The Giants farm system seem pretty overrated to me, right now. With Bumgarner’s MIA fastball, it’s pretty much Posey, a highschooler with no professional innings, and the nameless masses of prospects you can find in pretty much every other organization. Alderson, Villalona, and Barnes could have been half of the team’s top 6 prospects if they were still here, and few farm systems can take that kind of hit (and watch their top arm’s stock go into free fall) without falling into the bottom third.

OGC took it to a new level:

Oh the problems with your assessment, where to begin…

Slow change afoot? At some point this season, the Giants rotation will consist of four great homegrown starters – Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner. And it could start with another homegrown in Pucetas. The bullpen will be lead by Brian Wilson with very good farm products in Romo and Runzler, plus perhaps Waldis Joaquin or Hinshaw, and either Pucetas or Martinez as long relief. The lineup will feature Sandoval and include Schierholtz (probably), plus Ishikawa got one spot and perhaps Lewis and Frandsen another two spots.

Overall, that’s at least 40% of their spots taken by young players, and there are not a lot of other teams that has more than that on their roster, particularly those who are competing for the playoffs. And this is not just this year, it has been happening over the past few years for the Giants. Only most people (including many fans) don’t notice it because they look at the old lineup and somehow forget that the pitching staff is part of the team too.

For Giants fans who followed the farm system in 2007-8, it was not so much a surprise that Sandoval has been so successful, though the magnitude definitely is a surprise, given his lack of power in the minors. He has had a good strikeout rate throughout the minors, despite being much younger than the averaged aged players in that league, plus a good batting average as well.

You say Posey is a gimme to be ready for the majors this season – yet everyone said that Weiters was a gimme too last season, and he was considered a much better hitter than Posey. However, he started out slow when he reached the majors, and he didn’t even start the season in the majors while doing way better than Posey has in the minors, yet he failed to produce until September.

I prefer the re-sign of Molina over starting Posey because then Posey can continue to develop his catching skills in the minors under the watchful eye of former MLB catcher Steve Decker, then if we bring him up mid-season, we have 7 seasons of control over him, plus we avoid the super-2 designation as well. Plus, then we got him and Molina available at the end of the season.

The Giants will need every offensive edge it can get in 2010 if they are to make the playoffs, Molina is a pretty sure thing to produce, but if Posey hit as badly as Weiters did – .264/.315/.366/.681 to mid-September, and remember, he’s supposedly not as good a hitter as Weiters PLUS did worse than Weiters in the minors – that would hurt the team’s chances.

Or are you guaranteeing that Posey will hit well? And are you willing to pay the Giants, say, $5-10M, if you are wrong, because that is the loss they would have based on missing the playoffs, bad will with the fans clamoring for the playoffs with Lincecum, and so forth? People always forget about the consequences when they are wrong with their predictions/projections.

Promising arm Tim Alderson? Are we talking about the same pitcher? When is a middle of rotation starter – and that is all he has been seen as since he was drafted – that big a deal? And did you see his numbers after he got promoted, he hardly struck out anybody, certainly not at a pace that a pitcher can survive at in the majors – and he was doing it in AA, which is a whole lot easier than AAA, which is then a whole lot easier than the majors. I wish him no ill, but I was hoping to trade him for someone valuable, middle starters are not what makes a championship team (same goes for Barnes).

Now, I wish we had gotten more, but Sanchez prior to 2009, played a lot of games because he was a healthy player overall, rarely going on the DL. And offensively he is OK at 2B while good defensively. And at that time, we only had Burriss and Frandsen in the system to play 2B, and both either had or were coming off big injuries.

And it works with how the Giants are constructed in 2010, if Sanchez does go down, the Giants could move DeRosa to 2B if need be, because we have a lot of OF that we could start in LF, Lewis, Bowker, maybe even Neal by mid-season if he’s hitting well. They also have Uribe and I still have hope for Frandsen, who has hit well at every level in the minors, and has not been given a chance in the majors – he blew his window in 2008. And I say keep an eye out on Noonan in 2010 with the Richmond Flying Squirrels, I think he’s ready to break out in 2010.

