Atlanta Braves Getting Dissed By Rosenthal?

That High-Risk High Reward Thing

Let’s move on to another point from Rosenthal:

Club officials also are high on the upside of the Braves’ bevy of young pitchers, even though some rival executives and prospect analysts view most of those pitchers as high-risk types with ceilings as mid-rotation starters.

First off, how many true ‘Aces’ are there in baseball?  A dozen?  Fifteen?

There are 150 rotation jobs in the major leagues.  If you don’t believe that filling those 150 slots isn’t valuable to an organization, then please see what Rich Hill‘s contract looks like.  Or that of 43-year-old Bartolo Colon.  Even back-end-of-the-rotation guys have value – especially if they can reliably proivde innings and keep their team in games.

But about these “high risk” “high-upside” guys…if your organization doesn’t have these kinds of pitchers, then you will have a lot of something else:  I call these guys ‘5th starters’, ‘AAAA’, and ‘relievers’.

Teams need players with high ceilings – because it is seldom that you see an 10th-40th round draft pick develop into something more.

Let’s look here’s the draft positions of the top 11 drafted pitchers with the top pitching WAR this year:

• Noah Syndergaard:  38th overall pick
• the late Jose Fernandez:  14th
• Max Scherzer:  11th
• Rick Porcello:  27th
• Justin Verlander:  2nd
• Chris Sale:  13th
• Corey Kluber:  134th (Round 4)
• Madison Bumgarner:  10th
• David Price:  1st
• Kyle Hendricks:  264th (Round 8)
• Jon Lester:  57th (Round 2)

What have the Braves done in rebuilding their farm system?  They’ve bought, begged, scraped and connived to bring back top talent:

• Sean Newcomb:  15th overall draft pick
• Lucas Sims:  21st
• Kolby Allard:  14th
• Max Fried:  7th
• Ian Anderson:  3rd
• Mike Soroka:  28th
• Touki Toussaint:  16th
• Patrick Weigel:  210th (7th round)
• Joey Wentz:  40th
• Kyle Muller:  44th

That clearly doesn’t mean that all of these guys are going to turn into those on the prior list… but this is exactly the kind of talent that makes those ace-level pitchers.

Will some of these guys fail to make the majors? Yes – absolutely.  But that’s why you see a lot of 3-for-1 like trades when shipping prospects out for major league talent… it’s because of the hope that one of the 3 will ‘hit’… not that all 3 will.

But for Rosenthal to suggest that there are not impact players in this crop because they only project to ‘mid-rotation starters’ is preposterous.  Just as the Rays about how many hits they’ve had recently on their starters – not just Archer, but ‘mid-rotation’ arms Smyly, Odorizzi, or Moore.

Besides:  there are as many evaluations as evaluators and even Jim Callis and the MLB Pipeline people now have 4 Braves’ pitchers in the Top 100 overall… and that doesn’t even count Fried or Toussaint.

How many other clubs can say that Ken?

In short: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but to complain about ‘high risk’ talent is to complain against all pitchers in general… for they’re all ‘high risk’.

Rosenthal Tries to Balance the Scale

But a year from now, the Braves should be in better position to make firm evaluations on their youngsters — and, if enough of those players progress, better position to get any big piece they need.

Bless his heart.

There’s a reason that scouts exist in the sport of baseball.  They are present to look at “today” while projecting about “tomorrow”.

It’s an art form.  But a vital piece as old as the game itself.

With no scouting, Steve Searcy would be a footnote in Braves baseball and John Smoltz would be a hall-of-famer for the Tigers.  Without scouting, players like Evan Gattis or Andrelton Simmons might never have been discovered… or any others for that matter.

If a scout believes that a prospect has the potential to ‘turn it around’ or ‘break out’, that’s usually enough for a team to say ‘I want that kid’, for talent – as we’ve discussed – is hard to come by.  The more talent you can amass, the better you will be.

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It’s a statistical certainty.

Sometimes you get lucky and several top prospects “hit”.  That’s how I believe the Mets have ammassed their current pitching rotation.

Sometimes you amass talent and very little happens (the Marlins from 3-ish years ago).

But none of that means that organizations are reluctant to trade with you while waiting for that upside to show itself.

Heck, if nothing else, let’s say that the Braves’ top pitching prospects all blossom in 2017.  Great!  But that means trade partners won’t be able to get as many of them in a deal as they might have during this off-season.  I.e., the value just increased.

Scouts are all about trying to fins that ideal “buy low” candidate – that’s exactly what the Braves have been doing in the past two years.

Now they’re armed to the teeth… but also aiming to be highly selective in exactly how they use these farm-based riches.

So in answer to a fan question about the plans for the rest of this winter?

Next: Let's Get Smithy

And Ken, that’s not a ‘tricky’ situation for the Braves – that’s exactly how they’ve planned it out.  One trade doesn’t make a silly statement about the farm system.  It says more about restraint and their future.

Full disclosure:  TomahawkTake and FanSided writings appear on the MLB team pages at FoxSports.com.