For Love of the Farm System

Heard a couple interesting things lately as potential deadline deals have been tossed about. Most of them have ranged from silly, to flat out wrong. Thankfully, I have this place here to make a plea for sanity.

Someone actually said that, “the best way to build a team is through homegrown talent.” That is, of course, absolute bunk. The cheapest way to build a team is through homegrown talent. The best way to build a team is to have the best player at every position using any method you can to get them. If the best way to build a team were using homegrown players, nobody would make a trade. Ever. Now, I’ll admit. If you made up a team of active players that the Sox drafted, it wouldn’t be a horrible team. But, it wouldn’t be as good as the one they have now. (That might be a fun little exercise.) I’ll also admit that this isn’t a perfect world, with endless pockets. So, in this world you do need to consider having some cheaper younger players. But, you can’t say that it gets you the best team.

Along those same lines, someone mentioned, “the farm system is just getting respectable. Now’s not the time to start trading them away.” Why not? Really, the farm system is designed to do one thing. Provide you with players for the major league club. It can do that by having players you can call up to the bigs. Or, it can provide you with players to trade for someone who you can play in the bigs. Either way helps the team out. Really, the comment should have been, “the farm system is respectable again, so they can afford to trade some pieces away.” Make those chips work for you.

This love of the farms came up one more time when someone was discussing the Sox and their playoff chances. The Sox should stand pat at the deadline, the theory went, because if you trade away a prospect, you may lose the wild card game. Then, you will have traded away the prospect for nothing. I suppose that’s true. It’s also a horrible way to run a ball club. Fear should never be a motivator. Just be smart about it. Yes, trading away your three best prospects for some bench strength might not make sense. But, if you can improve your club without being crazy, you need to do it.

People need to stop falling in love with the future.