The Cardinals Still Benefiting From the First Farm
With their victory tonight, the St. Louis Cardinals are up 2-1 in the NLCS and in good position to defend their National League title from 2011. They are also, by far, the most farm-developed team in the hunt for the World Series. As John Sickels recently wrote, 64 percent of their roster was developed by their farm system, compared to 40 percent for the Giants and 32 percent each for the Tigers and Yankees. The Cardinals famously developed the first modern farm system, under Branch Rickey. They are still, clearly, ahead of the curve.
Sickels looked at all 25 players on the Cards’ 25-man roster, and all but eight were originally drafted or signed by the Cardinals. (Mark Rzepczynski and Chris Carpenter were originally drafted by the Jays; David Freese was originally drafted by the Padres; Kyle Lohse was originally drafted by the Cubs; Adam Wainwright was originally drafted by the Braves; Matt Holliday was originally drafted by the Rockies; Carlos Beltran was originally drafted by the Royals; and Edward Mujica was originally signed as an international free agent by the Indians.)
That’s really quite remarkable. If the 2012 Cardinals were to win the World Series, they would be the most homegrown team to do so in well over a decade: the last World Series winner to be more than 50 percent homegrown was the 2002 Anaheim Angels, 13 of whose players were original Angel draftees or signees.
I wasn’t able to look at all recent playoff teams — and would love it if one of you could find more examples — but the closest comparable modern team I was able to find was the 2005 Atlanta Braves, the “Baby Braves” team that won the NL East and lost the Division Series to the Astros. That team used 18 rookies in its quest for the pennant, setting a record for most rookies on a playoff team, and its playoff roster contained 15 players originally signed or drafted by the Braves.
This team is anomalous for the Cardinals of recent years; the 2011 World Championship team was 44 percent homegrown (11 out of 25) and the 2006 champions were around 40 percent, if you give them credit for signing So Taguchi and drafting Braden Looper: Taguchi played a long career for the Orix Blue Wave before debuting with the Cards, and Looper pitched eight years with the Marlins and Mets before coming back to throw meaningful innings for the Cardinals. (I have to say “around 40 percent” because only 23 players actually appeared in a game in the World Series for the Cardinals, and I couldn’t find out who the two benchwarmers were.)
So, even though their team originated the notion of the modern farm system, it would not be accurate to say that the Cardinals have always been this homegrown. Far from it: back in 2009, the Cardinals writer on scout.com wrote, “The Cardinals farm system has been a barren wasteland for years.” It just goes to show that in a well-run organization, it doesn’t take long to make the desert bloom.
Branch Rickey was, first and foremost, a businessman, and two of his insights from nearly a century ago still undergird everything that we do in baseball analysis today. First, he realized that the tool of statistical analysis can be used to build a competitive advantage. As early as 1914, he hired a sportswriter, Travis Hoke, as a part-time statistic-keeper for the Browns. Later, when Rickey was with the Dodgers, he hired Allan Roth, the first full-time statistician in baseball history.
Second, Rickey realized that you can get a lot more bang for your buck by spending on player development than on the free agent market, and so he convinced the owner of the Cardinals to purchase stakes in numerous independent minor league franchises, which he then used as a pipeline of talent to the major leagues. That’s still true today: a team with a strong minor league system is likely to be a strong team.
The Cardinals have been feasting off their first-mover advantage for nearly a century. It is not surprising that the most successful franchise in baseball history is the Yankees. New York is the most populous and wealthiest city in the country: you would expect that city’s teams to have a revenue advantage. It is somewhat surprising, however, that the second-most successful team, in terms of championships, is the Cardinals.
The phrase “second-most successful” can be a bit confusing, so here is what I mean. The Cardinals franchise has the second-most world championships of all time, behind only the Yankees, though the franchise is actually fourth of all time in wins [behind the Giants, Cubs, and Dodgers] and winning percentage [behind the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers]. Moreover, many of the Cubs’ franchise wins occurred prior to 1900, when they were the White Stockings and then Colts. The Cardinal franchise, which started life as the Brown Stockings, is seven years younger than that of the Cubs. However, baseball measures greatness in championships, and because the modern World Series began in 1903, there’s no advantage that goes to teams that have been around since the 1870s like the Cubs.
