
Valera is still a prospect, probably still top ten in the Cleveland system. The other four simply didn’t pan out.
Keep that in mind when you look at the list that will come out this winter.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 