Cubs Farm System And Prospects Discussion Thread

[beckdawg]

Actually by all accounts Hendry was, and is, a very good scout so I'm not sure he was a bad talent evaluater I think he was a bad talent compiler for lack of a better word. Part of it was that he liked the toolsy guys as you said and part of it is that, under his leadership, they did not have a standard for who they wanted to draft which actually a bit surprising because Andy McPhail had created that kind of a standard player model in Minnesota and Hendry began his GM stint under McPhail. My impression was though that McPhail by that time didn't his job in Chicago much but that's just a hunch. The Hendry regime also didn't have much use for the emerging advanced metrics so you ended up with a haphazard draft strategy where player conflicted with rather than complemented each other and were thrust into a disorganized developments system. Can you imagine what it would be like for a hitter to be taught one plate approach at low A, another in high A then his AA or AAA coaches tell him to go back to what he was taught in low A or even something else entirely. Add that to the fact that these weren't exactly well rounded players and you have an unmitigated disaster.

Honestly, I'd argue the biggest gaff of Hendry's tenure wasn't talent acquisition. It was more the development of that talent. Could be a chicken or the egg type situation but so many high round picks didn't amount to anything and you had guys like Josh Donaldson who are MVP caliber players who were dealt away. If you look at the present front office, who's been their "bust" as far as draft picks go? Pierce Johnson? He's the worst I can name off the top of my head and even then he's not bad.

If someone wants to make the case that Hendry favoring toolsy guys was more the problem because they are harder to develop, that's a valid idea. However, that sort of goes with the territory. Most teams employing that model hope to land 1 or 2 super stars and back fill with money in FA. Ultimately I'm more in the camp of low floor players but it can be a viable strategy and if you do find a couple of super star types it's a lot easier to add someone like Lackey or Zobrist on the cheap than it is to sign someone like David Price.

And to be clear, I think a lot of the development issue was with the ownership. You'll recall one of the first things the Ricketts spent money on was a brand new dominican facility followed shortly by the new one in mesa.

 

[TC in Mississippi]

Honestly, I'd argue the biggest gaff of Hendry's tenure wasn't talent acquisition. It was more the development of that talent. Could be a chicken or the egg type situation but so many high round picks didn't amount to anything and you had guys like Josh Donaldson who are MVP caliber players who were dealt away. If you look at the present front office, who's been their "bust" as far as draft picks go? Pierce Johnson? He's the worst I can name off the top of my head and even then he's not bad.

If someone wants to make the case that Hendry favoring toolsy guys was more the problem because they are harder to develop, that's a valid idea. However, that sort of goes with the territory. Most teams employing that model hope to land 1 or 2 super stars and back fill with money in FA. Ultimately I'm more in the camp of low floor players but it can be a viable strategy and if you do find a couple of super star types it's a lot easier to add someone like Lackey or Zobrist on the cheap than it is to sign someone like David Price.

And to be clear, I think a lot of the development issue was with the ownership. You'll recall one of the first things the Ricketts spent money on was a brand new dominican facility followed shortly by the new one in mesa.

!00% on the development being the issue. As I said players learned different things at different levels and by the time they were 22-24 years old at AAA their heads were spinning. I sat in a bar in 10 years ago or so with a buddy who was covering college and minor league baseball at that time and a scout friend of his and the scout made a detailed case about how Corey Patterson was literally ruined by the Cubs organization. He described the jumble of information between levels and with the organization at large and basically told us that the Cubs would not develop a single position player of note until the organization was fixed. As we see now he was right. I agree though that a lot of that had to do with ownership. For all I know Hendry argued for hiring more talented instructors and development folks and was shut down. Of course it's also possible that he didn't.

 

[SilenceS]

!00% on the development being the issue. As I said players learned different things at different levels and by the time they were 22-24 years old at AAA their heads were spinning. I sat in a bar in 10 years ago or so with a buddy who was covering college and minor league baseball at that time and a scout friend of his and the scout made a detailed case about how Corey Patterson was literally ruined by the Cubs organization. He described the jumble of information between levels and with the organization at large and basically told us that the Cubs would not develop a single position player of note until the organization was fixed. As we see now he was right. I agree though that a lot of that had to do with ownership. For all I know Hendry argued for hiring more talented instructors and development folks and was shut down. Of course it's also possible that he didn't.

