What does the BA Top 100 tell us?

I would rather have major league success than minor league notoriety.

…but I have found some of our other prospects on the top 100.
D.J. Tools i found rated as low as 59 by K.Law
Jaime Garcia #44 and Lance Lynn#100 on Scoutingbook.com

so there shouldn’t be any lack of excitement over quality players.

- The birds seldom finish with a losing record, meaning their picks are seldom high
- The Cards rarely pick high upside signings, instead preferring “safe” picks
- We have (to date) had a limited Latin American presence
- We have been reluctant to pay the big signing bonus (ala Porcello)

This all translates to a system with many so-so players, and only the occasional outlier like Brett Wallace or (hopefully) Shelby Miller, that brings us notoriety from losers like Keith Law. But I agree with indakind up above.

I would rather have major league success than minor league notoriety.

21 latin america signings

http://www.globe-democrat.com/news/2010/mar/03/minor-league-notebook-cardinals-sign-dominican-out/

I have to admit (especially at my stage in life) that I am major league oriented, that is, I am mostly about the 25 men on the Cardinals’ roster, all of whom I try to watch and know as much about as I can. With 29 OTHER teams in the ML, that is already more than I can handle. On any given day, in June say, if you challenged me to name as few as 12 Pittsburgh Pirates, I would probably flunk. And they are even in our division.
Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City (etc): they play baseball in these cities ??
My point is, the "draft’ is WAY under my skill level; in part because I think it is a crap-shoot anyway. As in, how can you really tell about a player until he actually gets to the show, or at least some significant time at AAA?. But mostly I find myself paying little attention to the draft and even the lower minors because there are just too many of them, and too far-flung. Moreover I can’t/don’t SEE them; reading about them doesn’t do it for me.
Which leads to my one period of exception. My glory years (of the 55 or so as a reasonably aware Cardinal fan) were those years when the St Louis AAA franchise was based in Louisville (30 minutes from my home). Especially the 80’s. I still have a man-crush on Tom Pagnozzi, not so much from his, arguably, wonderful years as a Cardinal, but moreso from the time (two years as I remember) he was the most popular Louisville Redbird.

I’m sure a significant portion of that difference (23 vs. 9, counting CC players) is because many college players either graduate to the majors or go bust in their first few years as prospects and thus would not be on the Top 100 in either scenario.

In contrast, a high school player could take the better part of a decade to develop.

Most prospects are either declared busts or make the majors by 25. Most college players are drafted at age 21-22, and sometimes 20, whereas high school players are obviously drafted when they are 18. Essentially, about four years of drafted collegians are eligible for this list, against seven years of drafted high schoolers.

I would also point out that the Top 100 lists tend to focus on potential future stars. I suspect, though I can’t verify my suspicion, that the Cardinals do pretty well at developing role players and various other pieces after the first round. Obviously these sort of players wouldn’t be in a Top 100, but they still have value.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this post, I just had a couple caveats.

There are a number of ways of looking at the minor leagues which creates a lot of varying opinions. I’m of the view that the minor league ratings are largely meaningless because they focus on the minor legues not on the improvement of the major league team. How do you rate a sytem that traded Wallace, Perez etc but now has Matt holliday to show for that.

In my mind the minor legue system is part of a inter-related group of tools used to get to the playoffs. If the team is making the playoffs every year with its approach and the approach is sustainable then I’m happy with result. The Cards have done a great job of using player development fo fill holes and trading chips for better players. Of course that way of using the system has risks like Mulder or Derosa.

I think if you are just trying to rate qulaity of the system I would use look at several variables:

1. Your analysis of how many players drafted AFTER your choice are prospects is a good way to look at whether you are doing a good job of rating talent. There ought to be a way to build a metric around that analysis. This is the way I would rate my amateur scouting staff.

2. I think your point about being on top of trends is a good one — like signing talent from Japan etc. In many ways this is the importance of hiring a guy like Luhnow who seems to have a good vision.

3. I would look at number of major leaguers making it 1-3 years, 3-5 years, 5 years and beyond and compare against other teams over a ten-15 year period to understand my ranking. In my mind this would be a good metric to rate your minor league coaching staff performance

4. I think injury-free development in the pitching corps would be interesting to look at . A lot of people here have written about the ability to spot poor form. If that is true, then you should be able to measure your ability to stay away from injuries. This would be a good way to rate your medical staff.

5. I would also look at categories like minor league free agents, rule V draftees, chips picked up in trades and try to grade my professional scouting staff against other teams performance in this area.

At the end of the day, the standard analysis seems to focus more on tools/skill sets of individual players as opposed to the process of development. I would much more try to break down the component parts of my minor league staff and try to measure each individually.