This has probably been addressed, but the curious thing to me was that Girardi had Boone Logan loose for lefty’s I presume, then proceeded to leave Nova in. I think Kay and Lieter mentioned it too that if you have no intention of using a guy why get him up and warming.  Anyway, it worked out.. this time.
Nova did look very good and the slider was tremendous until that inning.  Seems that at least Martin and Rothchild could go visit our pitchers a bit more often when they are out of sync.  I think Texas sends their coach out every inning.  Don’t know if it helps, but they are doing pretty well the past few years.
Hamilton will likely stay in Texas, but their payroll will be pretty well north, won’t it? Then there is the question of years and injury risk, wow! He is an amazing player.

I thought that the manager/pitching coach can only visit the mound twice in a game for any individual pitcher, unless they’re checking on an injury?

The Hamilton contract situation will be interesting.  He’s not that young, he’s got an amazing talent, but I can’t think of a player as good as he is who ever had a better chance of giving you nothing if you signed him.  He could get hurt or he could succumb to his demons and effectively be worthless at the drop of the hat.

I’m guessing Texas tries to go big short-term, something like 3 yrs, $90M?  Wonder if he’d do that?

Blanket question. Is there a case to be made that Yankee talent evaluators aren’t among the best?  Cano was very under-appreciated in his minor league career and it seems Nova arrived on the scene with little expectation.  We hear so much about Betances for instance, and he seems to have been promoted to AAA without much sucess in AA. I have read that many view him as one of the rawest and wildest pitchers in AAA.
I do remember that some of the Yankee brass were high on Noesi last year. Now it only makes the trade of Montero so much worse that he is winning games in the bigs. I must say that my view of Cashman is declining particularly in the wake of that deal. His personal picadilos too seem pretty classless. I wonder what Big George would have done by now?

Blanket question. Is there a case to be made that Yankee talent evaluators aren’t among the best?

Sure.  I’d say they’re clearly behind teams like Atlanta, Texas and Tampa Bay.  I don’t know that there’s any other team I’d put ahead of them though, and I’m also not sure Noesi’s 6.30 ERA is an argument in that case.  You never know when the evaluations you are hearing from the team are part of propping up a player’s value or if they’re legitimate.

The case for their talent evaluators is probably buoyed by their picking up guys off down years like Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson and seeing them blossom into important regulars.  I think they’ve done great building a bullpen, drafting David Robertson, grabbing Boone Logan in the otherwise awful Vazquez part 2 trade, picking up Cory Wade out of Tampa Bay’s farm, stuff like that.  Drafting Brett Gardner in the third round worked out very well.

Do we blame the talent evaluators for the Yankees trading away Ian Kennedy and keeping Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain instead?  Is that an evaluation issue or a development issue?  Should they have known Michael Pineda may have been damaged goods before they got him?  I’d like to think they had more data available to them than some Fangraphs numbers and an MLB.tv subscription, but I have my doubts.

Matt Holliday is another guy whose minor league numbers weren’t great (they were actually pretty bad) and he became an elite player.

Is Matt Holiday an “elite” player?

[6] Yes, I think so. He’s probably declining, but for a stretch of 4-5 years, he was definitely an elite player. And his minor league numbers showed no indication of that ever happening.

5 All Star Games, a second place MVP finish with five seasons where he received MVP votes, I’d say he’s up there.

In a lot of ways, it’s more fun to watch a pitcher who wasn’t really highly touted surpass expectations than a top prospect who comes into the league with guns ablazing, not that us Yankee fans would have any idea of the latter.

Seriously, who was the last great Yankee prospect that actually became an All Star level player?  Was it really Jeter?  Maybe AJ will continue to shine but you can’t call him that now.  Looking back at BA top Yankee prospects for the decade you see names like Joba, Hughes, Eric Duncan, Drew Henson…

Seriously, who was the last great Yankee prospect that actually became an All Star level player?

Eric Milton made one All Star team in 2001.  Nick Johnson could have been an All Star in 2006, I guess. 

Yeesh.

Soriano?

I’m not saying he’s going to be an ace, because it’s pretty freaking hard to become one.  But he sure looks like a guy on his way to surpassing his 4th/5th starter “ceiling”.

So what does that mean for Nova being ready to pitch teh ate?

[3]  Noesi has been terrible.

Why does he make the Yankees scouts look bad?

[10]

Remind me again, who was the losing pitcher of the 2010 All Star Game?

I grew up on Bill James 80s Abstracts and thus assume that all skepticism and indeed outright mockery re. the Yanks’ farm system is justified….

[14] Noesi?

Remind me again, who was the losing pitcher of the 2010 All Star Game?

You can’t spell his name without UGH.

And we know he wasn’t really an All Star.  He just had five good starts with an unsustainably low BABIP against.

[14] - My fault, I don’t mean a guy who makes the all start team once, I mean an All Star, non HOF type level player year in and year out.  Someone the level of a Pettitte or better.

