The Tigers seem to be strip mining their system for arms, with Willis falling apart especially. Is it more need than having Porcello ready?

And I guess Bumgarner winning the triple crown in the SAL, and Most Spectacular Pitcher, and Class A Starting Pitcher of the Year, and SAL most outstanding pitcher means nothing, right?

especially considering Porcello was totally shelled in his first game, and struck nobody out in his second game. The fact that you’re declaring anyone right or wrong on this issue after like 3 games is rather ridiculous. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

BTW, everyone here hates Sabean. At least most do.

You’re right. Let’s DFA Bumgarner and cut our losses.

k, I wished we had Heyward now and I still do. That doesn’t make picking Bumgarner a bad pick. Porcello I’d prefer, but i’m not upset with timmy two.

overall, still a good draft.

Shoulda just given Bonds the extra $5000, instead he turned us down and went to ASU…..and we wasted a draft pick that coulda been Zane Smith…….

well, wcw in full douche bag effect.

To this point, Bumgarner and Heyward are effectively equivalent, and a wash. The whole bit that runs ‘pitchers are more susceptible to injury, thus hitters are better’ is only helpful in the abstract, and not particularly helpful here. It rarely decisive in deciding who is a better prospect among two similarly high prospects. Its like noting that many top prospects fail, period—especially when someone tries to give projections, and thus concluding that top prospects aren’t as valuable as a proven average MLB player: its a leap of logic that leads to things like Michael Tucker, RF, SFG. (how Ironic that is).

They are both in a-ball and still have a lot of chance to fail. Neither looks like they will, though.

Yes, I’d rather Porcello, but not by much. I’m not sold on him either. That he is in the Majors is point that proves little about Porcello, but quite a bit about you. It is the overwhelming consensus around baseball that Porcello is being rushed. You know this right?

There ain’t shit you can say “I told you so” about, here. Instead, you should apply hand to mouth, or consider removing your keyboard for a while, until you can be less foolish.

Probably the Giants felt more confident in their evaluation of Bumgarner than Heyward. And hey, guess what? They’ve been amazingly spectacularly right about Bumgarner so far. A pick is not a bad pick if it could have been better. It is a bad pick if the player underperforms, and so far MadBum has shown no signs of that. He’s been ridiculously dominant every step of the way in the minors.

Also, evaluating draft picks before they play in double-fucking-A is ridiculous. And by ridiculous I mean insane.

Wow, that post is all kinds of fail. Firstly analysing indidvidual picks like this is generally pointless as drafting in baseball is very much an inexact science & there’s always going to be picks you can make differently. Look at how many times teams passed on Pujols for the perfect example!

Analysing the picks based on one season & a couple of weeks of minor league ball is pretty pointless as performances in the minors isn’t the aim for draft picks, it’s what they do in the majors that counts. Also, if you’re evaluating them on performance so far (which is stupid) you’re actually contradicting yourself. Heyward had a good year but Bumgarner put up better numbers, and Alderson put up better numbers than Porcello in a more hitter friendly environement. Porcello is the majors as opposed to Alderson for completely different reasons, namely that our rotation is good and Detroits isn’t! Also ignoring bonus demands is pretty easy for you to do with no involvement but it isn’t as easy as that in the real world!

Criticising the choice of Bumgarner at this stage is really beyond stupid irrespective of whether you have a preference for Heyward or not. Currently it’s looking like a very good choice but we’ll have to see what the future holds.

1. Easy to say ‘Screw Bonus Demands’ with someone else’s money (and I say that as a season ticket holder).

2. Any post criticizing the 2007 draft, focusing on guys they should’ve drafted other than Bumgarner or Alderson, but not touching on Fairley…well, I think this is someone looking to pick a fight and not be serious.

3. Anyone who justifies not liking Bumgarner as a draft pick for the reason of ’y’know, really, more pitching?’ clearly needs to spend five years being a Texas Rangers fan.

Can’t you at least wait until they’re both in the majors before telling everyone to eat crow? I mean, really, man.

Giants vs. Braves in late 2010 ought to be a fun game.

I TOLD YOUZE SO!

They’re going to need to replace Cain’s spot in the rotation when they trade him for Fielder.

is this a pseudo-greek attempt at kleos? your fame goes abroad to the sky’s rim, sir…

I like him in the show right now, I like his ability to get ground balls and after watching both his starts I think he will be fine.

