I have always advocated that, when equal, I prefer a pitching over hitting. Obviously, if one is superior to the other, you take the superior. It seemed like being pitching intensive had become antiquated for reasons with which I never agreed.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Sort of. The Sox must play better defense if they want to become a serious contender. Also, fire Ventura.

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The long period of losing and horrible management of the Mets certainly does!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Hmmm. It wasn't all that long ago that the Mets had Jerry Manuel filling out the lineup card for them.

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I think with scoring being at deadball era levels a lot of guys who are ordinary are going to look like good pitchers. That being the case, it's nice to have a lineup full of guys who can score a run (or more) with a single swing the way the Cubs do. I mean, I don't think too many people are going to argue if I say Chris Sale is "better" than Kyle Hendricks, but what really matters is the end result. If Hendricks is winning all his games 4-3 and Sale is losing all his 2-1, Sale isn't providing more value than Hendricks, is he? You can talk all you want about "manufacturing" runs, and the risk in running and bunting is mitigated somewhat by the low scoring environment. An out is simply worth less when run scoring is at a premium. Risk/reward ratio. But it's hard to string hits together in today's game. I think it's a better philosophy to hope Fowler coaxes a walk and Schwarber cranks one on the concourse.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Sure it does. The Mets have gone about it a little differently but they have put together a dominating pitching staff then made offensive upgrades during the season. Who knows what would have happened if Hahn balled up and acquired Cespedes at the deadline instead of sitting on his hands and doing nothing

They loaded up on young pitching and did it in a variety of ways

Jacob De Grom: 9th rd pick
Noah Syndergaard: R. A. Dickey Trade
Matt Harvey: 2010 1st rd pick
Wheeler: Beltran trade
Matz: 2nd Rd pick

Well, that's true. You can't just go out and find Sales or Rodons. Picking up a guy like Arrieta is a fluke. You look at the vast majority of the top gun pitchers, they're high first rounders. You need pitching to win a World Series. You can cobble together an adequate offense with professional journeymen like Victorino, Gomes, etc. It's a lot harder to find the pitching equivalent of Jayson Werth to be the number three starter in your rotation.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand were off...

_________________

It's certainly a fluke that he was the best pitcher in baseball in the second half...but certainly the Cubs thought he'd be better than his past history.

_________________
Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Well, I'm sure they did. In the same way they thought Arodys Vizcaino and Jacob Turner would be. Theo has said the main guy in that deal was Strop.

I'm not knocking on Arrieta. I think Seacrest misunderstood me too. I'm not saying Arrieta's season was a fluke. I'm saying coming up with a bonafide number one ace type guy in a trade like that is a longshot. It doesn't happen often.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Pulshipper, Wilson and Isringhausen

Wood, Prior, Zambrano

Pitchers tend to break down.

_________________
"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Just my little shout out to Phil Georgeff.

You are correct. And I can't come up with another example of this off the top of my head except Sutcliffe.

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like I wrote somewhere else, Loiza or Contrearas.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

You can't be as bad as the White Sox have been at drafting hitters though. There has to be some offensive talent coming from the minors.

I don't think either of those guys is a good parallel for Arrieta. Loaiza had a pretty fluky year with the Sox where he commanded the cutter like he never did again. Contreras is a an all-time great who should be spoken of with Randy Johnson, Clemens, Maddux, and Pedro. Unfortunately, he was stuck in Cuba for the best years of his career. He's like a modern Satchel Paige. A better comp for Arrieta is Al Leiter, a big stuff guy who finally figured out how to put it together.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

he added 1 MPH to his fastball at the age of 29 which is kind of unusual in this non steroidal era.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Al Leiter?!

And Contreras is an all time great. Ho-Key. This is what happens when I agree with you.

_________________
Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

The Mets have players all over the diamond that are the envy of the Sox. Look at the OF of Lagares/Conforto-Granderson-Cespedes, nowhere near the best OF in the league but compared to the Sox it may as well be. I dont even want to bother with the IF where aside from 1B the Met's backups are twice as good as the Sox starters. All of this goes for offense and defense.

The worst part is the Sox will look right past all around ballplayers like Granderson to go "fill the DH spot" with some failure. Same way the balked at Torii Hunter's price. They'll do the same regarding Cespedes this offseason, maybe because they blew their wad last year, but also because they inexplicably shy away from multi-dimensional players.

The Sox drafting philosophy is fine. They've had more hits than misses the past 5 years and that's about all you can hope for in the MLB draft. They just spend their money like idiots.

You know Granderson has future White Sox player written all over him.

_________________
"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Mike Scott is your Arrieta comp.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

You should be very happy if Arrieta gives you a Leiter career.

And Contreras didnt get to the bigs until he was about 40. He might be better than Satchel Paige.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

If he were a free agent this winter, I would love to have him play CF for the Cubs for 1 season while Almora and Martinez are still developing. I have always liked his game.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

Nah....we gotta wait a few more years until CG is old and feeble. Then we'll sign him.

Sox: Get some defense.

He should be on the team now.

Draft Delivered Mets’ Pennant Keys
October 23, 2015 by John Manuel


Jacob deGrom headlines New York’s powerful, predominantly homegrown pitching staff (Photo by Bill Nichols)
Jacob deGrom headlines New York’s powerful, predominantly homegrown pitching staff (Photo by Bill Nichols)
The Cubs won 97 games in 2015, won a wild-card showdown with the Pirates and even won a Division Series matchup with the rival Cardinals. Game Four of that series proved to be the first time the Cubs clinched a playoff series at Wrigley Field.

