Harvesting Opinion is a regular feature on Seedlings to Stars. Each week, six of FanSided’s team blogs send S2S a question relating to their team’s minor league system, and we answer them in this space–each question gets one article devoted to answering it. In this way, we make sure we regularly get to discuss hot-button issues relating to the systems of every team, as these go on a five-week cycle.
Please note that any statistics used may be a day or two out of date, as we prepare our answers over the course of a week.
In this edition, we tackle a question sent to us from our Detroit Tigers site Motor City Bengals:
The Tigers have spent the past few weeks dealing away many young pieces, but they seem to have been dealing from positions of depth. Detroit’s system wasn’t highly regarded before these trades. How do you see the losses of guys like Francisco Martinez, Chance Ruffin, and Lester Oliveros (just to name a few) affecting the strength of the system? Is there one of the player that Detroit traded away that you feel they’ll wind up regretting more than the others?
Nathaniel says: I can’t really complain about the Tigers’ strategy.
Compare them to the Brewers, another team that isn’t said to have much of a system and nonetheless seems to be trading every decent prospect for some immediate big league help. And still, the Brewers have had a number of prospects improve this year, and their system isn’t nearly as bad as it’s made out to be as a result–there are still a couple of impact players there. The White Sox are a similar example.
Of course, the Tigers also have looser purse strings than the Brewers, so they can afford to fill holes by signing players or trading for expensive veterans–not to mention that this is a team with a history of spending a lot of money to get steals in the draft (Rick Porcello, for example).
None of the players the Tigers dealt projected as more than complementary guys–Antonio Cruz might be a fourth starter, Martinez may turn into a decent third baseman, Ruffin could be a nice reliever, etc. It’s highly unlikely they dealt away a future centerpiece of the franchise.
I think the prospect they’ll miss the most is Charlie Furbush, who could essentially be as good as Doug Fister pretty quickly and has had some nice starts for the Mariners since the deal. But Furbush himself is a lesson in what I was just saying–he came completely out of nowhere last season to establish himself, and now here he is. Other recent Tigers players like Brennan Boesch, Andy Dirks, Armando Galarraga, Alex Avila, and Clete Thomas have risen from obscurity and gotten to contribute in the majors in short order.
Certainly, the system takes a step down with so much depth traded away, but again, a team can pretty much “luck into” replenishing that depth, and good drafting can fix it quickly as well. Detroit’s survived for years without having a plethora of acclaimed minor leaguers, and I don’t see this latest prospect exodus as changing the team’s overall situation in any sort of meaningfully negative way.
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Wally says:
Nathaniel is spot-on in his take here. The relative strength of any team’s minor league system is always in a state of flux. Prospects emerge and prospects disappear and it’s just the way the wheel turns.
Detroit dealt away a lot of talent but I don’t really see them missing any of it. None of the guys sent away were impact prospects and while one or two of them may have a really strong season or a nice run of seasons in their career, I don’t see the Tigers regretting any of the moves. The guy I think has the best chance of having a quality major league career is Chance Ruffin, but relievers are notoriously inconsistent and all of them essentially replaceable from season to season. No matter how thing the free agent market is, there are always relievers available, and with some shrewd scouting and patience an entire bullpen can be upgraded on the cheap. Throw in the fact that the Tigers have the resources to overpay for a guy like Joaquin Benoit, and they can easily cover for the loss of Ruffin in the short and long term.
However, they did without question deal away a fair amount of depth and serviceable talent, and they finished 29th out of 30 when it comes to bonus expenditures for each team’s draft classes. Both these facts are going to put more pressure on the organization to outperform their competition in other areas like international scouting and intelligent allocation of resources in the free agent market.
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For more on the Tigers, be sure to check out Motor City Bengals.
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