As for Heyward over Bumgarner, you are out of your fucking mind. To say “I told you so” requires the consensus opinion to be utterly and epically wrong, and you to be unequivocally right, which you are not. They are both awesome prospects and about equal in terms of rankings

YEAH AND WHY DIDNT WE DRAFT PUJOLS IN THE 12TH ROUND!

We have 3 home-grown pitchers in our starting rotation, so according to wcw’s math there must have been 9 Giants pitchers whose arms fell off?

At the time, I probably would’ve picked Heyward and Porcello too, and that would’ve worked out fabulously, but if you’re really complaining about the horrible fate of having Bumgarner and Alderson, well, that’s kinda dumb.

If there’s one thing the Giants have sucked at the last couple years, it’s been developing quality young starting pitchers.

There’s so much uncertainty in the draft that I think it’s unfair to complain about a team that picks good players because they could have picked an even better player. And we still don’t know who’s going to turn out to be the best players here.

Heyward and Bumgarner were rated pretty closely before the draft by Baseball America, and Porcello was passed on because of his price tag. You can quibble with those decisions, but two years later, I’m pretty happy to have two fine prospects in Bumgarner and Alderson.

can we have this conversation in about 8 years?

Are we not allowed to talk about ‘signability’?

We’re talking about a player that most clubs thought was one of the best pitcher in the draft. He fell because no one wanted to pay him the $3.5 million signing bonus + the 4 year/$7.5m contract he eventually signed. That’s a commitment most the clubs were unwilling to give, and I can’t fault Sabean for doing the same. He already had 3 first rounders & 3 supplementals to pay for.

Gentlemen and some Ladies
I know this has been beaten to death but how can you speculate on a draft that has yet to produce major leaguers. I remember when the Angels had a draft that had Dallas McPhereson, Casey Kotchman, and like Jeff Mathis. When they were all prospects Baseball America called it the best draft in the whole prospect book, and they were talking about 5 years of drafts from every organization. And now none of those players have come anywhere close to living up to that. So there is just a little perspective.

1) The worst thing about the Giants franchise is that they have Madison Bumgarner and Tim Alderson under contract.

2) Anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid

3) Any references to budgetary limitations preventing the drafting of Porcello or causing the drafting of Williams or Culberson will be summarily ignored.

Douchiest douche to ever douche a douche.

Crazy thread is nuts.

so to summarize: you think that 22 months is a sufficient amount of time to evaluate a draft, and in those 22 months you have concluded that the Giants made a colossal mistake in choosing two pitchers who both led their leagues in ERA last year (while leading the league in many other categories in MadBum’s case) despite each being the youngest starting pitcher in their respective leagues.

and here it is:

He was signed between the 2006 and 2007 drafts to the largest amateur signing bonus the team had ever given out. He’s at the same level as our studs from the ‘07 draft, and although they might take it a little slower developing him, I feel he deserves to be grouped in with them. He was available to every team in baseball, but we were the ones to pick him up and now he’s a top 50 prospect by most measures.

I’m not sure if you agree that AnVil can be grouped in with them, but

Villalona/Bumgarner/Alderson > Porcello/Hayward. All day, everyday.

You say the Giants didn’t want to spend the 10 million on Porcello but should have, and you also talk about how 2/3 of pitching prospects flame out, and it is better to take a hitter. ????

As has been mentioned elsewhere saying “Screw bonus demands” is easy for any of us to sit here & stay but it’s not that simple in the real world. An example for you:

Would you rather have Porcello or would you rather have Alderson + Villalona + Rafael Rodriguez + The next Villalona/Rodriguez?

Now that’s not the best way to look at it as it’s naive & over-simplistic like your arguament but it’s a valid comparison of the money’s involved.

Some poster isn’t very popular, and is considered a bit of a douche. A lot of other posters aren’t very nice to said poster because of that. Cookyman understands why said poster isn’t very popular, and it’s not like Cookyman is that crazy about said poster, but Cookyman believes that said poster is still being mistreated, and mentions that maybe people should be a bit nicer, that maybe said poster isn’t that douchey, and just needs to be given a chance. Said poster does something really douchey and Cookyman feels like a jackass.

You can’t just be satisfied with a top ten prospect in Bumgarner, and another really promising pitcher in Alderson? Come on, this is just a useless thread

It’s easy to claim superiority and foresightedness when the game is not done yet, but Porcello is just beginning his career, this is literally the first batter of the game, we have no idea what will happen, though we do have some good ideas what might happen. And given all the arguments for why we should not have selected Bumgarner and picked Heyward instead, that would suggest that if you believe that such statistics are correct, you would never pick a Porcello just past the middle of the first round when you can get a Noonan or any of the other hitters who were available there, that is a huge difference in probability between hitters and pitchers, assuming that his 2/3 1/3 was correct (cause we are taking his perspective and what he was facing in his decision).