Sanchez has been inconsistent but one needs to understand why. In 2008, it was his first year back starting and he wasn’t ready to go a full season. He had a sub-4 ERA going into the All-Star break, then tired out the rest of the season. In 2009, he adjusted his mechanics to copy his idol, Johan Santana, who he pitched with in the WBC in spring. However, he being much taller than Santana, that mechanics didn’t work for him. Once he went back to his old ways, he threw his no-hitter and never looked back, again delivering a sub-4 ERA, though faltering in September this time. This off-season he has prepared even more for strength deep into the season, and I feel that the no-hitter was the validation he needed, much like the Wizard handing out the diploma to the Scarecrow, for his confidence. He should be much more consistent this season.

And how do you define good organizational depth? Having good prospects down into the low-A does not impress me because most prospects end up doing nothing much in the majors. Depth to me is when there are players in your system who you can conceivably bring up that season, from the farm or bench, with some hope of being an OK major leaguer, and we have a lot of depth to my view. C: Posey; 1B: Ishikawa, Pill; 2B: Frandsen, Burriss, Noonan, Crawford; 3B: Gillaspie; SS: Crawford; LF: Bowker, Lewis, Neal; CF: Ford; RF: Kieschnick; P: Pucetas, Sosa, Stoffel, Joaquin, Hinshaw

And for the future: C: Hector Sanchez; 1B: Joseph, Villalona, Dominguez?; 2B: Brock Bond; SS: Adrianza; OF: Rafael Rodriguez, Francisco Peguero, Wendell Fairley, P: Wheeler, Tanner, Graham.

About the 2009 draft, there were a number of opinions by established analysts who said that they liked the Giants draft, and the commenters above noted why.

The Giants not only got the memo but has been successful doing what most people have denigrated as poor or mismanaged. They have one of the better rotations in the majors, which will lead to one of the best runs allowed in the majors again. Look over the past few seasons in the majors, use Pythagorean for the top teams in runs allowed (not just Giants) and you will find that to win 90 games with one of the lowest runs allowed in the majors, you only need an average offense to do that. If the players expected to start does as well as the projection systems say they will, their offense should be around average for 2010 and therefore, with that pitching, be able to win 90+ games.

When you have great pitching, you can make the playoffs on average hitting, which almost everybody misses. And it is relatively easy to pick up average hitting on the free agent market, and hitters are much more reliable assets to acquire via free agency. Meanwhile, the Giants could soon potentially have four starters who would be aces for most teams in Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner plus another potential ace in Wheeler coming down the line in 2-4 seasons. Plus two closer-quality pitchers in Wilson and Runzler in the bullpen (plus Romo, who has been fabulous, good, and consistent, for the most part).

The Giants are set up nicely, even with the free agent disasters that has happened when you don’t have hitters because you focused more on pitchers. As the big money goes off the books over the next few years, that will open up money to sign Cain and then Sandoval and Lincecum to long term contracts. While the young players start to develop and mature and take the spots of the vets, Posey at C, Noonan at 2B, Crawford and Adrianza at SS, Neal or Bowker in LF, Ford and Peguero in CF, Kieschnick in RF.

Aubrey Huff RBIS!

Mark DeRosa GAMERY!

THERES MAGIC INSIDE!

Ipso facto: Brian Sabean is a fucktard.

New MCC tagline?

ELITIST!!!

I don’t, YET!

But I have the Droid, so it’s a no go for me.

Oh, and, despite the flaws, 23 is too low.

The part that worries me is that we will still be handcuffed by mediocre player payroll that when our sweet quartet hit FA years we may have trouble keeping them all here.

And I assume the ballpark, increasing payroll and steady revenue streams that project to increase in the future aren’t listed as a positive (although they should be) because of the Sabean factor. Which, if they wanted, could be used to discount every positive out there.