Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxpert
I think it's irrelevant (though perhaps interesting) how our OF compares to Tampa Bay's or Toronto's. What would be more relevant is a comparison to NL foes, with particular focus on the NL West teams. Those are the teams we are directly competing against for playoff spots in the future.
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A fair point certainly about focusing more within the division, and that will be most important to us. But I'll restate my purpose in such comparisons.
The Rox aren't going to do it the way most fan$ would like. They are going to do it with player development and doing things the "right" way long-term. That is how they need to be JUDGED fairly in accordance with their stated intentions - not so much by money spent because that isn't our reality. That isn't the plan or the measurements they are trying to meet. This is a development comparison thread where we should be judged against those who do it best. How do we really measure up? In reality, we need our development system to live up to the hype it has received and produce young talent that is better than most other systems.
The Rox are judged critically in terms of financial commitment in every other thread on this site. Here was a place I thought they could be judged based soley on their intended plan of player development versus the existing standards in the game. If we only judge them against 4 other teams that would give us a good idea of the division in a few years (which is also a good thing to examine), but not so much a good sample of overall development standards in the industry that I wanted to compare us against to really see how we are doing so far down this path.
And it certainly is possible and a feasible way to become a strong team over an extended period of time because young talent is such an advantage in the game. Young stars are GOLD. You can't get anything better other than your hands around the World Series trophy. Those models and case histories exist. The question we need to look at IMO more so than a comparison of our spending versus other team spending is our DEVELOPMENT realities versus other development standards currently in the game.
We've just started, but I'm not so sure just yet that our system is ultimately going to live up to the high praise people heap on us. Of course, some of our stronger areas of development are still to be explored in the thread where we should receive much higher marks.