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Originally Posted by Mecca
Cain is the guy who did develop into what he was supposed to be..and he was largely developed by another organization.
Perez in a lot of ways should be considered a bonus, I don't ever remember him being on a top 100 list, he was never thought of the same way the other guys were around baseball. Hosmer, Moose and Myers were suppose to be stars. Duffy was supposed to be an ace...hell Mike Montgomery and John Lamb were suppose to be somebodies.
I won't go any further into pitching there really isn't an argument, they flat out sucked balls at developing pitchers. I do think their hitting approach like duncan said of "if they are producing leave them alone" led to a lot of big league struggles for those guys.
If a lot of bad habits had been broken early on in the organization it may have taken a bit longer for them to get here but we may have seen better players or some guys make it that didn't.
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Some of it can be chalked up to developmental approach.
But some of it is also misunderstanding Baseball prospects and how different a beast it is.
The “elite” prospects the Royals had in the farm system in 2011 were Hosmer, Moustakas, Myers, and Lamb. That system had a crazy amount of depth, but guys like Duffy and Ventura and Chris Dwyer and etc who were on the back half of the top 100 were never expected to be superstars.
John Lamb’s injury killed him as a major leaguer. Never got his fastball back, lost the special command he had. Injuries happen.
Duffy was seen as a likely 3 with a 2 ceiling, never an ace. Montgomery was the same.
There is no such thing as a pitching prospect is a thing for a reason, the biggest reason being that if you have 4 pitching prospects, an AVERAGE return would be for one to be at least 80 percent of what he expected, two to bust, and one to be useful but as a bullpen guy or back-end starter.
An above average return would cut one of those busts out.
If you’re elite at developing pitching, like the Cardinals and Rays have been, you hit on 1/2 or close to it of your pitching prospects.
Compare what the Royals got out of Hosmer and Moustakas to what the Twins are getting out of their version of those two - Buxton and Sano (with Buxton being a more elite prospect by a wide margin than anyone else).
It also should be noted that guys like Perez and Cain and Dyson and Holland and Herrera, all key contributors to the run, were developed into far more than it was thought they would be. Have to apply credit in those situations, too.