homegrown players like Troy Tulowitzki have put the Rockies in contention
Friday night’s game between the Rockies and the Padres at Petco Park brought forth an interesting mini-discussion between the Channel 4 announcers, Mark Neely and Mark Grant. Grant noted that the ENTIRE Rockies lineup, from pitcher to RF, was drafted and developed in the Colorado farm system. Neely then tried to pump up the Padres’ system by bringing up the number of homegrown products in the field for San Diego. He had to pause, though, recount, and delete those who were actually developed in other organizations before coming to the Padres.
The net total was 3 for San Diego, 9 for Colorado. Josh Geer, Chase Headley and Will Venable were Padre farm products, and that was it. Everyone else was somebody else’s baby. Sure, there were young players on the field who were going to develop as big leaguers under the Padres’ wing, but guys like Gwynn, Cabrera and Kouzmanoff were all drafted and developed by other teams.
As the Padres stumble their way through this miserable 2009 season, they need to keep a close eye on the Rockies, because Colorado is the one team in the NL West that the Padres can afford to emulate. The Rockies, years ago, committed to a youth movement, to building through their farm system. It took quite some time for their fruits to ripen. But now, from Troy Tulowitzki to Brad Hawpe to Dexter Fowler, the Rockies are 100% homegrown.
It wasn’t always this way for Colorado, not even close. From the Blake Street Bomber days, filled with sluggers castoff from other teams, to the misguided Throw Your Money Around years that saw pricey busts like Mike Hampton and Darryl Kile toe the rubber, the Rockies re-invented themselves as a franchise over and over again. Nothing worked. People started to wonder if it was even possible to build a winner in an offensive ballpark like Coors Field.
The answer was, of course you can. You just have to do it the right way. Spending 100 million on a free-agent pitcher was a waste of money, because no matter how good the pitcher was, Coors Field was going to chew him up and spit him out. The place to spend the money was in the draft, in development, in seeking out young, controllable talent.
The Padres took a step in the right direction seemingly in their 2009 amateur draft, drafting young talent. They now need to spend the money to sign that talent. Then, the cultivation process begins. The Padres have not had the necessary talent in their system to fortify a sub-par big league team. The result has been the mishmash we’ve watched on the field for the past season and a half.
San Diego will never be able to get the jewel of the free-agent class to come to their team. Neither will Colorado. The Rockies realized this years ago, and now they have an inexpensive, exciting contender on the field. The Padres, though, not only skimped at the free-agent window, they crippled themselves by penny-pinching in the draft. Now, their fans are suffering for the mistakes the team made throughout the last decade in drafting and development.
It’s possible for the Padres to get better. It will take time, perhaps years, for the fruits of their labor to ripen. But if they need a blueprint to follow, all the Friars have to do is look across the field this weekend, to a purple-clad outfit that is entirely homegrown.
