12 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

The $5M or under part is the tricky part. We can literally look at 200 fringe/injured guys or AAAA types and pick 10 of them and still might not get the value. It's the hardest thing to do and the Sox got extremely lucky they found value in McCann and Marshall. Look at all the crap they tried and never panned out. You could probably find 15 guys over the last 3 years they took fliers on and missed. We never did find our Max Muncy. Palka was the closest we got and he got nowhere close to the positional versatility and OBP of Muncy. Another guy is how the Astro's fleeced the Dodgers for Yordan Alvarez or how a guy like Arestides Aquino was kept by the Reds. If I had to choose I'd still scour the young guys who can provide even wild unimaginable upside like somehow Marcus Semien improved his D and hitting to get 8 WAR. It's also one of the reasons the Sox shouldn't be trading their draft picks yet and putting more money in the international free agency and not trading that money away. I'm not really that confident that we have the personnel in player development/scouting or even the tools to identify the next Muncy , Semien , Alvarez or Aquino since some of that is just looking in the right place at the right time or just keeping a very long list of players to keep an eye on and pouncing on them if they become available even for a short period of time like Aquino.

Same goes for Indians who turned Ramirez, Clevinger, and Bieber into stars. Some team do it better than the others. And it's no coincidence that Dodgers and Astros are two of the best teams at elevating a player's career through their development. Investing in data analytics and having your development staff fully embrace the analytical significance and build plans based on it is the key. That to me is worth spending on than $15M on freaking Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso in 2019.

 

As we rapidly approach the 9 year anniversary of this fabled date... let us hope this never again happens. 

2 hours ago, thxfrthmmrs said:

Same goes for Indians who turned Ramirez, Clevinger, and Bieber into stars. Some team do it better than the others. And it's no coincidence that Dodgers and Astros are two of the best teams at elevating a player's career through their development. Investing in data analytics and having your development staff fully embrace the analytical significance and build plans based on it is the key. That to me is worth spending on than $15M on freaking Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso in 2019.

 

I agree wholeheartedly and it's why I don't believe sustained success is realistic because they never prepared the whole system for it.