Law on Money and Talent

Keith Law at ESPN disagrees with the Marlins approach to the Giancarlo Stanton deal:

When teams trade marquee players coming off peak years, the goal is to get talent in return, the kind that can save you tens of millions of dollars down the road when those players are productive big leaguers while they’re still paid the league minimum.

…

Every trade you make that doesn’t bring back good young talent, even if they’re still low-minors prospects, wastes one of those shots and sets the rebuild further and further back.

Or, you can finish last every year for three or four years and draft well. This worked for the Mets of the 1980s, the A’s of the late 1980s, the Braves of the early 1990s. Even the last Yankees dynasty took advantage of a down period in the club’s history to draft and develop the core four. The Royals and Pirates eventually figured this out, although it took them a long time. Most recently, the Cubs used bad finishes and good drafts to build a team.

Law notes that the new ownership is starting in the hole when it comes to the farm system. Will this group be better at drafting and developing talent than the previous owners? They decided that saving money now is the right thing to do. It may mean a longer time before the team is good again, or it could mean they have figured out a plan and this is part of the execution.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2ji5idQ