[9] Wasn’t there an article on BBTF or somewhere a few years back mapping the probability of a prospect reaching the bigs ? IIRC it comes to the Top 10, then 11 through 99 are pretty fungible, and after that it is almost literally a lottery. The curve was a classic hockey stick.

Jeter was the last Top 10 pick they had.

Top 10’s going back to 1965:

1992 Jeter
1991 Brien Taylor, pitcher who rose to AA in his second year, then back down to A ball for 4 years. He was rated the #1 prospect 2 years running.
1968 Munson (yay !)
1967 Ron Blomberg, a #1 pick who had a few seasons as a 1.5-2.0 WAR player, then dropped off sharply and was out of the league. Injury ?

Other notable drafts ? Bo Jackson, and our pal Buck Showalter, a 5 year fixture in AA ball with a few visits to AAA.

Well, Taylor got hurt throwing a punch in a fight.  He looked like he was well on his way to a big league career before that, although his control was iffy.  He’s one of only two #1 draft picks to never play a big league game.  I suppose he’ll be joining Matt Bush as a #1 draft pick spending time in prison shortly.

Further to the scouts, they are also responsible for such blunders as amateur free agent signings of Rivera, Cano, Melky Cabrera, Ramiro Pena, Cervello, Bernie Williams, El Duque, Remiro Mendoza.

Pettitte was a 22nd rounder, Po a 24th, Mike Lowell a 20th, Robertson a 17th rounder.

Soriano actually signed in Japan and was purchased from them by the Yankees. Does that count ? I think so.

Nova’s breaking pitches really have improved, and it shows in the k rate.  He needs to keep his FB down.  That’s really it at this point.  I like.

Would it be reasonable to posit that a decent portion of Nova’s failures, including a decent chunk of his HR/BF, could be attributed to the manager possibly intentionally leaving in there a bit longer when everyone knew he was in trouble, when the tactics for the particular game would obviously dictate taking him out, and when the manager himself might have taken him out if it were a do-or-die game?

[23] It sure would be reasonable to posit that.  Data for 2012.

Innings 1-5:
ERA: 3.00
FIP: 3.47
AVG/OBP/SLG against: .295/.323/.541
BB/BF: 3.9%
K/BF: 26.0%
IP: 30
HR: 5

Innings 6+:
ERA: 18.78
FIP: 10.04
AVG/OBP/SLG against: .429/.512/.886
BB/BF: 11.6%
K/BF: 7.0%
IP: 7.2
HR: 3

[24] Interesting, but not particularly reassuring. Starting pitchers need to go more than 5 innings on a regular basis.

Yeah even last night Nova looked a lot better in the early innings than he did later on but I wouldn’t argue he was left in too long and imploded.

I think it’s pretty reassuring.  First of all, I’m sure most starting pitchers give up more runs later - because they’re probably likely to be giving up runs just before they get taken out.  Or having runs credited against them allowed by relievers.
But from following the games, I think Nova’s been left in to deal with these things and that there may be more of those numbers in his stats than is the usual case.
My take is that he’s therefore been a bit better than his numbers.  And I’m going to guess that he learns from it and goes farther into games, on average, as the season goes on.

[26]
SD, the point may be that, this time, he’s showing some of that learning curve and limited the implosion.

Right, I think the point is that he’s still a work in progress and hopefully he’s picking stuff up while he takes his lumps that will help him going forward.

Noesi not a star but isn’t as bad as his stats. He got clobbered in a couple of games latest being Texas, but won the previous game 8 innings 5 hits 0 runs and 6 K’s. Better than Pineda’s line this year.  He is just a rookie, so I think pitching in the majors trumps anything Campos is doing, er was doing.

[30] It’s true. If you take out all of Noesi’s bad games, he’s actually pitched pretty well.

[31]
If you take out his good games, though, he’s been abysmal.
And if you take them out AFTER taking out his bad games, he hasn’t pitched in the majors this year at all!

[19] It’s tough to limit hot shot prospects to just top-ten picks.  The Yankees have had guys like Drew Henson, Brandon Claussen, Eric Duncan, Reuben Rivera, etc. that reached Top-20 prospect territory and never amounted to squat.

The Yankees do an exceptional job of hyping up their prospects.  However, most of that is just hype.  Very rare is the hyped Yankee prospect that shows up and does well.  Jeter and ...

It’s probably rare all around baseball except in Atlanta, Boston, and Tampa Bay where they churn out future HOFers like cake batter.

Zach Greinke looked absolutely ridiculous today. 8 IP 2H 0BB 8K, nasty, nasty stuff.

[32] Pineda’d

And Chapman with the 101 mph fastball.

John Axford strikes me as the kind of guy who won’t be doing much in a few years. Not sure why.

EDIT: I guess because he’s a reliever.

It’s tough to limit hot shot prospects to just top-ten picks.  The Yankees have had guys like Drew Henson, Brandon Claussen, Eric Duncan, Reuben Rivera, etc. that reached Top-20 prospect territory and never amounted to squat.

