I just wanted to remind people that (if they want) they can be happy and optimistic when looking at our club. :)

“In Soviet Russia, cynical gets YOU!!!”

Those are certainly closer numbers and he has closed on occassion.

My main point is that his performances in the past are closer quality and we would be getting that in the setup position, which we didn’t get in 2008.

Also, Mark Lemke in the 27th round of the 1983 draft.

I started on rebuild, then jumped to how the Braves had a long stretch of winning. So good point on that, but that’s not what I meant. The talk at the end was more about the construct of how the Giants might duplicate the Braves long stretch of success, I was not literally saying the Giants did it the exact same way the Braves did it.

I agree that it’s more complicated than stinking resulting a successful rebuild, anyone can see that with the Pirates and Royals. My main point is that I think it was crucial to their rebuild that they got Chipper Jones, and the only way they got him was losing for a long time, and badly. Without him, they never have that long run of success.

The draft is a matter of doing it long enough to get the key pieces you need, not to literally rebuild the whole team. In fact, and I know you know this, every rebuild is part-draft, part free agent, part-international free agents, part trades. Everyone does it a little bit different.

But everyone needs to get crucial pieces, the star players, through the draft. Sure, they got pieces from when they were relatively better (though at .500, they still got better draft picks than if they were actually winning divisions). Again, nobody rebuilds just during their losing period. The key thing is that the elite players, the ones who can lead you to have a long stretch of success, are easiest to find when you have a pick among the first five picks overall. That entails a lot of losing.

And the draft, again as you all know, is not a smooth normal curve, it is lumpy and uneven, and sometimes you end up with some poor picks. That’s been the point of my draft study, that even if you select with a top pick overall, it is not like catching fish in a barrel, there is still a significant amount of risk you are taking on, even with the first pick overall.

So, if you want to rebuild easier, on a relative scale with all the other alternatives, you need to start losing a lot of games, enough to get you into the Top 5 picks overall, and keeping on losing and picking until you find the right player who can lead you forward. Because there is no other higher probability way of doing it.

Free agency is mostly catch as catch can, if you are lucky there is a Bonds on the market who you can sign long-term, but mostly they are Casey Blakes and Orlando Cabreras. Good luck trying to find someone like that in Latin America, seems like you have to get close to every parent with a teenage son just to find one to sign, there has not been any consistency as to how to find and sign a star player. And Japan (and the rest of Asia) is even worse for finding a star player. And you cannot always steal a Smoltz, or Kent, or Schmidt in trade. The problem with all these methods is scarcity, there is not always a good player obtainable in these ways each year, so these are not reliable ways to execute a rebulid.

The draft is the only area where a team can reliably find the good players they need to complete their rebuild. And the best pickings are if you select within the Top 5, and ideally the first pick. But as you noted with Atlanta’s picks (and if you check out other teams, other drafts), that is pretty poor results.

That has been my exact point with my draft study: there are very poor results in terms of finding good players in the draft, even if you are drafting with a Top 5 pick, under a coin flip.

However, it’s the only game in town and still the best way of locating the good players you will need if you expect to become a winner again, and particularly if you hope to build a long winning dynasty. The odds are much better with a top 5 pick (around 45% odds based on my study) than a pick you would have if you were winning (around 10-11%), or four times better.

So you basically need to lose, and ideally lose badly, for a long time, to get multiple lottery tickets, which these players basically are, and hope that you pick a good one who you are rebuild around.

Thus, your point on the Braves rebuilding without getting any production from draft picks while losing is an apt one, showing that a rebuild can happen without a top draft pick contribution, my main point is that their long run of success probably wouldn’t have happened without Chipper, and that’s what I’m really more concerned about.

Most teams worry too much over being competitive for that year once the glory days are over. We all saw that with the Giants the past 4 seasons. Teams built upon older players have creaky foundations that won’t last long. They have short shelf-lives as a winning team.

Most of that Braves team that they had their first success with were basically at their peak or starting to go past, they were mostly around 30 years old, with some older, and some younger. So that success did start without the high draft help from the losing, yes, but it was Chipper who sustained that long run. And, actually, you were off slightly, Avery was a big contributor to that first winning team, as well as Kent Mercker, so they did get production from prospects drafted from their losing years, they contributed to their rebuild. The fruit from those early losing years were starting to pay off that season, and they added veterans around them to fill what they needed.

So, yes, rebuilding is more than simply losing for a number of years. I think anyone here can see that. My point is that if you want to rebuild and have it last, you need to stink for a while until you get enough pieces to build around by supplementing with free agents, international free agents, and trades. Because few teams, if ever, rebuild without obtaining good players via the draft, and the fastest way of doing that is to lose and lose badly, getting higher probability draft picks.

Being mediocre brings you mediocre draft picks. The Giants of the 70’s and 80’s showed that to be a poor method of rebuilding. It was only when they really lost a lot of games, leading to the drafts of Will Clark and Matt Williams, that rebuilt the Giants and put us to the path to today. If that continued into the 90’s we might have become the Tampa Bay Giants back then, who knows if there would have been enough support without the Will Clark era energizing the team again.

youve been watching “they live” on continuous loop?

find a way to the playoffs and we have lincecum, cain, johnson starting only? with dirty as a long guy or spot starter? wow, that would be clean, very clean