He had half the staff Theo does. Its been well documented that he worked with almost no support from ownership in developing players. They wanted to sell the team, so they put all their money into FA's and left the rest of the org to suffer. The Cubs were near the bottom of the list in draft spending during the Hendry era. That doesn't make sense for a team like Chicago and Hendry being a head scout for a lot of his career. You can read a lot of articles that he would get hamstrung into drafting guys who would sign for much less and they didn't over slot a ton. The exceptions being Shark and Szczur. Then, when he missed on a guy like Josh Vitters. It really hurt. Hendry is an extremely well respected man in baseball. Its why I found it funny when people would rag on him. The guy gave his heart to the Cubs and was a class act. Oh, and people like to forget that he was a main component when the Cubs had a top 3 farm in the early 2000's with guys like Prior, Zambrano, Patterson, Cruz, and others.

 

[chibears55]

I think what hurt hendry is that he didn't get the financial backing from the Tribune to pay those kids..

So, instead of being able to draft kids that were first second third rounders and offering them a sizeable deal, he had to draft kids projected in later rounds that would accept what he can offer...

Because of that is why we seen a lot of the early round picks end up as bust or just career minor leaguers over those years.

Sent from my LG-V495 using Tapatalk

 

[Parade_Rain]

Wow, Contreras is smoking. I just realized that I never saw him play before, so I looked him up on UTube. His swing and stance are eerily similar to Starlin Castro.

It looks like McKinney and Candelario have a good eye at the plate, but their BA needs to be higher. When I get time, I'm going to try to look up the advanced stats on those two.

edit: Both players have picked it up in May. McKinney hitting .250 and Candelario .274.

 

[Parade_Rain]

He had half the staff Theo does. Its been well documented that he worked with almost no support from ownership in developing players. They wanted to sell the team, so they put all their money into FA's and left the rest of the org to suffer. The Cubs were near the bottom of the list in draft spending during the Hendry era. That doesn't make sense for a team like Chicago and Hendry being a head scout for a lot of his career. You can read a lot of articles that he would get hamstrung into drafting guys who would sign for much less and they didn't over slot a ton. The exceptions being Shark and Szczur. Then, when he missed on a guy like Josh Vitters. It really hurt. Hendry is an extremely well respected man in baseball. Its why I found it funny when people would rag on him. The guy gave his heart to the Cubs and was a class act. Oh, and people like to forget that he was a main component when the Cubs had a top 3 farm in the early 2000's with guys like Prior, Zambrano, Patterson, Cruz, and others.

Two words - "Milton" and "Bradley".

 

[SilenceS]

Two words - "Milton" and "Bradley".

What?

 

[CSF77]

Think it was the 2003 draft that they had something like 4-5 picks in the first and 2 in the 2nd. Rich Hill was the 2nd. All busted.... Really sad.

Donaldson was the 2nd round pick after Vitters. Drafted as a catcher and was the bonus player added in 2008 to get Harden for the run. Oak converted him to a 3B and the rest is history.

 

[CSF77]

Honestly, I'd argue the biggest gaff of Hendry's tenure wasn't talent acquisition. It was more the development of that talent. Could be a chicken or the egg type situation but so many high round picks didn't amount to anything and you had guys like Josh Donaldson who are MVP caliber players who were dealt away. If you look at the present front office, who's been their "bust" as far as draft picks go? Pierce Johnson? He's the worst I can name off the top of my head and even then he's not bad.

If someone wants to make the case that Hendry favoring toolsy guys was more the problem because they are harder to develop, that's a valid idea. However, that sort of goes with the territory. Most teams employing that model hope to land 1 or 2 super stars and back fill with money in FA. Ultimately I'm more in the camp of low floor players but it can be a viable strategy and if you do find a couple of super star types it's a lot easier to add someone like Lackey or Zobrist on the cheap than it is to sign someone like David Price.

And to be clear, I think a lot of the development issue was with the ownership. You'll recall one of the first things the Ricketts spent money on was a brand new dominican facility followed shortly by the new one in mesa.

It created a misconception that you can not build a team through the farm with all of the failures that came up in that era. It forced Hendry to blow up payroll to make the team legit. And short term Windows.

 

[Parade_Rain]

What?

You found it funny why people rag on him. Bradley was one of the worst signings possible. They had great dinner together. Let's add another with the Mercker causing problems with Steve Stone. That was mishandled. Hendry was definitely a good baseball guy, but let's not get all fanboyish over his tenure.

 

[SilenceS]

You found it funny why people rag on him. Bradley was one of the worst signings possible. They had great dinner together. Let's add another with the Mercker causing problems with Steve Stone. That was mishandled. Hendry was definitely a good baseball guy, but let's not get all fanboyish over his tenure.

Bradley was coming off a career year and was a left handed bat that the Cubs needed tremendously. It's revisionist history in the signing. He fit every need the Cubs had at that time. It s like saying Theo was a good baseball guy but signing Edwin Jackson was the worst mistake possible

 

[Parade_Rain]

Bradley was coming off a career year and was a left handed bat that the Cubs needed tremendously. It's revisionist history in the signing. He fit every need the Cubs had at that time. It s like saying Theo was a good baseball guy but signing Edwin Jackson was the worst mistake possible

Quite a few people who were at least 30 years old at the time understood it was not a good signing at the time. It was well known that he was not an easy to deal with personality. Someone just looking at stats would have loved the signing in hindsight. That's the true revisionist history.

