Kicking off our rundown of LAST YEAR'S Top 50 Giants Prospects, we'll start off at the top, the easy ones first. The mission of a farm system is not to win minor league championships or to be #1 on BA's organizational rankings every year. The mission of a farm system is to produce major league ballplayers for the MLB team they are affiliated with. It isn't often that a farm system produces the way the Giants system produce in 2010 as their #1 and #2 prospects both graduated to the majors and impacted a run to a World Series title. Not only that, both players appear poised to deliver star quality performances for years to come. It really doesn't get any better than that for prospect watchers!
#1 Buster Posey: AAA- .349/.442/.552 with 6 HR's, 172 AB's. MLB- .305/.357/.505 with 18 HR's in 406 AB's.
Everybody knows what Buster accomplished after he arrived in the majors. The performance earned him a very deserved NL Rookie of the Year. The season was capped off by leading the Giants to their first World Series championship since coming to SF. Man, it sure feels good to say that! I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of it! There is still some lingering discontent over the Giants handling of Buster's transition to the majors. The argument is he should have played more in his 2009 September callup and he should have been the Giants starting catcher out of the gate in 2010. I believe the Giants handled him just right. Here is a summary of my argument:
1. The 2009 callup was mainly for the mental exercise. Get comfortable with the MLB atmosphere. Observe MLB catchers in action. Look, listen, learn.
2. I don't know enough about the nuances of catching to know whether Buster was ready at the beginning of 2010 or not. John Klima, at baseballbeginnings.com, who I think does know what to look for, has said that as of the Arizona Fall League in 2009, Buster wasn't ready to catch MLB pitching on the level of the Giants pitchers elite stuff. I admit I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing it has to do with blocking balls in the dirt and possibly game calling.
3. The Giants didn't call up Buster until his manager in Fresno, Steve Decker, gave the green light and said he was ready. Decker is a former MLB catcher himself and should know a thing or two about when a catcher is ready, certainly a lot more than me, or the fans who are criticizing the timing.
4. The results speak for themselves. You can't argue with success! We will never know what would have happened had Buster started the season as the Giants starting catcher. We do know what actually did happen and you can't write a script with a better outcome!
5. Thanks to the idiosyncracies of the agreement between MLB and the Players Association, we are assured that Buster will remain a Giant for at least 6 more seasons. Had he started the season in SF, it would be 5 seasons. The Giants gained a full year of Buster Posey at the cost of 6 weeks. I'll take that deal any day!
Things to be slightly concerned about going forward: 1. Sophomore slump. MLB pitchers may detect a weakness that Buster will have to re-adjust to. I have confidence in his ability to make adjustments going forward. 2. Stamina. Buster wore down at the end of 2009 and looked awfully tired at times at the end of 2010. The delay in making him the everyday catcher may have preserved him just long enough to get him through the postseason. I believe the Giants need to upgrade their backup catcher position to ensure that Buster gets the days off he needs to stay strong throughout the season.
Beyond that, barring injury, another thing I worry about due to the position he plays, Buster is a MLB star, a cornerstone player who will be a Giant deep into the decade.
Buster won't be on the 2011 Top Prospects list because he has graduated to the majors. The Giants organizational rankings will suffer because of it, but the MLB team will prosper and that is the whole purpose of having a farm system in the first place!
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Call it the "Goldilocks" development project -- Sabean and the gang seem to have done it "just right."
ReplyDeleteSo, Doc, how do the Giants keep Posey from going the way of Russell Martin? Much as I like Eli Whiteside, I'm tempted to say that an upgrade at backup catcher -- one who can catch a day or two a week without a devastating drop in offense -- may be in order.
What if the Giants had missed the playoff by 1 game? Would we all be singing a different tune at this point? This season has been incredibly magical as every decision seem to work out perfectly. How easily it could have gone the other way...
ReplyDeleteWhat if the Giants had missed the playoffs by 1 game? Well, they didn't did they? What if? Coulda, shoulda, woulda? Those things don't count! What we do know is what happened and it worked out perfectly!
ReplyDeleteI'll just give you one "what if" scenario: What if the Giants had made Buster the starting catcher from day one and he got injured during that time? or what if his production had cratered down the stretch due to fatigue? We'll never know the answers to those questions, will we?
DrB, Your blog is rapidly becoming my favorite since being banned at the McCoven. Keep up the great work.
ReplyDeleteLOL, GRM! The "McCoven" have become kind of a stuffy bunch, huh?
ReplyDeleteBack to Buster Posey. I don't want people to get the idea that my only argument for Buster's handling by the Giants is an "end justifies the means" argument. I made 5 points defending Buster's handling and only 1 of the 5 deals with the end result. The other 4 address processes. As far as this non-expert can tell from everything I've read on the subject, the Giants process in dealing with Buster's development was grounded in the sound judgement of knowledgeable coaches.
DrB,
ReplyDeleteOut of curiosity is "OnlyBaseballMatters" the other Giants site you use to frequent but quit because of how negative it always was?
No, I've never posted on OnlyBaseballMatters. I've visited the site a few times, but I guess it never really made much of an impression on me. I basically got run off the sfgiants.com Message Board for saying I thought Brian Sabean had the Giants headed in the right direction and he shouldn't be fired. I also made the mistake of posting on some of the OT political threads and apparently made some enemies due to some of my political positions.
ReplyDeleteAs for mccoveychronicles.com, I never really had a beef with them. When they went SB Nation, they required a new registration. For some reason, I was never able to re-register, although I tried several times. I finally just gave up and decided I was spending too much time posting there anyways.
