Traditional Rebuild: am I the only won who gets excited?

[North_of_Border]

Now im not saying the Jays try a traditional rebuild. They tried for years and failed. AA has a good thing going now. Jays are the talk of Toronto. They are title contenders. This superstar lineup is exciting.

Though....

What Im saying is, isent it also exciting when you build the traditional way. Like the Rays, Astros, Mets or Athletics strategy. Watching prospects develop and come through your teams system. Then finally making an impact and the team winning. Even though your team is losing, you watch the development of possible future stars.

Im more than happy with Tulo, Donaldson, Price etc... but something about the idea of developing Hoffman, Baretto, Norris, Syndergaard excites me.

Anyway, I only thought of this thing since the Jays are playing the Yankees. The strategy for both these teams seems to have been flipped. NYY was always famous for having a loaded lineup with stars all around. Jays were the team that developed their future stars. However, unlike the RAYS, the Jays had the money to add a few high priced tools to the lineups. It was not just a Jays team full of prospects...... now though its changed.

The Yankees remind me of the recent Jays. They have a few stars but also lots of prospects coming through the system. They are balancing it out.... The Jays are trading prospects for established stars. The tables have turned.

Though why then are Yankees so successful at both kinds of team building?
Jays failed at one... are learning the other.

[wbbfan]

When a team is bad, all the hope goes into the farm teams and prospects. Along with all the hype. They take steps and improve, get promoted and can continue. That makes it very easy to stay excited and have hope for the future. But in the end, few of those prospects turn into consistent stars.
Its not like this team and others, havent tried to rebuild the classic way. But it doesnt allways work. Some times players dont pan out and you end up with gaps between good players coming up which extends the rebuild and can push current good players off the team to continue the rebuild.
The As, dont do the classic rebuild either. The pound out alot of mid level players and wait for enough to build up into some thing special. They have crazy ups and downs year to year and its a surprise when they develop some one like donaldson.
Just remember for all those hyped prospects your excited by, there are 100+ in the same shoes that bust. Its a gamble, and if you gamble and lose at the classic rebuild you start from scratch. Thats how you can miss the play offs for 20+ years. Remember travis snider, dustin mcgowan and soo many others.

[Schad]

When a team is bad, all the hope goes into the farm teams and prospects. Along with all the hype. They take steps and improve, get promoted and can continue. That makes it very easy to stay excited and have hope for the future. But in the end, few of those prospects turn into consistent stars.
Its not like this team and others, havent tried to rebuild the classic way. But it doesnt allways work. Some times players dont pan out and you end up with gaps between good players coming up which extends the rebuild and can push current good players off the team to continue the rebuild.
The As, dont do the classic rebuild either. The pound out alot of mid level players and wait for enough to build up into some thing special. They have crazy ups and downs year to year and its a surprise when they develop some one like donaldson.
Just remember for all those hyped prospects your excited by, there are 100+ in the same shoes that bust. Its a gamble, and if you gamble and lose at the classic rebuild you start from scratch. Thats how you can miss the play offs for 20+ years. Remember travis snider, dustin mcgowan and soo many others.

Well, most of those twenty years weren't spent doing anything approximating a rebuild...we fielded a lot of teams with an odd mishmash of young and old, good enough for 75-85 wins and not a hell of a lot more. And it was by design. When it came time to move players, we aimed for lateral trades: we moved Clemens for another old guy in Wells (who was then traded for the busted shoulder of late-20s Mike Sirotka); Shawn Green was traded for a late-20s Raul Mondesi, Woody Williams for Joey Hamilton, Shannon Stewart for Bobby Kielty, etc. Seriously, our MO in the late 90s/early aughts was "give us the guy who plays his position, but isn't as good". Worse still, we let some very good Jays walk for nothing when it was highly unlikely that they'd re-sign, seemingly to avoid the backlash of having traded them...Delgado, Alomar and Escobar come to mind. Others we held on to until we'd devalued them as trade chips, and then good sweet fk all when dealt; Juan Guzman and John Olerud are the standouts there. We also got very cheap in the draft, and surrendered our massive advantage in recruiting Dominican players in the name of saving a buck.

None of those are the hallmarks of a rebuilding team; rebuilds are about long-term planning, and we rarely seemed to be looking more than one year ahead. AA's the first to make a concerted effort in that direction, and the fruits of his labour resulted in the current group. Whether it was wise to use them as trade bait rather than building through those players remains to be seen, but we'll soon get a good idea of how we'll need to build in the future; if this run doesn't lead to a loosening of the purse strings, within a couple years we're going to need an overhaul to reorient the squad with our financial constraints, and a rebuild's about the best way to do so.

[dagger]

The Yankees have the means to go either way, spending lavishly on the present, or building patiently. Their current bunch is aging, but they have resisted trading their best prospects for short-term additions who could have helped put them over the top again. Today's starting pitcher, Severino, is a prime example of the approach Cashman now appears to favour. They could have traded him at the deadline, almost by himself, to get a Price or Cueto, but believe he'll be the cornerstone of their rotation shortly. They'll deal a prospect if they don't have an inner belief in his perceived high ceiling (Montero), but retain those they believe will be the foundation of tomorrow's Yankees, the cheap but extraordinary talent that will help give them the financial latitude to chase the most coveted FAs once they run one or two current players off the payroll.

[Schad]

And that's the other side in baseball: you don't necessarily need to go the Astros route and detonate the whole shebang, you just need to hang on to talent when it appears. High draft picks are better than low picks, but it's not skewed toward the top five in the same fashion as the NBA; while parts of our now-aborted youth movement would be hard to replicate thanks to the change in the compensation system, we built one of the best farm systems in the game with only one top ten pick (in Hoffman). Similarly, the Red Sox built an impressive pile of talent, largely through international free agency and comp picks, while trying to contend.

[Michael Bradley]

And that's the other side in baseball: you don't necessarily need to go the Astros route and detonate the whole shebang, you just need to hang on to talent when it appears. High draft picks are better than low picks, but it's not skewed toward the top five in the same fashion as the NBA; while parts of our now-aborted youth movement would be hard to replicate thanks to the change in the compensation system, we built one of the best farm systems in the game with only one top ten pick (in Hoffman). Similarly, the Red Sox built an impressive pile of talent, largely through international free agency and comp picks, while trying to contend.

Exactly. In baseball, you can have a top 5 MLB team and a top 5 farm system simultaneously. It's never one or the other. The Jays for whatever reason have decided that it's either one or the other, and while that might get them a division or WC appearance this season, it may come back to hurt them in 2016-beyond.

It's one of the reasons I don't mind if AA gets replaced after this season, even if the current team makes the playoffs. You can't use prospects as capital to acquire players on free agent contracts and expect sustainable success, certainly not if you do it twice in a 3 year span. The Jays will need to find a GM who can quench ownership's thirst of keeping attendance at a solid level while still being able to build a roster that focuses both on winning and building for the future.