The Giants and Dodgers both switched coasts, which makes the franchise analysis a bit difficult: the nicknames were the same, but their fan and revenue bases were totally different. Still, you’d expect the Dodgers and Giants to be able to compete with the Cardinals for championships, considering the relative size of the metropolitan areas of New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to St. Louis. Likewise the Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, and Chicago White Sox, who never moved, and who come from cities with a much larger metropolitan area population than St. Louis.
The Cubs were latecomers to both the farm system and to night baseball, which hampered the team financially; the Red Sox are well-known for fiercely resisting integration. Both clubs were hampered for years by these decisions.
In all events, St. Louis is something like the 19th-most populous metropolitan area in the country; there is no structural reason why the teams of Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago should all have experienced less championship success than the Cardinals. Branch Rickey’s legacy is a major piece of the explanation.
The Cardinals may not win it all this year, but they have a core that they’ll control for years, from Lance Lynn to Allen Craig, Jaime Garcia to Jason Motte, Shelby Miller to Yadier Molina. They’re well-positioned for the long haul. Just the way Branch liked it.
Rickey couldn’t have known that building a team through a farm system was better than through free agency because at the time free agency didn’t exist. The point remains valid, but I doubt Rickey predicted the addition of free agency to MLB that occurred in the 1970′s.
“and so he convinced the owner of the Cardinals to purchase stakes in numerous independent minor league franchises, which he then used as a pipeline of talent to the major leagues.”
Some where in the middle of the article before your “lets correct a fangraph author comment” alert switched on
True enough. The players weren’t free agents. But the economic point remains. it was a lot more expensive to purchase or trade for players who were already playing professional baseball than it was to scout, sign, and develop them yourself.
And it still is.
Freese and Wainwright both spent significant time in the Cards minor league system before being promoted, too. Freese was traded for the corpse of Jim Edmonds, and Wainwright for Ray King, I think.
Not quite. Wainwright came to the Cardinals with King and Jason Marquis in the trade that sent J. D. Drew and Eli Marrero to Atlanta. The Braves were widely considered to have “won” that trade at the time. Riiiight…
I’m not sure about that. Wainwright was a hugely hyped prospect — probably the best pitcher other than Jason Schmidt that the Braves have traded away in the past two decades — and J.D. Drew was a one-year rental. It was a massive risk, and it was seen that way at the time.
(For what it’s worth, here’s what the late Mac Thomason wrote at the time:
As it happened, it wound up working out more or less ideally for both teams: Eli Marrero and J.D. Drew had more or less the best years of their career for the Braves, and Adam Wainwright has lived up to every bit of his potential.
I’ll call that a win-win.
(Also, by “best pitcher,” I mean the prospect who has had the best career away from the Braves. Wainwright and Schmidt were terrific. Neftali Feliz has been a very good closer. Other traded Braves pitching prospects have, famously, not panned out as well. I think Matt Belisle might be one of the best of the rest.)
Win-win is reasonable in hindsight, and just calling it a win for the Cardinals may be closer to the truth; although Drew was very good (one of the more underrated players of the last 30 years, IMO), he only had one (excellent) year in Atlanta, and they didn’t get anything for him when he left via free agency. However, I’m not sure that Thomason’s view was the consensus one at the time. Yes, most observers thought Wainwright would have a career. I’m less convinced that they thought he’d become Wainwright. Many writers also thought the Cardinals had overpaid to get him, expecting Drew to go on to great things once he and TLR parted ways. He did (2004, right after the trade, was his best year), but Atlanta couldn’t or wouldn’t keep him.
That’s interesting. I had no idea what fans in the Cards blogosphere thought about the deal. My impression was that the Braves blogosphere — at least the more saber-minded people like Mac — was awfully hesitant about the deal, as anyone would be when your organization trades your top prospect for a one-year rental, especially when that one-year rental is well-known for his fragility.
It sounds like both fanbases perceived the deal as risky. I think that an objective analysis would show that the Cardinals end of the deal looked better at the time, as well as in retrospect. Moreover, even though it worked out as well as it possibly could have for the Braves, the Cardinals have still gotten more out of Adam than the Braves ever could have from JD. (He was a Boras client, even though he’s a Georgia native, so it was hard to see us extending him. Schuerholz generally demanded that his signees give him a hometown discount.)
