Developing Young Potential Stars At No Cost Or We Don’t Want To Develop Anyone Unless He Can Contribute To A Championship

but have you ever considered paragraphs?

The baseball draft is very hit and miss. I like DD’s strategy in drafting for the most part. Build around a solid nucleus of top starting pitchers. Go over slot if you have to, and pay for premium talent especially in the first round. But DD has come up short in terms of drafting position players. When is the last time he drafted a blue chipper? Maybe Castellanos, maybe, but nobody is on the radar to contribute in a big way any time soon that’s not a pitcher.

Sure, there will be some good players coming out of the Tiger system. From the many will come a few good men. But no Cabrera, no Magglio, no Longoria, no Votto, no Mauer or Morneau, not even an AJax in the entire system. Perhaps a Brennan Boesch can correct his swing and do what he did for the first half of 2010 on a full time basis, then we’ve really got something. But with vacancies all over the field, at 2B, SS, 3B, Catcher, two corner OF’s, and a DH, there is not a single player that looks like he’d be above the average major leaguer at any of those positions. Not one. Rely on them to fill out your roster, and you finish in fourth place, at best, IMO.

One way that DD can improve what’s in the pipeline is don’t be so stupid about working the compensation game. The name Polanco just screams at you. Two first round picks. Another is what he did with the second comp pick in last summer’s draft. Okay maybe Ruffin is a decent reliever, but he passed up some great talent with that pick. How many comp picks will the Tigers get this summer? My bet is zero. Eight free agents leaving, and not one offer of arbitration that’s declined. That’s because any player remotely worth anything gets an extension from DD.

When you look at any draft, from any year, you see a very distinct pattern. Most first rounders make it. Most All Stars are high first round picks. As you go further down the draft list, there are fewer and fewer major leaguers on the list. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Theo Epstein in Boston annually winds up with a few first round comp picks. He trades for players at the deadline that will be free agents, knowing that they’ll decline arbitration. He just acquired a first round comp pick or two. Jarrod Washedburnt, Aubrey Huff, or Jhonny Peralta don’t get you those picks.

I’m mighty confused with how they doled out playing time at the ML level this year. Once it was clear that the playoffs weren’t happening, they should have transitioned to a more strategic approach to assessing minor league talent at the major league level (not all at once, but in specific competitions).

Ajax and Avila got a lot of playing time and I think were treated in ways that will benefit their development. I have no complaints there.

Boesch should have had fewer AB’s in the last two months both to reduce his free-fall and to allow Wells to get more AB’s. We could have learned more about them both if they had been handled differently. After weeks of futility at the plate, I have to think that Boesch’s confidence has been shattered. Wells showed a lot at the plate and in the field and I think earned more AB’s, at least to be used as a better test of his ability to handle a full time job.

At 2B, there didn’t seem to be much of a plan. When Sizemore came back, he got only sporadic playing time while Rhymes got most of the AB’s. Rhymes’ ceiling is lower than Sizemore’s, but he was treated as the blue chip prospect. I don’t feel that we really know much about Sizemore since his start to the year was hampered by the recovery from his injury. Rhymes played like a major league 2B but the small sample size and his small stature and small minor league productivity do not lead me to believe that we have a plus 2B in our midst.

Next year, they may add a few rookies, but if they rely on more than 2 to be major contributors (ie starters in the field or > 50 innings pitched), then they are not likely to be able to keep up with Minnie or the CWS (College World Series always comes to mind).