I still read McC daily and enjoy the content there, but sometimes find the herd/groupthink mentality over there to be stifling if not downright disturbing. Also, no matter what the topic, the threads always seem to get hijacked by snarky, inside joke, non-baseball comments. You literally have to wade through 500 comments to find one that is worth reading!
Anyway, you are welcome to visit this site and are invited to comment on what you read. I think we've done a good job keeping it to serious baseball-only discussion.
I'm honored that so many people seem to have found this site worthwhile to visit on a regular basis.
While I agree in disliking the adolescent, snide, in-group, OT mentality one often finds with the McCoven, it has the great advantages--sometimes I think the great distinctions--of being likely to demand facts of an up-to-date sort to support arguments, being often witty, and being often literate. I'm grateful for it. Too much on other sites seems cracker-barrel dumb by comparison.
ReplyDeleteThis last comment about "other sites," however, isn't meant to cast aspersions on "When the Giants Come to Town," which I enjoy reading daily, and appreciate for its focus, its seriousness, and its avoiding arrogance.
Campanari,
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong. I think mccoveychronicles.com is a great site and am a daily reader. I learn a lot from that. I was just commenting on some of it's characteristics as a site.
Again, I am grateful for readers who find this site worth coming to and even more to those who care enough to post responses.
Here's another what-if: if the Giants pushed Posey before he was ready (and nobody can say that he was before the Giants brought him up) as the starting catcher, who is to say that he could not have struggled a lot, much like another high profile, high potential catcher, Matt Weiters did and has done since making the majors and being thrust into the starting position. Both had similar minor league numbers prior to coming up, and Weiters had the better hitting pedigre, he's suppose to be the better hitter, Posey was suppose to only up as high because of his defense. Only Posey was eased into the MLB, focusing on hitting first, then catching.
ReplyDeleteI was disappointed that Weiters did not fall to the Giants as some predicted, but am glad now that it didn't happen because then probably the Giants wouldn't have picked up Posey.
The thing is we don't have to play "What-If", we know what is, and it looks pretty good: Giants are World Champions!
And if you want to play the what-if game, that can be applied to almost every team who wins the World Series, there are always what-ifs that go well for the team that wins it all. And if that is still how you feel, then why not just draw cards or roll the dice to see who wins, because what you are saying is that randomness is the only reason any team wins.
The Giants won not just because of random good things happening, they won because Sabean built the best pitching staff, particularly best pitching rotation, in a generation or two. Period.
With pitching like that, you don't need much offense to win with that, I've shown that with the math on Pythag. So anything can happen on offense, as long as it happens enough while the pitching is going well. Yeah, anything could have gone wrong - only, it didn't.
I used to go to OnlyBaseballMatters, but stopped going when it degenerated into solely a "Beat up on the Giants and Sabean" site and anyone who don't agree got pilloried. I often wonder what would have happened if I took his offer to write for his site instead of continuing to blog.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with DrB, there is a lot to learn at MCC, it is just a shame you have to sift through the dreck there to get to it.
I love sites like DrB, intelligent commentary I can read, good updates and info, a place where people can have civil and serious discussions about the team we love.
Thanks again for the great comments, everybody.
ReplyDeleteGreat post on Posey DrB!
ReplyDeleteI agree with your summary on Posey. Experts such as Earl Weaver feel that prospects need time to adjust to MLB life before they become MLB starters.
I would also add Baseball America's take on Posey as C: "For all his strides Posey has made as a catcher, the mechanics of the position haven't become second nature yet. He's still working to improve his receiving and has problems handling quality fastballs with late life." Need I remind anyone, but that describes many on the Giants staff.
That holds double for me because BA complains that the Giants don't give them any info on their players, so I know their descriptions about a prospect's potential and current status is from opposing team scouts and their own observations.
Good point about Decker being arbiter on readiness as a catcher. Also, he's been an excellent manager in the minors for the Giants, suggesting he knows how to assess (as well as utilize) talent.
We may not ever know exactly what might have happened had he started the season with the Giants, but one can make intelligent guesses.
For one, a number of well-regarded sources says that he was not ready defensively after the 2009 season, so it seems likely to me that he would have had all sorts of trouble handling pitches and giving up a lot of passed balls. If he can't handle minor league pitchers (15 in 120 pro games in minors), he's not going to handle major leaguers, particularly ones like Giants staff with a lot of stuff, very well, without more practice and training/instruction.
Meanwhile, his MLE in April suggests that he would have been hitting in the low 700 OPS range in April, as he was not hitting that well in AAA back then. He started figuring some things out in May and after hitting well for about a month, the Giants then brought him up.
So the best guess anyone can make is that Posey would have been struggling with his hitting and defense as the starter for the Giants, with maybe Yorvit as the backup, but more probably Whiteside, and might have turned things around in May but we don't know how Posey would handle such a bad stretch, though he's very confident so hopefully well. For that, we would have only 5 more seasons with him on the team.
Now, we have him for 6! I have no idea why people can't see the beauty of this, what is, is.
Pretty good blog you got going here! Especially enjoy the minor league analysis all in one place on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteAs for all the "What Iffing" going on -- Whether you call it good management and good decision making, or pure luck, the Giants won the World Series. As anyone who watched baseball outside of New York knows, WS Titles are very hard to come by, this may be the only one for decades to come. In that light, I'll take MadBum over Heyward, Jonathan Sanchez over Uggla, a fill-in utility infield over the Phillies big 4 and heart attack closer over Mariano Rivera's 1-2-3 9th's every time.