Will Chaim Bloom deal Red Sox farm system prospects?
The Boston Red Sox farm system is on the upswing; depending on which baseball site you use, the swing could be relatively high. Baseball America, MLB Prospect Watch, and Prospects 1500 will all have definitive and similar information on the Boston system in conjunction with their approach regarding the rankings. I’ll stick with BSI’s Hunter Noll for updates on the system. That concludes the word salad introduction.
From what the idolizing masses are being fed, it is improving after a point of selloff a few years back. That supposedly was one of the corporate goals regarding hiring Chaim Bloom as CBO. Is the stockpile approaching a world of plenty? Competition is great, but so is the stagnation of being locked into an organization where upward mobility is limited.
Is trading time here? Trade is invariably linked to the infamous Jeff Bagwell trade that brought a short-term solution in exchange for a future Hall of Fame player, but GMs, CBOs, or whatever cannot be shy about deals. As with selling a stock, it is best not to look back. Boston now has an increasing amount of trade chips.
Scouting decisions are tough since a scout has to project—that skinny 17-year-old kid with the sweet swing – what will he look like in five years? That was Manny Ramirez and probably thousands of others. The younger the player, the more complex the assessment task. A great book on scouting is Kevin Kerrane’s “Dollar Sign On The Muscle” which has recently been updated.
The same applies to the player developed in the minors. Each level becomes a test, and you never know what will happen. I thought Lars Anderson would be a future MLB star. Somewhere in the bowels of Fenway Park, the numbers and reports are synthesized just as they are for other teams. Money Ball spelled it out rather clearly. Know what you have and what they have.
The ranking of a prospect is that delightful combination of objective and subjective, but the further along with the system, the more significant the accumulation of information. Do the Red Sox trade their best?
A few years ago, they did just that to get Chris Sale. Would they do it again for an up in lights talent? In that trade was Michael Kopech, who had an arm of rubber and a head of cement. Kopech is now on the cusp of being a top rotation arm. But for me, you do not trade off pitching. Let the other guys give you Connor Seabold and Josh Winckowski.
In the prospect pipeline of every system is that large group of players who are not top ten. Bloom seems adept at that mining operation when dealing with other teams. Again, it goes back to evaluating and seeing what others may not. Bloom and his staff must have seen something with Alex Binelas and David Hamilton, but time will tell the whole story.
The great unknown is the value the Red Sox has placed on each prospect, not what various sites have. Is Mayer, in their view, their number one prospect? Who do they project to replace certain players over the next few seasons? No one knows but the internal evaluators.
In 2021 the Red Sox made the needed trade for Kyle Schwarber, which became a few months’ rental. The cost was prospect Aldo Ramirez who is the proverbial work in progress. So if you are somewhere in the lower echelons of the farm system, I would say rest uncomfortable.
Bloom is not a hoarder of prospects; some prospects may be moved if this team needs to be shored up in the next few weeks. When and if that happens, the exciting part will be the insight into how management viewed the player or players traded? Why were they expendable?
Followers of the Red Sox will note the horrific July schedule. Last July and August produced a 25-28 record, and they may be faced with a similar outcome. Just how proactive will Bloom be? As the poker player says: “Fold ’em or hold ’em.”