The Yankee System
The other big personnel thing they did was basically dump the high A coaching staff and replace them with the low A coaching staff. That's huge.
Now, here's a question as per development: Who do you think has more of an effect on player development -- the guys in uniform who manage and coach them everyday, or some executives in Tampa who collate data, approve promotions, and spend some of their time in the DR overseeing all the international signings.
Obviously it's the managers, hitting coaches and pitching coaches in uniform. And that, beyond the physical upgrade and the addition of a stats guy and the three pros, is where the Yanks found and attacked the problem.
I'm still not sure who will be managing and coaching from Charleston on down this year, but that could be a lot of new guys, too.
Btw, Charleston released their roster today, and it's basically a bunch of teenagers in the infield and college guys, including Aaron Judge in the outfield. He might not be there long,
So it will be interesting to see what else they have done, once the minor league season starts, and what, if any changes are apparent.
I basically wrote this because I was seeing too many articles that said the Yankees didn't do enough because they didn't fire some exces. Firing execs would have made a better show, but figuring out the problem and attacking it there, will probably lead to better results.
posted by Kalel9 @ 12:14 PM
11 Comments:
Cashman has presided over this well below average minor league system for too long, since he asked for and received more power in 2006. Will he ever be held accountable for the underproduction?
Somehow, the people that run the Cardinals' and the Rays' respective systems know who to hire to draft and develop. Hal should seek to hire as many as their decision-makers as possible, including people to replace Cashman, Eppler, Newman, etc. (Oppenheimer may have some value.)
Yet Randy Levine thinks that "Cash is doing a great job." Well, he is, but it's only at necessitating the spending of more and more of Hal's money with his incompetence.
I am thankful that Hal keeps spending.
See, this is exactly what I was addressing, Revenge firing. The problem with the system is two fold.
Before MLB changed the rules and prohibited it, the Yanks chose NOT to spend for top tier talent in the draft, and NOT to sign everyone they could in IFA for fear that the rules would change. The rules changed anyway, and now they're really screwed. That is completely on George and Hal. They could have had Sano, too a few years ago, but allowed themselves to be outbid.
I have written endlessly on this blog about how the Yanks are pennywise and pound foolish when it comes to prospect spending. That, more than anything is why the Yanks system is a mess.
Oppenheimer has done what he's been allowed to do in the draft. They haven't let him do all they could do. So that's not his fault. They've done a lot better in the draft than they were doing in the late `90s and early 00's.
And the development problem is happening on the ground. The execs aren't there. All they have done is set up the system to succeed in the areas that they can. Like physical plant, health care, dietary support, and season plans.
For years, they have been giving kids season plans for how many walks they expect, etc. But they can't really call everyone up every night to see if they are following their plan.
That's what happens on the ground.
Of course, once again this year, they have no picks because of their FA frenzy.
But, they will be attacking the talent problem in IFA and we'll see if they do a good job there.
As for the Rays, they got good after picking in the top 5 of every draft for a generation. And now they keep their picks and collect more for the guys they let go.
The Yanks keep resisting that business plan.
And they have raided the Cards for some scouts, one or two of whom the Cards had originally poached from the Yanks.
I wouldn't mind changing execs, but I think changing the day to day minor league coaches will have a greater effect on development.
Sure, they should have signed Sano, Puig, etc. but Sano signed in 2009, some months after Hal spent a ton on CC, AJ, and Tex, and Puig became available when Hal thought he could get the payroll under $189, so he ok'd setting money on fire for Wells, Youk, etc. because they wouldn't be on the books in 2014, unlike Puig.
So yes, he doesn't understand the big picture, but that is in part because he doesn't seem to realize the degree to which Cashman and Co. have failed him.
He has a right to expect more for the dollars he has spent.
Any effective managers (I mean generally, not a baseball manager), has to be able to delegate and then oversee. Somehow that hasn't happened in the Yankees' system. For example, look at Girardi's recent quote in a Joel Sherman article:
Steinbrenner revealed, “When Joe and I had a conversation at the end of the season, even before he agreed to come back, he said, ‘Look, I got guys coming up here who don’t even know how to run the bases, guys coming up that don’t know how to bunt. Something is clearly being missed at some levels.’”
