Quote:
Originally Posted by Orcin
I am going to follow the develop hitters / buy pitchers strategy carefully. I usually end up going the other way and then have to buy my best pitchers anyway. Your way sounds better.
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I did some draft work for the Cubs a few years back. I had a slew of pitchers they wanted me to look at and when I was done scouting I sat down with Theo to talk through his draft strategy. I did the same thing with Buck when I went to Arizona, picked his brain about the expansion draft philosophy and what theirs was.
Theo told me they were going to focus almost exclusively on college hitters early. Apparently, the numbers show they are the least risky amateur players to invest in as their the group that gets the largest % of draft picks to the big leagues. Which honestly makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
They looked at pitchers, with some rare exceptions, as way too risky an investment of big dollars. Their belief was that you let all the other teams take the risks and you 'buy them' in free agency. Most of the risk for a pitcher is gone by that point. You don't spend millions signing and developing guys who never make it. You clearly still draft them but you don't ever do it at the top of the 1st round or early rounds.
Always exceptions clearly but I thought it was a fascinating approach. My background tells me you can develop pitchers far better than many teams do it if you create an organization-wide approach to how you bring young arms along.