Bonehead Player Development Decision Discussion

Switching from rotation to bullpen, seemingly constantly.

to make some MLB starts that early

And then not calling up Buster Posey until late May and then finally trading Molina away.

Fernando Martinez, Ruben Tejada, and Jenrry Mejia should never have seen ML action this year.

everything about Porcello’s handling makes me scratch my head.

I mean, nobody is going to call it a mistake if someone is promoted soon and kills it, right? Like Heyward in Atlanta, even with certain struggles, he’s in the right place.

What about Posey in San Francisco? That’s not bad player development decisions, obviously Posey is killing it. If the Giants miss the playoffs, then its just bad personnel decisions. It hurt the team, not Buster.

How about the Kansas City Royals? You give up on Alex Gordon at 3rd base after 9 games this year. Two years removed from a 109 OPS+ season at age 24. Stop jerking this kid around.

On a more prospect-oriented, and maybe off-the-wall note - Stephen Strasburg should have never pitched in the minors. It was obviously never necessary. There’s no reason to believe that he would have gotten hurt and more or less by pitching in the majors. But at least you would have the Rookie of the Year, sold more tickets, and won a couple more games.

Kila Ka’aihue.

And this isn’t in the minor leagues, but the Pirates’ failure to find regular AB’s for Lastings Milledge and Jeff Clement (in favor of Ryan Doumit and Garrett Jones) is kinda depressing.

To me, switching Wallace from 3rd base to 1st base was a huge mistake - it instantly slashed his value, in my opinion. He never had the profile of being a star at 1B, so to me, the best course of action would have been leaving him at third base, where as long as his defense was relatively average, his offensive numbers would likely make him a very good player.

I understand why it was necessary, and yeah, he had done pretty well in AAA in very limited time. But I definitely would have stuck with Davis or gone and got someone cheap. Probably both options would have outperformed Smoak and allowed him a bit more time.

There are a couple of questionable decisions by the Rangers, but it’s pretty hard to criticize right now.

You just don’t take your top pitching prospect and come out of spring training with him as a middle reliever unless he’s ready and you want to save some innings on his arm ala Liriano.

Firing Josh Byrnes was a stupid player development decision that just keeps on giving. Since John didn’t specifically mention player moves, that’s what I’m going with.

playing Chris Carter at 1B basically all of April, May, June, and July, when 1B is among the major league team’s few strengths, LF is a black hole both in Oakland and in the high minors, and Carter may be a future DH but he is getting no practice whatsoever at the skill.

Why was he playing 1B, when he doesn’t even play it well, instead of learning LF and/or learning DH?

So then Carter is called up to play LF in mid-August, when he had only been out there for 11 days in AAA, and having now been sent back to AAA he has still had virtually no experience at DH in his career. Oh, he’s playing 1B tonight.

Meanwhile, Barton is ensconced at 1B and Carter’s future in 2011 looks to be…?

Many team’s that didn’t spend on the draft messed up on player development. With hard slotting on it’s way, teams not stocking up on high end talent in the later rounds are missing out on exploiting this flaw while it still exists.

he is not ready yet and Boston has killed his confidence

Getting jerked around up and down from the majors to the minors. He gets 33 ABs coming off an injury in April, and they pull the plug on him and send him right down to the minors. He proceeds to rake, hitting .315 with 14 HRs in AAA, yet Dayton Moore says “he’s not ready yet”. I don’t get it. You could also say the same for the Kila monster, ready for the bigs and rotting in the minors. Could Dayton Moore truly be any worse of a GM?

Drafted as a sixth round over slot high school shortstop.

Placed as an OF and toiled the whole year hitting .240 in A+ FSL, supposedly a pitching paradise.

Did the Tigers decide they just don’t like this guy?

But does Jeff Samardzija count?

Another older one (but one of the biggest of all time) - Mark Fidrych

John VanBenschoten - guy sets the NCAA record for home runs in a season, and the Pirates draft him as a pitcher? And then they keep him at pitcher after he struggles and gets injured?