Granted, it is a multi-faceted problem, but where is the accountability? To this point, it has been confined to lower level personnel. Maybe they deserved to be replaced, but I don't see how the guy at the top of the baseball food chain doesn't bear significant responsibility as well.
Back to Sano. Yes, kids like that are golden opportunities for development served up on a silver platter for the deep-pocketed Yankees. But even if they were only league average at development and handcuffed by limited resources, they should be more successful than they have been.
As for Tampa, they drafted guys like Hellickson and Cobb in the 4th round, and Moore in the 8th round. They identify pitchers that can throw or learn a changeup and go with them (they have a plan). The change has been an underutilized weapon in the Yankees' development system. That direction needs to come from the top.
That's why I point to the GM, who used to talk the right talk, and be quite humble. Now, he has become rather arrogant and defensive. I think it's because deep down, he knows that he hasn't gotten the job done.
The accountability was felt by the entire High A coaching staff. They are the ones who must day to day make sure that kids can run and bunt, and take walks. They got fired.
The executives do not teach bunting or base running. The coaches do or in the Yankee example did not.
And people brandishing those Girardi quotes were what I wrote the original post about. And btw, Girardi himself never learned to take a walk as a player. And that's something that Yankee management has been trying to get the minor league managers to instill for at least the past 10 years. They don't have time, or perhaps the expertise, to put on uniforms and go teach it while carrying out a multitude of other responsibilities.
And Sano in 2009 cost 3 or 4M. He was not a commensurate salary to CC and Tex, but pennies on the dollar who'd be helping us now.
George, then Hal, have both been pound foolish with the minors.
But who hired the A coaches in the first place? Even granting everything you said, their development problems can't all be placed at their feet.
This has been going on for years, over a decade. At what point are the executives responsible for their bad prior hires? Other GMs oversee successful minor league organizations? Why can't this one?
I will say he is probably really good at office politics to have survived this long with such an abysmal record of development.
Again, they should have signed Sano, and Puig, and Chapman, and Darvish, but all of those become less necessary (although not unnecessary) if their development was even league average.
Agreed on George and Hal in that regard, but Hal hasn't ordered the Fred McGriff, Doug Drabek, etc. type of trades that characterized the manic George era.
Executives are always responsible for bad prior hires — it's their ability to recognize such hires and make changes that separates the great from the mediocre.
The fact that the players you mentioned are with other organizations is inexcusable and a huge reason the Yankees are being forced to shell out huge, long-term deals to free agents just to remain competitive.
The criticism toward Cashman for his inability to develop the talent on-hand is legitimate. It has unfortunately been compounded by an ownership group that, up until recently, has been cheap in regard to amateur/international talent. I imagine during the meetings that the scouting personnel made that a point of contention with ownership.
Hal traded Jesus Montero, who, in his Yankee tryout looked like the hitter we thought he was, though, it seems his life has spiraled since the trade.
Back in the late `90s and early 00's the Yanks had some great minor league coaches. Guys like Trey Hillman, Brian Butterfield, and Gil Patterson. Two of them are finally back in the organization, and that should help. Denbo has come and gone and moved around. Some of their guys have retired.
They've juggled staffs a lot since then, though they left Nardi in control of pitching for far too long.
They're trying to fix things now, and let's hope they do. The drafts have been pretty good considering pick positions and Hal's budgetary constraints, but something wasn't happening along the way.
Phil, did you mean to say Cashman traded Montero? I'm still hoping the Ms cut him and the Yankees bring him back somehow. I think much of his problems have stemmed from being traded by a team he really, really wanted to play for.
No, I was referring to the number of bad trades George approved. Hall approved one, too. Though, still think Girardi just didn't like him as a catcher and they were too unimaginative to make a prospects a DH.
They should do everything they can to get Montero back.
As for the trade, it sucked, but back then, Cashman was telling everyone that pitching held the keys to the kingdom. Maybe Hal bought-in.
At this point, we can only hope that Cashman backed in to what turns out to be a great, really crazy trade.
Yup.
They've believed we've been sliding into a pitchers era for the past few years, though I'd have to look at the aggregates to see if that's still true.
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