Miguel de los Santos

[jokin]

The Rangers released preseason #17-ranked Texas Ranger prospect, 24 year old LH Starter/Reliever Miguel de los Santos. He was quickly scooped up by the Milwaukee Brewers.

 

Although he clearly hit the wall at AA this year, his career overall MiL K/9 rate is an awesome 13.6 and 11.2 at AA and a WHIP of 1.23. BA says his best pitch is a change-up with screwball action (rated best secondary pitch in entire Rangers system), FB only tops out at 90MPH, but has some movement, which also means he's a little wild (BB/9 of 4.9). I immediately thought "Sam Deduno", but de los Santos' stats to the same age as Deduno are better, a lot better. He will be a 6 year guy next January, so that makes his situation a little more problematic. The Twins, due to their last-place AL standing, had first crack at him and passed.

 

What was the downside in taking a look at him? As Reusse pointed out this evening, the Twins #1 SP, Scott Diamond, wouldn't be more than the #7 SP on the White Sox and presumably even lower ranked on the even more pitching-deep Texas Rangers. For that matter, given the dire pitching situation up-and-down the system, why haven't the Twins been making any MiL FA waiver claims in their advantageous position?

[Fatt Crapps]

Duh. The Twins are racist.

[greengoblinrulz]

Why would they want to sign a swing & miss type pitcher.....goes against everything they've preached for years about 'pitch to contact'.

[jokin]

deleted

 

There's a great story about the pre-eminent management theoritician of the 20th Century, Peter Drucker, born in Austria, yet became a closet baseball fan and late in life (nearly 80) was brought in to consult and completely break down and recommend how to rebuild the Cleveland Indians organization in 1986, all based on his managment theories, which he stated worked perfectly in baseball- a business chock full of unambiguous absolutes- success and failure is always out in the open. Despite never having been involved in baseball or sports, a foreigner, and in his late 70s, his 450 page report and the implementation of his recommendations resulted in an astonishing turnaround for the Indians- in one season they went from 60-102 (sound familiar?) to 84-78 and increased attendance by 137%. (http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-04-10/peter-druckers-winning-teambusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice).

 

Drucker presaged the "Peter Principle" (workers inevitably rising to their level of incompetence) and felt that the critically key thing for an organization to be successful is the correct placement of its managment personnel and maintaining constant review and assessment techniques relative to the organization's stated objectives. Inevitably in any organization, staleness, mismanagment and inefficiencies set in and employees must be moved or removed or the peak "performance capacity of the organization" will never be met. All too often, particularly in sclerotic hierarchical organizations (like the Twins?), these decisions are frequently not taken or managed. The consequences can be catastrophic (like the Twins? from the onset of the Bill Smith era- through to today?). Drucker concludes that:

 

 

“people in organisations tend to behave as they see others being rewarded. When the rewards go to non-performance, to flattery or to mere cleverness, the organisation will soon descend into non-performance, flattery or cleverness.”