But this comes down to what I’ve been saying for years about the draft: my study showed that less than half of even the top 5 picks in a draft become good in the majors. So it’s easy right now to say “Hey, $8M for Porcello, no-brainer!” but if he should take the Mark Prior route or crash and burn in his performance if teams figure out what his weaknesses are, which it does for over half of the amateurs selected there, I doubt there would be many arguments posted about “Hey, I would have still spend that $8M on Porcello.” No, you would see posts saying, “I wasn’t stupid enough to spend $8M on Porcello.”

It’s easy to say that you wouldn’t have spent $20M on Zito, but frankly, most people end up spending their budget on other needs (like hitting), and if you make the case that you would save $8M each year for the draft, instead of spending it on the roster, then you would have to answer your ownership almost every year why you had $8M left over to spend, thus costing us a chance to better our roster during the off-season instead of hoping that the top pitching/hitting prospect would fall to you in the 21-30 pick range (assuming you are winning, since you are a good GM) and finding that he didn’t fall down to our slot this year. Again. And again.

Porcello was a once in a generation thing, players of that ilk rarely fall that far into the draft. You cannot plan for such an event, for if you put aside that much money, then you have to explain to the managing owner why you didn’t upgrade the offense, or pitching, or defense with that $8M every year that you come up short of winning the division or getting into the World Series or even if you are losing. Why didn’t you spend that $8M instead of saving for a rainy day?

That’s the biggest thing, there is no way you can go, year in, year out, keeping $8M aside as a rainy day bank account just in case a top prospect falls to you in the back of the first round, even if you aren’t overspending for Zito.

And even if you spend that much on him, and frankly, I don’t recall his bonus ultimately being that much, didn’t he sign for less?, you are still looking at having a bust over half the time, so you need to weigh that into the equation relative to how much less you would pay for Alderson. People forget about the risk to cost ratio that exists at that point, it could have been a better value proposition at that moment of time to select Alderson, because of the potential you see with him.

Risks don’t always pay off, look at Willy Mo Pena, and Guzman, both got $2M bonuses long ago when that was more like a top pick’s bonus, and they didn’t work out. Taking the risk of the high potential does not always work out.

And Porcello is different because of the Boras factor. He usually holds out for a lot more money. I’m still surprised they signed with Detroit for much less than the rumors, particularly after the shenanigans with Pedro Alvarez. So it is not just normal bonus money you are talking about, it has a Boras multiplier on top of that, making it that much more risky for you to do that, simply because this is money you could have been using to improve your current team but didn’t.

I can go either way on Bumgarner vs. Heyward. Both are great prospects. But we don’t know if Heyward can continue the climb upward, he strikes out a great percentage of the time. Meanwhile, pitchers who completely dominate in the lower minors appear capable of rising to the minors, just taking the Jonathan Sanchez and Tim Lincecum examples, though Homer Bailey is a warning. But Bumgarner dominated, Heyward did not, he just hit a lot of homers as well as strike out way too much, which is not a sign of a good hitter. Which to me makes Bumgarner look like a better bet for the majors right now.

Plus, both Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times studied the issue of winning in the playoffs and both found that it was pitching and defense that were the factors that contributed, not offense. BP, furthermore, noted that key indicators of a more successful playoff team is a pitching staff with a high K/9, a closer with a high WRXL, and a good defense, using their defensive metric. They did not find any correlation with scoring runs, nor with hitting home runs more than the other teams. Pitching and defense, and high K/9 at that, unlike the teams the A’s have put together.

So if I should be faced with choosing between prospects who appear to be about even, one a pitcher, one a hitter, both looking like they are going to be special, you have to go with the pitcher, they are part of the key of being more successful in the playoffs, at least according to the most recent studies of this, whereas the hitter, while nice, is not necessary for being successful in the playoffs, it is just complementary.

Now, the way I see the Posey situation is that he was clearly the best player, period, when we selected, there was no pitcher equivalent to him available; it might have been different had Matusz fell to us too. Plus, as some noted, our rotation is pretty full of great starters already, so we need to start adding some hitters to complement that great pitching, particularly at one position of need in catching.

1. OP’s M/O = Fail
2. I keep thinking of gigantic, succulent mushrooms when I read “Porcello”