And I do think Edwin Jackson does belong on the list. His handling after the Randy Johnson game, but before being traded to the Rays, probably set him back a couple years.

Without a doubt, the top of the list for this year has to include the Giants (read Brian Sabean) mishandling of the Buster Posey callup. It easily could mean the difference between whether or not the Giants make the playoffs this year.

First off, Sabean waited way too long to call Posey up when it was obvious to any informed observer that Posey would be the best catcher in SF as soon as he hit the majors, and that he would be one of the top 2 or 3 hitters on the team right off the bat (no pun intended). Sabean even had a public meltdown in the press back in May where he denigrated Posey’s defensive capability to play catcher in the majors. There’s nothing better to generate loyalty than publicly humiliating your #1 prospect in the local press.

Secondly, after waiting so long to call Posey up (with Bengie Molina’s game sinking lower and lower every day) Sabean finally calls him up on May 28th. Just in time to ensure that Posey will certainly become Super 2 arb-eligible after the 2011 season. If they had just waited another 3-4 weeks he wouldn’t be eligible for arb until after the 2012 season. Or, if Sabean hadn’t been so dumb as to call up Posey on Sept. 1, 2009 - adding 34 days to his major league service clock while only playing him in 7 games and giving 17 ABs.

Finally, they had Posey starting at 1B (not even full time) for his first 30 days in the majors this year, when it’s obvious that Bengie Molina’s bat and defense had deteriorated to the point that he was a below-average catcher and a horrible hitter.

Not even counting last year when they kept him on the major league bench for about a month.

The Brewers have still refused to find him a position he can play. I know it makes sense to keep him at the tougher position as long as possible and the Brewers have recently started to give him reps at 1b and RF — but he is still playing the majority of his time at 3B despite being in his 6th year in the system and never showing any ability to play that position.

Porcello was bounced to AAA for like 4 starts which wasn’t really helpful.
Scott Sizemore was jerked around and now he’s being shifted around the infield (away from 2B).
Jacob Turner never should have gone to Hi-A as soon as he has.
Austin Jackson’s done well, but on a high BABIP and he probably could have benefited from some time in AAA.
Alex Avila’s looked lost and probably could have used regular at-bats in AAA.
Daniel Fields is 19 and in Hi-A.
Andy Oliver was rushed to the Majors for 4 starts.

But in my book, the worst NON move made this year was the Brewers holding onto Prince Fielder because Doug Melvin felt 1) they still had a chance to contend, and 2) he didnt get any offers that included top line MLB starting pitching.

In my book, the best trade the Brewers could have made was to deal Fielder this year before July 31, and not for an immediate fix, but for a semi rebuild/replenish the farm system with arms, type of deal that brought them 3 or 4 high upside A ball pitchers and maybe a 1B prospect as well. (see my aqa question the other day to John involving the Rays and Colome, McGee and Barnese: perfect return for Fielder to a team needing a big bat for the playoffs).

I generally like a lot of the moves Dombrowski does, but he certainly deserves a lot of the blame for the Tigers woes right now.

First, he gave terrible deals to a number of players, and they’ve all come back to haunt them especially this year. Shelling out contracts, and then releasing or trading (while paying the majority of salary) Adam Everett, Nate Robertson, and Dontrelle Willis, along with constantly moving around, and parading out the fragile Carlos Guillen, has made huge holes on the team everywhere.

This has caused Dombrowski to now call up players like Andy Oliver, Danny Worth, Scott Sizemore, Casper Wells, Robbie Weinhardt, and a number of others already up like Alex Avila, Ryan Perry, and so forth, who clearly aren’t ready to be consistent major league starters/contributors to the team.

Not to mention, they continue to plug guys like Gerald Laird, Ryan Raburn, Don Kelly, and Brandon Inge in the lineup everyday.

So due to Dombrowski’s overspending on the veterans, he’s been forced to make something like 11 rookies have their debuts this season despite the fact that so few of them are truly ready.

With the size of the Tigers payroll, you’d think they wouldn’t have so many holes to fill, but they do. A lot of it is off the books this offseason, but it means nothing if its spent poorly again.