J.C. Bradbury notes that the Phillies decision to keep Howard and Utley in the minors for a long time paid off:
The end result is that the team has two quite valuable players locked in through their peak years (29-30).
Of course, the players were hurt somewhat monetarily. An earlier call up would have resulted in earlier free agency. They were also hurt career wise, as shorter career mean lower counting totals when they retire, which might hurt their Hall of Fame chances.
Still, this is another way that smaller market teams can build winners. The Rockies did this on a larger scale as they brought up a number of players at age 24-25 a couple of years before they went to the playoff in 2007. Bringing players up near their entry into their prime seasons means teams are going to get peak performance cheaply.
Posted by David Pinto at 9:56 am | Team Evaluation | Permalink | 2 Comments
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November 4th, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
I think all teams have or will be doing this shortly. The large market teams sometimes do it by default because of the players blocking the younger ones. I thought this was a good strategy for the parent club (I thought this was done with Youk, and the other call-ups seem to be older for the Red Sox, whether that’s a function of drafting college players or not, I’m not sure)
November 4th, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
I think there’s a big problem with this strategy.
It’s going to make it very costly for a player, esp. a very promising player, to sign with the team. Players will strongly prefer to sign with a team that will give them an earlier shot in the Bigs.
Of course, if, as d says above, all teams start to use this strategy, then there will be nothing players can do about it. But if that happens there will surely be “defectors” — the Marlins, maybe? And those teams will have a large advantage in signing their draft picks.