Then stop whining about all the 1st rounders we gave up to get All Stars!
Stop whining about 1st rounders being wasted over the past 20 years since you seem to think they don’t matter and it’s only what you do in the 5th and 6th rounds that makes you a success!

And stop whining about how smart we don’t look when we have picked in the bottom half of the draft in every round for the last 10 years because we were a successful team and competing.

Because as I showed it doesn’t really matter if your smarter than 30 other teams if they take all the guys you think are better!
Your smarts are USELESS unless they are DUMB and let one get by them!
And as smart as you think you can be you can never be smart enough to force 30 other teams to SCREW UP!
It’s all about how LUCKY you are either for them letting him be there or for you taking gamble in the 6th and coming up roses!

They seem to do just fine without top 10 picks.

We who have had 7 top 10 picks (acquired by playing monkeyball) have worse farm systems then they do and we used tow of them to help get Piazza, one more to help get Leiter and another to help get Santana which went a long way toward what modest success we have enjoyed.

Can you take them if someone who sucked more than you takes them first?

Sure they are important but only in regards to taking a good one of whats left on the board!

But if you KNOW some guy is better but he has already been taken YOU CAN:T DRAFT HIM!
CAN’T PLAN TO DRAFT HIM!
SMARTS mean nothing if the team in front of you is JUST AS SMART!

First, second and third round picks are very important in building a real team of guys who are good offensively AND defensively AND run the bases well AND have good baseball instincts.

Not to say those guys CAN’T come from other rounds, just that there is a much better chance of getting that type of player in the first three rounds then elsewhere AND a better chance that player will be a real cornerstone for years to come.

I was just pointing out how incorrect you were in stating that the NYY got all these guys in the top ten picks of the draft and that’s why they went to the playoffs 16 times in 17 years.

That’s a total fallacy. Total and complete BS as proven by the fact that they have only drafted in the top 10 twice in the last 50 years and one of them washed out.

The Braves have drafted in the top 10 once in 20 years. ONE time and yet they have a farm stuffed with top talent and a team full of recent graduates that have won and come in 2nd in ROY, gone to All Star games and even gotten MVP votes. Heyward 1st rnd #15 NOT A TOP TEN PICK. McCann and Freeman 2nd round, NOT TOP 10 PICKS. Kimbrall third round NOT A TOP 10 PICK. Hanson 27th round NOT A TOP 10 PICK. Venters 30th round NOT A TOP 10 PICK. Brandon Beachy undrafted, NOT A TOP 10 PICK. Prado, Teheran, Delgado, Vizcaino IFA’s NOT TOP 10 PICKS.

Braves have 2 top 10 picks, Chipper and Mike Minor. That’s it. Yankees have one. Dereck Jeter.

This is the blueprint. The teams in each league that have been consistently successful for 15-20 years, year in and year out and their success has had next to nothing to do with having top 10 picks. It has everything to do with getting good players out of the late 1st round, supplemental round, 2nd round, 3rd round and every round. Grooming them, not zooming them.

It is stupid for us to look toward Washington KC, Pittsburgh or Tampa Bay because those teams ARE good examples of multiple top 10 picks making huge differences now or soon but we don’t aspire to draft in the top 10 and we don’t have to draft in the top 10 in order to build a real team. The NYY and Braves don’t and they win and win consistently. Year in and year out. IFA’s and the draft have long been the foundation of these teams success same as the draft has been for Philly and again next to none of it due to having top ten picks.

The draft (all rounds, especially the best ones) and international free agency has allowed these teams to target any trade acquisition they want. Anyone at all, not just those that become free agents like we do cause we have nothing to trade. We can’t even put a 2nd basemen at 2B or a RFer in RF or a catcher behind the plate, how the hell are we going to make a trade? What do we have in excess? Nothing that’s what.

NYY want Pineda they have Montero and they also have Murphy (late 1st rnd), Romaine (late 2nd round) Sanchez (IFA 2009) Cervelli (IFA 2002) and Martin non type A FA 2010 and all this after losing their catcher of 20 years. What so we have? Thole, Nickeas, Cordero, Centeno, Pena. Please. You would really think the team with 7 top 10 picks acquired over the last 20 years would have at least one catcher better than the NYY’s 6th best one but we don’t and we won’t until we start making it a priority year in and year out like they do.

In the last 20 years the NYY and Braves have had exactly one top 10 pick each, we’ve had 7 of them and there is currently more distance in between us and those two teams than ever before during the last two decades and their farms are brimming over with talent to trade or bring up by doing GREAT jobs internationally and GREAT jobs in the draft and consequently being able to make GREAT trades while our educated fan base continues to scream for more Mo Vaughn’s and Jason Bay’s.

SO then we can forget all that crap you keep repeating about giving away 1st rounders since no one you wanted to emulate did it with thier 1st rounders? No Successful team NEEDED them to become successful?

So we can call bull the next time you mention Alou, Wagner and anyone mentioned in the Wasted draft picks part of the four score and 25 years ago address?

Now as to what I said which you jumped on as usual but missed the point!

THERE IS NO SYSTEM OR BLUEPRIINT!

The ONLY think you can WILL to happen, the only plan you can GUARANTEE getting the best players in the draft is to suck and get first choice of who gets taken!

Thats a fact! You can argue you don’t NEED to do tnat to win and be correct but if your BLUEPRINTING, PLANNING, SMARTER than everyone else you can’t really set one until the other teams who pick before you have made theirs!