They did it with a young, in part homegrown lineup, featuring not only 2015 Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant but also 2014 first-rounder Kyle Schwarber, 2011 first-rounder Javy Baez (subbing for injured Addison Russell), and top international signees such as Starlin Castro and Jorge Soler.

When the Cubs were bad—and their first-round pick was never lower than ninth in the last five years—they picked a hitter every single time. Signing free agent Jon Lester and stealing Jake Arrieta from the Orioles gave them a good enough rotation for the regular season, but the Cubs need pitching reinforcements.Dig deeper into the track record of Jason McLeod, the Cubs’ scouting and player development chief who also has served as scouting director for the Red Sox (2005-2009) and Padres (2010-11), and you find a similar track record.

McLeod has had a stellar career, earning himself a spot as one of the most respected scouts in the business. He’s built it by drafting hitters who have made a big league impact, from Jacoby Ellsbury and Anthony Rizzo in Boston, to Jedd Gyorko with the Padres, to the current, impact group in Chicago led by Bryant and Schwarber.

But the best pitcher on McLeod’s track record has been 2005 supplemental first-rounder Clay Buchholz. The Padres’ 2011 draft brought in righthanders Joe Ross and Matt Wisler (both since traded last year by the Padres), but recent Cubs drafts have not produced big league impact yet.

No one is arguing Chicago should have drafted, say, Jon Gray over Bryant with the second overall pick in 2013. But if the Cubs want to end their 107-year World Series drought, they’ll have to do better than starting Kyle Hendricks—a fine young pitcher but one who throws in the upper 80s with his fastball—in Game Three of a playoff series.

Hail To The Victors

The Mets had similar franchise frustrations of late, though they never quite bottomed out like Chicago. The Mets also have drafted hitters high in the draft—they didn’t have a first-rounder this year after signing free agent Michael Cuddyer—but they haven’t drafted a pitcher in the first round since taking Matt Harvey seventh overall in 2010.

They haven’t had to though. Obviously, the Mets just played better in sweeping the Cubs in the National League Championship series, dominating in all phases. The story, though, was how the Mets’ young, hard-throwing pitchers thwarted Chicago’s young lineup.

New York gave up just eight runs in the four games, using four starters—Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz—who all spent time in the Mets’ development system. Only Syndergaard was not a Mets draftee, and he’d thrown around 100 innings in low Class A when the Blue Jays included him (and catcher Travis d’Arnaud) in a trade for R.A. Dickey.

The Mets have developed homegrown arms, whether they were drafted highly or not, as well as any organization in the game in recent years. The most obvious success story is deGrom, a ninth-round pick whose athleticism from his days as a Stetson shortstop has translated into an electric arm that he pairs with tremendous toughness and makeup. Matz, the team’s top pick in 2009 in the second round, is another success story, brought along carefully after missing his first two professional seasons having and recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Club officials are just as proud of the system’s depth, using minor league pitching as currency in trades. New York traded 11 homegrown arms in 2015, with only righthander Michael Fulmer, a 2011 supplemental first-rounder, having been a big-ticket purchase.

That depth shows up on the field as well. Rudy Terrasas didn’t get a lot of credit when he was scouting director from 2006-10 under GM Omar Minaya, but his fingerprints were all over this pennant winner, from series MVP Daniel Murphy, a 13th-round pick in 2006, and Matz to first baseman Lucas Duda (seventh round, 2007) to Harvey and deGrom in the 2010 draft. (The Mets also drafted Astros righthander Collin McHugh, who made two playoff starts, in 2008 in the 18th round.)

That was the foundation of this pennant winner. Minaya and his successor Sandy Alderson had to choose a patient approach due to a shall we say frugal ownership group, and gave those players—as well as homegrown Latin American finds such as Jeurys Familia, Wilmer Flores, Juan Lagares and Ruben Tejada—the time they needed to develop.

The Mets’ success is a true scouting and player-development model. It’s an all-homegrown infield, and all the key, best pitchers spent plenty of time in the Mets minors.

The Cubs have received and deserve credit for their scouting success. It’s taken the Mets longer to gather all the pieces of a pennant winner. But to paraphrase one of the franchise’s most famous fans, Jerry Seinfeld: those pieces are real, and they are spectacular.

The Mets found guys who could play defense to support their pitching staff. All it takes is one play like the one Wright made in Game 4 to put a pitcher like Matz (or Harvey, or deGrom, or Syndergaard, or Wheeler when he comes back) in a position to win the game. The Mets have defenders like that everywhere, their SS platoon was defensively minded, their OF defense with the addition of Cespedes became fantastic, Duda is an above average defensive 1B, Murphy is kind of crummy at 2nd but he's also on fire at the plate so its OK.

The Sox really have nobody who's any good defensively, aside from maybe Adam Eaton and a pair of guys in Saladino and Thompson who are complete unknowns at the plate. That's the fault that holds the Sox back, while the Mets make that one defensive play that puts their superior pitching over the top the Sox will fail to make plays to equal out their pitching advantage over their opponent.