 

[SilenceS]

Quite a few people who were at least 30 years old at the time understood it was not a good signing at the time. It was well known that he was not an easy to deal with personality. Someone just looking at stats would have loved the signing in hindsight. That's the true revisionist history.

LOL yea, Im sure thats what happened.

 

[Parade_Rain]

LOL yea, Im sure thats what happened.

http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2011/5/9/2162505/cubs-mariners-lesson-of-milton-bradley

...
That last statement got him sent home by Jim Hendry for the final two weeks of the 2009 season -- at which time (not coincidentally, I'd argue) the Cubs immediately won seven of their next nine games. This post isn't to rehash old news -- things we've done over and over and over -- instead, it's to analyze why the Cubs signed this player in the first place and what lessons can be learned to not make the same mistake in the future.
...
As we all know, there was a perceived lack of lefthanded hitting on the 2008 division champion Cubs. Despite the fact that the mostly-righthanded team led the NL in runs scored that year, they played poorly for three days against the Dodgers and got swept out of the division series.
...
So, the Cubs put him on a short list of "lefthanded hitting run producers", even though he had never been that and had driven in only 77 runs in 2008 while missing 36 games for various reasons. Instead of signing Bobby Abreu or Raul Ibanez -- both of whom could have been had less expensively -- Hendry had a dinner with Bradley, who apparently charmed him enough to sign him to the now-infamous three-year, $30 million deal
...
This deal was handed out to Bradley despite the fact that only one other team (the Nationals) had even expressed an interest in him and no one was dangling a three-year offer in front of him.

This deal was handed out to Bradley despite the antics that had, at the time, gotten him to wear out his welcome with six other teams -- even the Rangers, for whom he had just put up an All-Star season.

This deal was handed out to Bradley despite the fact that the Cubs probably could have put up the same kind of production for less money, if they had just re-signed Jim Edmonds, who had put up a .937 OPS and hit 19 home runs for the Cubs in only 85 games. Edmonds and Reed Johnson would have made a good platoon again in 2009;
...

None of us should have been against the signing and it's all just revisionist history that quite a few of us thought the signing was terrible when it occurred. LOL.

 

[SilenceS]

http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2011/5/9/2162505/cubs-mariners-lesson-of-milton-bradley

None of us should have been against the signing and it's all just revisionist history that quite a few of us thought the signing was terrible when it occurred. LOL.

So, a random guy on bleedcubbieblue writes a revisionist article. lol The best part of the article is they could have just signed Jim Edmonds and platooned him with Reed Johnson. Edmonds was 39 and didnt even play in majors that year. Guess why? He didnt receive an offer he thought he deemed worthy enough for him to play. Great attitude.The next year he came back and said he made a mistake the year before. But, excellent article. Also, its funny because people ripped on him but here is more revisionist history. Raul ibanez signed with the Phillies that year. He was 37 years old and never played in the NL. they signed him for 3 years 31.5 million. Turned out well for the Phillies, but if the Cubs signed someone like that today. People's head would explode. Now, you can make a case for Abreu but there werent a lot of suitors because he was 35 and his defensive skills had diminished greatly. So, yes, the MB is blown out of proportion and revisionist history. So, in the end, was he a bad signing. Yes, he didnt produce. But, it is no different then saying Edwin Jackson was a bad signing. Both sucked for the Cubs. It happens.

 

[TC in Mississippi]

Bradley was coming off a career year and was a left handed bat that the Cubs needed tremendously. It's revisionist history in the signing. He fit every need the Cubs had at that time. It s like saying Theo was a good baseball guy but signing Edwin Jackson was the worst mistake possible

Bradley was a bad guy. When you're 31 years old and you've played for six teams, as Bradley was in 2009, there are some serious red flags. I remember listening to an interview with Peter Gammons on the radio just prior to his signing when the rumors were that he was on short list of Cubs targets. Gammons told the interviewer, for some reason I'm reasonably sure it was Terry Boers, "Be careful of what you wish for". When Boers pressed him on it, and acknowledged that he had heard bad things as well, Gammons promised him to tell him more off the air. He was signed soon after and "Steak dinner boom!" in reference to the great dinner PR mentioned became a schtick for years with Boers always coming back to that Gammons warning. Over his career he got in a fight with a fan, threw a bottle at a fan in the stands and attempted to go after an announcer and those were just the incidents that were made public. All of these things happened before he signed with the Cubs. I'm not the moral police, and I'm not going to say you can never, ever take a chance on a questionable behavior guy (Dennis Rodman worked out pretty well with the Bulls) but you had better be very careful and do your due diligence. If Hendry did that, he ignored the findings. Sorry, I don't disagree with you that Hendry was a better guy than history has painted him, especially in light of the awful ownership at the time, but I Bradley squarely at his feet as terrible signing.

