Talent Machines

I've been meaning to post this for a few days. Steve Treder at the Hardball Times has been doing a long-term study of the value produced by each team's farm system, dating back to World War II. He just finished the last few years of the study, posted here.

The study relies on Win Shares: he basically tallies up Win Shares for each ML player (minimum 5 WS per year), and credits those figures to the farm system that drafted and developed them.

So for example, Seattle gets all the credit for Alex Rodriguez's production since they originally signed and developed him, even though he's played for Texas and some other team, in addition to the Mariners. On the other hand, they don't get credit for Ichiro, who developed outside their system (just like the Yankees don't get credit for Joe DiMaggio, for the same reason).

It's a pretty neat to see how different teams' farm systems have improved and declined over the decades. What's it tell us about the Chin Music Troika?

Well, first off, the Yankees were the clear beasts of the trio from World War II up until the mid-'60s (a period of time that featured something like 10 World Series victories for them, with dudes like Yogi and Mantle playing the bulk of their careers). That's likely due to the resources they were able to bring to bear in both scouting and internal development.

Meanwhile, the Sox appear to be tied (with Cleveland) for the second-most-productive farm system over that period, while Oakland struggled towards the bottom.

But everything changed quickly, as the Yankee farm system suddenly crashed and burned in the mid-'60s, and stayed crappy up until the early '90s (thank you, Steinbrenner). Boston improved accordingly; and Oakland became really productive for about 15 years, up until the early '80s (which would help explain their three-peat with Reggie and Catfish in the early '70s).

Oakland's production then dipped in the early-'80s for a time, and Boston's farm system then saw its own period of prolonged dominant production from the late '70s throughout the '80s (Clemens and Boggs were two big reasons for this, I assume, along with Jim Rice?).

Over the past 15 years in the AL West, it looks like the production has jumped around quite a bit from year-to-year. But I think you can say that Oakland's former farmhands (Hudson, Tejada) have been more productive than those of any other team in the division. They're followed closely by Seattle (how much of that is from Johnson, ARod, and Griffey I wonder?), with Texas and Anaheim lagging behind.

The AL East is interesting. The Yankees of Jeter, Bernie and Soriano have been just a step ahead of the Red Sox for quite some time, up until last year. I assume Pedroia & company had something to do with that, along with Hanley's monster year in the NL (and the continued dominance of David Eckstein. Kidding.)

But you know who's had the best talent machine in the division? Toronto. They get credit for developing the most productive major-leaguers for all but three years since the strike (note, this is after they won those two titles). Toronto gets the credit for: Delgado, Jeff Kent, Jimmy Key, Shawn Green, Michael Young, John Olerud, Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter's good few years, and David Wells, among others.

Who'da thunk?