But the point is that if you have a top-10 pick, you will probably get a productive major-league player out of it, and very possibly a superstar.  If you don’t have a top-10 pick, you won’t do as well, and it quickly gets down to lottery-pick level.

Also, there’s probably something to the idea that having multiple/many picks in the first round will help.  If your amateur scouts are divided between 2 or 3 guys and you only have one pick, you take your best guess.  If you have 3 picks, you may be able to get all 3 guys.  Yankees of course often give up draft picks to sign FA. 

So they don’t often have high picks and they don’t often have multiple picks.  And with that their farm system has stilll produced a number of quality players the past decade.  Helped by IFA of course.  Perhaps no superstars other than Cano (though jury is still out on several players), but that’s the point; you don’t often get superstars after the first half of the first round.

[34] I am sorry. Greinke didn’t have 8 SO. He had 11.

[37] You are scary.

Seems like the Town is very upset over Adrian Gonzalez’s production.

[38] Not my point.  I’m not talking about rankings prior to the draft.  I’m talking about players that the shoot up prospect lists in the minors and then flame out.  They Yankees, to me, seem to miss a lot on the ones who crest in the top-20s and then disappear or sputter out. 

Think of these two guys:
Robinson Cano who never sniffed a top-prospect list—> all-star
Ruben Rivera, crested as the #2 prospect in baseball—> 662 career games as a bench guy with a career OPS+ of 82

The Yankees have had quite a few of the former (Mo, Pettitte, Cano, Ted Lilly, Posado, maybe Gardner who is very valuable despite not getting an AS), a fair amount of the latter (Ruben Rivera, Eric Duncan, Drew Henson, maybe Claussen, and maybe Hughes & Chamberlain) but not very many highly touted prospects who then succeeded in the major leagues (Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, maybe Nick Johnson?).  Is this a common occurrence in professional baseball or something where the Yankees hot prospects make the leap, or is it a perception fault?

‘Seems like the Town is very upset over Adrian Gonzalez’s production.’

He will get going, but I hope he doesn’t. Still ticks me off how Sox are able to make trades fairly easily with Florida and S. Diego. Recently Oakland. Those clubs would never make much effort to work with Yanks unless they got a ransom.

How bout we trade Cashman for Tampa’s GM.  We could throw in several million if they would take Levine.

I think Mike K’s comments on correct with the uncertainty of talent above the first 10 picks and having multiple picks has to be a key additonal advantage.
Boston has been a high finisher in the standings for the past 10 years but still seems to produce some good prospects. the new lefty Doubrant and the new third baseman for example.  Tampa though now winning each year maintains getting picks as they often let FA go and get the compensatory picks and they don’t seem to miss.
Maybe we can get their scouts too?

 
My house is NOT clean, either.

Love it. Showed it to my wife.

[44] You need to put her in the spam filter. It works with mine.

[42] - Exactly.  That’s why I was asking.  Joba and Hughes were other good examples.  Neither were top 10 picks but both were top prospects (I guess IPK is in there as well and might be the next real answer) and while they have been somewhat productive in certain roles, neither really made it to the consistent All Star level of a Cano etc…

As Chris is saying, we don’t really have a lot of top prospects in baseball than actually panned out.  I was trying to think of the last one we saw and I can’t remember anyone since Jeter.

SG says the Nova’s, Gardners, and Cano’s of the world are more fun to watch, but are they?  How much did we love Montero already?  How much would that have solidified if we saw him become Piazza 2?  Is it just that we haven’t had it in so long?

[41] If you think they are mad with AG now, wait to see the reaction to Beckett playing golf a day after they announced he would skip a start because of a sore lat muscle, and 2 days before he did not pitch in the Chris Davis game.

This is going to be fun to follow all year long.

SG says the Nova’s, Gardners, and Cano’s of the world are more fun to watch, but are they?

I said “in a lot of ways.”  I didn’t say it was absolute, and “fun to watch” is kind of subjective.  If Phil Hughes was 2009-first half 2010 Phil Hughes right now and had been since 2009 I’m sure he’d have been fun to watch too, even if it just meant he was doing what was expected as one of the top two or three pitching prospects in baseball at one time.

How much would that have solidified if we saw him become Piazza 2?

Well, I hate Jeter so I’m not the best person to answer this question.

I just thought of another top Yankee prospect who did pan out.

Al Leiter.

Was Jay Buhner a top prospect?  He had a pretty good career.

I said “in a lot of ways.”  I didn’t say it was absolute, and “fun to watch” is kind of subjective.  If Phil Hughes was 2009-first half 2010 Phil Hughes right now and had been since 2009 I’m sure he’d have been fun to watch too, even if it just meant he was doing what was expected as one of the top two or three pitching prospects in baseball at one time.

Right, that’s your opinion and I wasn’t trying to attack it.  I was just trying to figure out how long it had been since the Yankees had one of the other ones.  Bernie then Jeter are the last ones I remember.

Buhner is a good one but he was before Bernie.  It’s been a long time.