Could the Giants have taken Strasburg in 2009? NO!
Why? Because a suckier team took him first!

And that suckier team picked in front of them in every round of that draft!

SO the only way SF could ENSURE getting better picks than the nats was to be much smarter than them (which they can’t control), or be ahead of them on the pick board!

A point you argue everytime I mention it but forget WHY I said it!

Sure you don’t have to build with top 10 picks BUT if as you say EVEN if your smarter than everyone else that smartness, knowledge, skill is useless if the good guys are off the board by the time you pick!

When you combine that with a strong scouting and player development system (which also costs money, but again, a small amount compared to a bust of a FA), and the ability to resign any guy they want to (having a massive ML payroll) you damned well better expect to be in the playoffs every year!

The NYY have had exactly TWO picks in the top 10 since 1968.

1991 with the first pick of the entire draft they took Brien Taylor and 1992 with the 6th pick they took Derrick Jeter.

So there you go Metsie. Two top 10 picks, one has been a huge part of the NYY success, one was a washout who didn’t contribute himself or bring back anything in a trade.

As good as Jeter has been without IFA’s like Bernie, Mariano, Cano, El Duque, Soriano, Montero, Nova, Noesi, Banuelos, Cervelli, Nunez, Pena and trades from the farm for guys like A-Rod, O’Neil, Knoblauch, Wells, Clemens, Tino, Granderson, Swisher, Pineda a PTBNL like Brosius and 22nd round picks like Petite and Posada, it wouldn’t have mattered how well Jeter played.

Other contributors include non top 10 draftees like Hughes, Joba, Gardiner, Robertson, Romaine.

Draft placement:

1982 – 22
1983 – 13
1984 – 22
1985 – 23
1986 – 25
1987 – 23
1988 – 22
1989 – 15
1990 – 11
1991 – 1
1992 – 6
1993 – 13
1994 – 24
1995 – 27
1996 – 24
1997 – 25
1998 – 24
1999 – 27
2000 – 28
2001 – 19
2002 – 24
2003 – 27
2004 – 28
2005 – 29
2006 – 28
2007 – 30
2008 – 29
2009 – 24
2010 – 30
2011 – 28

Facts are every single player the NYY got, except Jeter, was available to every single team, most of them multiple times, like Petite and Posada who could have been selected 21 times even by the defending world champions drafting last. All the IFA’s including Mariano, Bernie, Cano, Soriano, Montero, Nova, Noesi, All available to anyone who wanted to sign them.

Guys like Wells, Knoblauch, O’Neil, Clemmens, Tino, Pineda, A-Rod. All available but you have to have the goods to get those guys. You have to be able to take on that salary too but that would be to our advantage because there would be less teams able to take that on but you still have to have something reasonable in the farm or 25 to trade.

The simple matter is the NYY through solid drafting and especially outstanding scouting in Latin America were able to provide a solid base from which to support numerous key positions on the 25 and then make trades for other key players and then added some FA’s to that, not the other way around like we did.

One top 10 pick out of two the NYY have had since the 60′s had anything whatsoever to do with their success. One.

That means we may be able to escape this trap someday.

Not as bad as 1992, 1993 (thank God), 1996, 2002, 2003 (thank God), 2004 or 2009 but somewhere within 5 games of .500 on either side.

Like I said, Very, very familiar territory for us during this two decade period of practicing monkeyball.

Don’t like it here go right back to where you came from!
Especially if your posts today is any indication of what we will get in the future!

Thats why Reyes and Beltran are gone and Wright is next on the hitlist?

Hmmm?

You mean like Thole, Parnell, Duda, Gee, Niese, Murphy?

Posada and Petite have had careers our draft choices can only dream about. The fact that they both came from the 22nd round only makes them better picks, not worse. Neither is a HOFer IMO but still, compared to our best catcher drafted since Posada (Butera/Wilson) and our best drafted pitcher since Petite (Bobby Jones) Yeah I guess we can chalk it all up to luck, nothing else we could have done any better. Ah well, it’s all luck anyway why bother especially when you can get a real proven Major Leaguer like Mo Vaughn, Oliver Perez or Jason Bay anytime you want.

Guess WainWright 1st rnd #29, Glavine, McCann, Escobar and Freeman in the 2nd round Kimbrall in the 3rd, Justice and Gant in the 4th round, Klesko in the 5th, Jason Schmidt and Mark Wholers in the 8th, Millwood in the 11th, Mike Stanton in the 13th, Jermaine Dye in the 17th, Tommy Hanson and Mark Lemke in the 27th, Venters in the 30th and Marcus Giles in the 53rd were all just lucky picks.

Guess Andruw Jones, Javy Lopez, Eddie Perez, Rafeal Furcal, Martin Prado, Julio Teheran, Randall Delgado, Arodys Vizcaino, Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz were all just luck as well huh?

I wonder what it is that just a couple teams in MLB constantly get all the luck and we never get any of it?

Must have used it all up in the Seaver lottery.

Tell you what….Give me 100 bucks and MAYBE I’ll give you 120 in the future….NO GUARANTEE!

You in on that deal?
You were when it was Reyes for Tejada weren’t you?

Better to fix the car that gets broke 20% of the time than try to make a lesser engine give you 20% more it can’t really give you!

At best you can say spending hurts only because you win more by buying better players and it is that winning that denys you a better selection of players to pick from and GET lucky!

But if your convinced you know what your doing and who to take then it really shouldn’t matter where you pick if your smart!
And if thats true you don’t need luck!

Most teams need luck!