it is a really good thread with some more data coming from Shawn, Cal, or Harry.

One thing is certain, Harden of ‘09 is not the guy we traded for in ’08. Could be a tiny problem, bad luck, or injury. It’s definitely hard to pin point.

I expect more from you. That is a weak analyis.

You need to address multiple issues before writing off Kosuke in CF. Does he play deeper becuase he is excellent coming in? Or because he sucks going back? What types of jumps/reads does he get? If he gets great jumps and is great coming in, then he is a GREAT CF. Certainly better than a guy who plays shallow, sucks coming in, and gets lousy jumps.

Outfield play is certainly more dynamic than saying He plays several steps deeper than the better centerfielders. Too many balls drop in front of him. That is a lazy analysis of his play.

Yabbut: The Yankees I’ll give you, at least in 1996. But by the end of their title run they were getting large contributions from players who came over via free agency or in trades from teams who couldn’t afford to keep the players, Clemens most notably but also Paul O’Neil, El Duque, Knoblach, and David Justice.

The Red Sox are not a persuaasive example for you. Sure they had some home grown talent contributing in both wins, but $20mm/year for Manny Ramirez isn’t exactly reflective of a team that wouldn’t “spend [its] way out of organizational shortcomings” and the three biggest stars on the 2004 roster other than Manny were likewise acquired in free agency or trades from teams that couldn’t afford them (Ortiz, Pedro and Schilling), as were the stars of the 2007 series (Manny, Schilling and Ortiz again, plus Beckett, Dice-K, Lowell, and JD Drew). Those clubs all had very high payrolls despite getting contributions from some home grown players

Moral of the story, as you put it: you can’t typcast what makes a winning ballclub. The Cubs are a large market team with deep pockets, its not a vice that they would try to spend some of that.

The Yankees had a productive farm system in the mid-90s, but otherwise have only had occasional contributors from their farm. Their playoff run through this decade is predicated on the few remaining faces from the farm (Jeter, Rivera) and mostly on free agency (the list is long).

Boston has had a great deal of farm success in recent years, but their first championship in 2004 was almost completely devoid of homegrown talent. Ramirez, Ortiz, Damon, Pedro, Schilling, Lowe, Arroyo, Wakefield, Varitek, Millar, Foulke, etc were all acquired via free agency or trade. Only three position players from their system saw much playing time at all (Garciaparra – traded to us, Youkilis and Nixon), and neither Nixon nor Youkilis was the regular starter on that team.

But again, both of those teams are/were built predominantly on buying talent rather than cultivating talent. Boston has been able to supplement their spending power with home-grown players, but they definitely bought their way to the top.

When in reality, there isn’t a team out there that’s made serious bids for Free Agents that hasn’t had similar or worse results. You need to outbid everyone else to win a beauty contest, so by definition you’re usually offering the most years, most money, or both. Sometimes that works out great (Manny in Boston — that contract was considered ludicrous at the time, and they even waived him a couple times, but the dude won 2 WS rings). Sometimes it works out not so great (Giambi in NY, A-Rod in Texas/NY, Kevin Brown in LA).

It ain’t Hendry. This sport has a lot of money these days, and Soriano almost certainly would have signed somewhere else at 6 or 7 years for comparable money. Jim likely outbid the competition by no more than a year in length, and $1-2M per year.