I wouldn’t say the trade worked out as good as it could have for the Braves…the point of the Drew rental was obviously to go for it and try to win a world series. They did not do that, despite Drew’s efforts. I’d think the optics of this deal would be a bit different had they been able to hang a flag for the mere price of Adam Wainwright.
Think about the Red Sox not regretting trading Hanley/Anibal. They won the series with Beckett and Lowell, and while they weren’t rentals they certainly accrued less WAR than the guys they traded. But it was still a “win” as far as the ultimate goal was concerned.
Fair enough. I was just talking about the players themselves.
Unfortunately, the Braves’ pitching in 2003 wasn’t good, especially by their standards. Their offense was sick, but they couldn’t really hold leads very well.
I remember the big part of the trade being that the Cardinals were free from Drew’s salary. The money they would have spent on Drew fit very neatly into their salary obligations for Jeff Suppan and Reggie Sanders. They really needed King too. The big thing was to get something for Drew right away since it would be crazy to give him a long-term deal (something which the Dodgers and Red Sox later found out).
He was a decent enough situational lefty, but God help any team that ever “really needed” Ray King.
Situational lefty you say…. Remember LaRussa was the manager.
Light years ahead of the Reds. Why waste draft picks on Billy Hamilton? So dumb.
Cards do it right. Get players who are more substance than flash.
‘substance’ being the operative word
The Cardinals were 30 years ahead of the curve on that one.
The two non-appearing players in 2006 were backup catcher Gary Bennett and reliever (the late) Josh Hancock. Neither came up through the Cardinals system.
The “barren wasteland” farm system of 2009 really wasn’t as barren as all that. Boggs, M. Carpenter, Chambers, Craig, Cruz, Descalso, Freese, Garcia, Jay, Kelly, Kozma, Lynn, Miller, Robinson, and Salas were all down on the farm (one Cardinals farm or another) that year, along with various other guys who are now playing for other teams (Brett Wallace, Colby Rasmus, etc.). Most had been in the system in 2008 as well. The system wasn’t so much “barren” as “overlooked;” few of these guys were even on most minor-league commentators’ radars, except as fillers for top-10/15/25 lists, and most weren’t expected to amount to much. There’s a message in there somewhere.
Is the message “Luhnow is smart”?
Partly (Houston is going to be very happy with their new GM, I think), but it’s a longer-running thing than that. St. Louis trails only Oakland and (barely) Toronto in WAR accumulated by currently active players that they drafted, with Philadelphia and Texas microscopically behind them. Not all of those players signed with the first team that drafted them, of course.
Thanks very much, Bad Bill.
The two guys who didn’t appear in the 06 World Series were Gary Bennett and Josh Hancock (RIP), neither of whom was drafted by the Cardinals, so no change there.
Dang it, Bad Bill beat me.
I’m not as good as I look.
Twelve months ago, Baseball America didn’t even have me in their top 20 Midwest League prospects. That’s low-A. They also said I throw 91-93, so don’t trust those FOX radar guns!
12 months is a long time. I think Baseball America would admit they overlooked Rosenthal to some extent. He’s now widely considered at least a top 100 prospect and quite possibly top 50. As for the velocity, why would they only crank it up for him? Other pitchers’ velocities haven’t been different than normal. The guns at the stadium show the same thing as the TV. It’s possible that the guns are a touch hot but if you think those pitches are going any less than 98 mph then I bet there are some Giants and Nationals hitters who would vehemently disagree.
Also I don’t know why BA would say he topped out at 93. I’ve heard people say he was capable of 97+ since he was drafted.
I trust PitchFX, which puts Rosenthal’s max velocity at 100.6 MPH.
BA had you topping out at 98 as a starter before the 2012 season.
well, marc hulet had you as number 7 in a strong cardinals system pre-season, saying you range up to 95 as a starter; with age and training, it’s not inconceivable that you could be hitting triple digits in relief
The bloggers at Future Redbirds have been talking about Rosenthal as a top prospect since the year after he was drafted. And as far as I’m aware, they were the first and only ones talking about him for a long time. So it would seem he WAS overlooked by national rankers.
Why aren’t players acquired through trade but graduate from the team’s farm system considered? Teams exchange assets in return for specific minor leaguers whom play under team control at minimal cost for years as a draft pick would. The principles of using cost-controlled players and successful talent evaluation still apply, as with developing players from the draft.
