ratul wrote:Lol, wow - they didn't want to draft Bichette! Lol - this rebuild is TRASH. FIRE THESE GUYS please
They did draft him. So it's irrelevant if they had to be talked into it (in which case they were open minded) or if they simply deferred to their scouting director (which good organizations do).
If you want to look at things another way, let's look at first and second round picks for the current administration for 2016-2019 vs first and second round picks for the previous administration from 2010-2015. This is a handicap race because compensation for losing free agents was much greater for the former administration than the current administration. The rules today give only some teams losing the biggest free agent a meaningful bit of compensation.
Here are your Anthopoulos firsts
2010 Deck McGuire
2010 Aaron Sanchez
2010 Noah Syndergaard
2010 Asher Wojciechowski
2011 Tyler Beede*
2011 Jacob Anderson
2011 Joe Musgrove
2011 Dwight Smith Jr.
2011 Kevin Comer
2012 Marcus Stroman
2012 Matt Smoral
2012 Mitch Nay
2012 Tyler Gonzales
2013 Phil Bickford*
2014 Jeff Hoffman
2014 Max Pentecost
2015 Jon Harris
Anthopoulus got 12 supplemental or comp picks for losing free agents, most of whom were marginal value losses, and for failing to sign first round picks Tyler Beebe and Phil Bickford. Imagine getting a first round pick for losing Frankie Francisco in free agency!
Of the 17 regular or special first round picks above - some of which were slotted into the 40s and 50s by the time all free agent losses around the league were compensated for with comp round picks - you could say that two, Stroman and Sanchez, made an impact playing for the Jays, and Syndergaard in particular brought us R.A Dickey. A few others are making varying contributions for other teams, but never made it to the majors with Toronto on a sustained basis (think Dwight Smith Jr.)
For the same period, second rounders were
2010 Griffin Murphy
2010 Kellen Sweeney
2010 Justin Nicolino
2011 Daniel Norris
2011 Jeremy Gabryszwski
2012 Chase de Jong
2013 Clinton Hollon
2014 Sean Reid Foley
2015 Brady Singer
Now, it's not as if there weren't some other players in lower rounds who have done alright in the majors (like Matt Boyd and Kendall Graveman) and there a couple of guys with outside chances to success still in the system, their development delayed by injuries (think Justin Maese and Patrick Murphy). And some of those picks were part of the 2015 trades that brought David Price and Troy Tulowitski. You can even argue that using Chase de Jong to buy the team out of the maximum penalty created by signing Vlad Guerrero Jr above the legal spend limit helped the team re-enter the July 2 signing period for internationals sooner.
Still, it's rather remarkable that all of that drafting never yielded a) a major league position player and b) was only good enough to be converted into a couple of post-prime veterans in Price and Tulo, the former a pending free agent they wouldn't be able to re-sign and the latter a horribly expensive, modest upgrade on Jose Reyes for one and a half seasons before, like Lot's wife, turning into a pillar of salt.
In fact, the only drafted position player to make it through the system during AA's time was Kevin Pillar, and if you think it something to criticize that Bo Bichette wasn't the apple of Russ Atkins' eye, well don't give any credit to AA for a 35th round pick making it, because it's highly doubtful AA was in the room or gave a rat's ass about the 35th round pick. The success of that pick is on the scout who recommended Pillar, and no one else.
Now let's look at the current regime's first and second round picks. Again, their only comp pick was in 2017 for losing EE in free agency. And the addition of the competitive balance round has meant second round picks - which were delayed in the AA era because of the liberal comp picks awarded for losing free agents - are similarly deferred, only in the case of competitive balance picks, this is an area where the supposedly mid-market Jays cannot quality or benefit from unless they trade for such a pick.
So this is the lineup of Shatkins firsts. And sure, it's earlier days for some of this group
2016 TJ Zeuch
2017 Logan Warmoth
2017 Nate Pearson
2018 Jordan Groshans
2019 Alek Manoah
Second rounders
2016 JB Woodman (Comp)
2016 Bo Bichette
2017 Hagen Danner
2018 Griffin Conine
2019 Kendall Williams
Of these picks, only Warmoth looks like a failure of the first round and Woodman the second, but they moved off Woodman by trading him for Grichuk. Danner is a wildcard - hits for power but not for average, and as a catcher has declining value in an organization which has found a number of better catching prospects through the international market (Moreno, Kirk, Lopez). However, converting Danner to a pitcher was always an option, and we may see that happen next season. Everyone else on the above list is a live prospect, though Connine had better cut down on his whiffs and avoid another suspension. Of 10 picks through two rounds, the current administration has brought a potential all-star to the majors in Bichette, and has what some scouts consider the best pitching prospect in the majors in Pearson under careful development. There is a great deal of excitement about Groshans as potentially the guy who forces Vladdy to first base. The current top 30 prospect list - even minus Biggio, Vlad and Bo - is as good as any I can remember for an organization which hasn't often excelled in internal development. Yes, credit AA with trailers like Tellez and Alford if they actually get back to the majors and establish themselves - both are doing well right now at BUF and both are on the 40 man roster so we ought to see them with the Jays again next month. But the next wave of new faces, headed by Pearson and possibly Kay, Manoah and Woods Richardson (since pitchers can move through the system faster than position players and there are no bigger talents in their way), will be entirely of this administration's making.
