epstein conference on trade

[brett05]

"disagree vehemently with hitters rarer than pitching" - brett05

For one thing, who's even talking about "what a GM wants"? And even if we were, you think GMs are gonna focus on stockpiling talent that is actually becoming more common instead of the apparently more rare talent?

You said that you don't think hitters are rarer than pitching... well, based on the numbers (which shockingly aren't drinking Cubs koolaid), it appears that post-steroid era, hitting has become more of a commodity than pitching.

If you're not ready to accept the realities of this current era of baseball, that's fine. But stop trying to derail these conversations (I'm aware I'm falling victim to your attempts, too...) and take your nonsense elsewhere.

Show the derailment

 

[brett05]

If Theo is right about hitting becoming the new desired trade piece and he is ahead of the game there then the draft approach they have taken is frankly quite smart. Take someone like Schwarber as an example. They draft him high this year and as a college player you're realistically talking about a 2-3 year time frame if he performs. At that point if you *have* to have pitching you can trade him for MLB pitching and skip the entire development process. You likely need other pieces but he is good enough to be the headline piece.

This is all speculation on my part but if that is truly the idea/motivation behind things it's possibly very smart because you're letting other teams take all the risk developing pitchers. All those high school pitchers who get drafted and flame out as high round picks are other team's problems. And by attacking pitching in bulk in the later rounds they have the potential to find some gems as well as should have themselves covered in terms of back of the rotation pitchers. It's just the top of the rotation guys they have to acquire which can be done via trade or FA but both cases are MLB players already past a lot of that development.

I agree...but if not.....