I view the drafting/international free agent signing system as one system: it’s bringing in players who have never played professional baseball in America or Canada.
I view the minor leagues as a different system: it’s about developing those players who are already playing professionally, and bringing them to their highest potential.
The 2012 Cardinals deserve massive credit for execution in both of these areas.
This raises an interesting point that goes far beyond the current state of the Cardinals.
I think your analysis is exactly right here: there is a difference between player acquisition and player development. However, we in the peanut gallery tend to obsess with the former and just assume that the latter will somehow happen — that once an organization has signed a primo talent, that talent will make orderly, linear progress toward major-league stardom, and if he doesn’t, then the reason is either a career-ruining injury, shortcomings in his makeup, or a scouting error that overestimated him to begin with. It ain’t necessarily so. Player development cannot and should not be assumed equivalent among different organizations. Yet we never see serious analyses of what organizations do it well, for whom (a system that’s great for pitcher development may be lousy for developing power hitters), and how and why. At least I’ve never seen any. Have I missed something?
It’s not just home grown talent. It’s home grown talent that has won together in the minors. 12 on the current post-season roster have played on at least one minor league championship….Molina, Motte, Jay, Craig, Boggs, Garcia, Freese, Robinson, Descalso, Salas, Lynn, Rosenthal. And Chambers and Cruz were on the 2010 PCL runner up team in 2010.
Winning together in the minors is meaningless. The Bucs had a group from Huntington’s first draft in 2008 move up winning big at A+, AA, and AAA that almost completely lack MLB impact talent.
Looks like we have two bits of anecdotal evidence. Neither is more valuable than the other.
Also, in 1903, at the time of the first World Series, St. Louis was the 3rd most populous city in the US.
Secondly, the Cards have always had great management, top down. It helped they were Busch’s plaything starting in the 60′s. Now DeWitt, is a wise, and shrewd business man, who seems to always have the right people in charge.
Of course, the “Busch’s plaything” bit also had much to do with why they made the idiotic Carlton/Wise deal, and also why they had a rare bad stretch in the early 90s. Good owners don’t necessarily stay good as they age, and their children may not have the same whatever-it-takes as they do, a fact that applies to baseball players as well (and is something for Yankees fans to think about).
It is interesting that the eight players signed by other teams are, other than Molina and Motte, the Cardinals top shelf talent (although time may tell about Rosenthal. That guy looks amazing). It is also interesting that only one of those eight are relieivers. It looks like the Cardinals are only going to spend for position players and hope to develop their own relieivers.
The Cardinals have been one of the best teams (if not the best) team in WAR per free agent dollar spent over the past decade. That and Albert Pujols are the biggest reasons they’ve been so successful over those years, although as this article points out the formula has changed.
Given the price of relievers on the free agent market (i.e. close to double the cost of position players, per-WAR, for top tier relief talent), you’ve got to concede that that’s a sensible strategy.
Also, the Cards have a pretty good record of graduating their top-end starter prospects via the bullpen, which means that every year there’s one or two high-quality, live arms in the pen who end up being quality starters the year after. Rosenthal/Kelly/Miller this year, Lynn the year before, and guys like Garcia and Wainwright have graduated via the pen in previous seasons.
Not a single mention of Sig Mejdal? He was the Director of Draft Analytics at St. Louis and deserves a large chunk of credit for many of these players becoming Cardinals (as well as some of the minor league players acquired via trade, like Freese).
If we go back 2-3 years, guess where FG rates StL in their organization ratings? Due to having an old team and a vacant minor league system?
In just two short years, their major weakness has become of one their strengths.
Go figure.
It seems to me that the percentage of homegrown players doesn’t matter as much as the total contribution of homegrown players.
The relative contributions matter, but having warm bodies matters, too. You have to fill those 25 spots somehow. Even when it comes to the role players — bench guys and middle relievers — there’s a big difference between a team-controlled guy making the minimum and a random veteran free agent who costs ten times that.
The cardinals seem to be very good at drafting guys that have 2-4 pretty good contributing years. A lot of “solid” guys that get called up fairly late as far as typical elite prospects go. Seems like a quantity over quality thing. Might change with their current ridiculous farm though.
As always, an outstanding post from Alex.