 

[SilenceS]

Bradley was a bad guy. When you're 31 years old and you've played for six teams, as Bradley was in 2009, there are some serious red flags. I remember listening to an interview with Peter Gammons on the radio just prior to his signing when the rumors were that he was on short list of Cubs targets. Gammons told the interviewer, for some reason I'm reasonably sure it was Terry Boers, "Be careful of what you wish for". When Boers pressed him on it, and acknowledged that he had heard bad things as well, Gammons promised him to tell him more off the air. He was signed soon after and "Steak dinner boom!" in reference to the great dinner PR mentioned became a schtick for years with Boers always coming back to that Gammons warning. Over his career he got in a fight with a fan, threw a bottle at a fan in the stands and attempted to go after an announcer and those were just the incidents that were made public. All of these things happened before he signed with the Cubs. I'm not the moral police, and I'm not going to say you can never, ever take a chance on a questionable behavior guy (Dennis Rodman worked out pretty well with the Bulls) but you had better be very careful and do your due diligence. If Hendry did that, he ignored the findings. Sorry, I don't disagree with you that Hendry was a better guy than history has painted him, especially in light of the awful ownership at the time, but I Bradley squarely at his feet as terrible signing.

The Cubs had Carlos Zambrano who fought moire teammates than probably anyone in history. Billy Martin fought fan players and umpires. I'm fine with saying the signing was bad because it was. My problem is people acting like it was the death sentence of the Cubs and the worst contract ever. Theo already signed a worst contract for the Cubs

 

[Parade_Rain]

So, a random guy on bleedcubbieblue writes a revisionist article. lol The best part of the article is they could have just signed Jim Edmonds and platooned him with Reed Johnson. Edmonds was 39 and didnt even play in majors that year. Guess why? He didnt receive an offer he thought he deemed worthy enough for him to play. Great attitude.The next year he came back and said he made a mistake the year before. But, excellent article. Also, its funny because people ripped on him but here is more revisionist history. Raul ibanez signed with the Phillies that year. He was 37 years old and never played in the NL. they signed him for 3 years 31.5 million. Turned out well for the Phillies, but if the Cubs signed someone like that today. People's head would explode. Now, you can make a case for Abreu but there werent a lot of suitors because he was 35 and his defensive skills had diminished greatly. So, yes, the MB is blown out of proportion and revisionist history. So, in the end, was he a bad signing. Yes, he didnt produce. But, it is no different then saying Edwin Jackson was a bad signing. Both sucked for the Cubs. It happens.

So IOW, you just ignored that no one was offering him a 3 year contract except for the Cub$ and his six other PREVIOUS teams had all had problems with him, including the team he had just had that career year with. No red flags there and no Cub$ fans could possibly be knowledgeable enough to be completely against the signing when it occurred. LOL. I know you can't be this obtuse. It was a terrible signing.

 

[SilenceS]

So IOW, you just ignored that no one was offering him a 3 year contract except for the Cub$ and his six other PREVIOUS teams had all had problems with him, including the team he had just had that career year with. No red flags there and no Cub$ fans could possibly be knowledgeable enough to be completely against the signing when it occurred. LOL. I know you can't be this obtuse. It was a terrible signing.

Who said there weren't red flags? I said its revisionist history because he fit the Cubs needs and the majority of Cubs fans were thrilled with the signing. They were the ones screaming for a left handed bat. I said its a bad signing. I just find it comical people point to that as the worst thing in the world. Edwin Jackson was still a worse signing but the Cubs are winning so no one will speak about it. Hendry best attribute was trades. He made mistakes and he also hit grand slams.

 

[Parade_Rain]

Who said there weren't red flags? I said its revisionist history because he fit the Cubs needs and the majority of Cubs fans were thrilled with the signing. They were the ones screaming for a left handed bat. I said its a bad signing. I just find it comical people point to that as the worst thing in the world. Edwin Jackson was still a worse signing but the Cubs are winning so no one will speak about it. Hendry best attribute was trades. He made mistakes and he also hit grand slams.

LOL. You found it funny that people ragged on Hendry. I gave you two of the reasons why. You claimed it was revisionist history. I clearly provided evidence as to why quite a few people were against the signing well before Bradley played one game in a Cubs uniform. You ignored it anyway. I don't recall Edwin Jackson berating Cubs fans and the Cubs organization and having personal issues with every previous club he played for.