Seriously. We are probably not grateful enough for all our teams scouts (wait, do the Knicks even have scouts?) but it feels like the Rangers scouts are allowed to do the most, and Gordie Clark, as well as Jeff Gorton, Sather and an owner who cares more about the Knicks are to thank for it. Since Gordie came aboard back around `05, the Rangers have been able to find and grab players in the draft like Stepan, Kreider, Miller, Duclair (sniff), Buchnevich, etc, among the unsigned like Hayes, and foreign markets like Zuccarello, and in prospect trades like the one that brought McD and Lindberg. The Ranger scouts work both sides pro and amateur and it's working for them because they are good at their jobs and the powers that be trust them, and prospective players are held to a certain ideal and whom the Rangers have kept tabs on since their earliest years. You see them constantly on players they had rated higly in their draft years like McD, Hayes, Lindbergh and even Sheppard whom assistant GM Doug Riseborough drafted when he was with the Wild. It's a pretty perfect ecological system or glorious returns -- except for those few days every July when Sather gets an itchy palm and signs marginal vets that bock kids.
I think the Yanks and Giants both have a lot of great scouts. But the will of the Yankees scouts often seems foiled when things like the Moncada situation comes up and ownership won't got all-Yankee on it, or when they needless jam up their salary structure by punting picks for over 30 year old FA's, like they did in 2013. What's more it doesn't feel like all the scouts report to a single leader -- like the Rangers have with Gordie, or even the Giants have with their GM who came up through scouting. Thus, I'd like to see Damon Oppenheimer be that guy -- but the structure doesn't seem to allow it.
So we should be supergrateful for Gordie and Gorton who have ownership backing, and when picks are lost in trades have the full organizational support behind still finding more Ranger-types to throw into the system -- and that's how we got Hayes -- who looks like a burgeoning star -- and that's what they'll have to keep finding because the Rangers don't have another first rounder till 2017.
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Sather does deserve credit for giving a lot of these kids extended chances at the pro level. He has the power to truncate development at any time. Instead a lot of impressive kids have flourished.
The Yankees largely haven't done that except in the pen, frankly, because it's easier.
That's a large part of the reason that I think the Rangers have been run much better than the Yankees over the last five years.
The Giants have had far more success as well despite some big misses.
The Moncada situation would stand out as more unique if the Yankees had a couple of big, homegrown offensive players on the ML roster, or a couple of top of homegrown rotation starters.
They have neither.
Phil;
Excellent post. We really do not realize how good the Rangers are at scouting and procuring talent in their system. And it becomes more important to "hit" on picks in the later rounds now-a-days, as we keep trading away early round picks.
It's a weird situation for the Yanks, because they also have top notch south -- but when there were no rules, they didn't let them spend enough -- and now that there are rules and you really have to make your picks and keep them so your pool is large enough to work the last 30 rounds -- they squander the picks on old guys.
Meant top notch SCOUTS for the Yanks above, but it got auto corrected to South.
Amen
The person at the top has to oversee everything below, and the lack of output suggests that the oversight is lacking.
Randy Levine seems to be the person at the top of the Yanks these days.
Then why does Cashman still stay and stay and stay?
Only thing he's ever known, and he was used to being worked around from the time what George was still running things.
Then he has to share the blame for the massive underperformance.
That's why I think he jumped the shark long ago.
He has become bitter and cynical.
It's easy to see in the way he dissed Yogi on Nunez (apart from who was right; he's a Yankee legend in his late 80s), or the crap about HR hating fans, etc.
He used to be humble and self-effacing.
But the owner is an poseur and an asshole so we are stuck with the three blind mice.
Cash still does some good things, but it's just a very dysfunctional franchise right now.
He's not a zero. But it would do both him and the franchise good to start completely anew.
It won't happen. There's an unholy alliance.
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