Farms yielding few prospects.

AuthorBallou, Bill
PositionSports

Byline: Bill Ballou

It's a good thing our Commonwealth has the Registry of Motor Vehicles, since that saves baseball's minor leagues from being the least efficient organization in the country.

Maybe it is a reaction to seeing how badly Boston's farm system has faltered this year, but exactly what purpose do farm systems serve any more? Look around the game -- most rosters are populated by players who were signed and developed by other teams. If one of the purposes of a farm system is to teach players an organizational philosophy, provide consistent instruction and promote a sense of team -- it doesn't work if those players wind up wearing another uniform.

The waste of time and money in creating a farm system is enormous. The number of minor leaguers with even a faint hope of playing in the majors is tiny. Teams surround two potential big leaguers with 20 other guys in uniform just so they can schedule games and not just do long batting practices.

When the Red Sox realized that their 2014 season had fallen apart, they didn't go get minor leaguers, they got major leaguers -- players somebody else developed.

This is not to suggest there should be no minor leagues. The National League, the first major league, began play in 1876. The first minor leagues started up in 1877. They majors and minors always co-existed, although not necessarily peacefully. Until 1920 or so, when the Cardinals' Branch Rickey invented the farm system, minor league owners signed young players, let them learn the game, then sold them to higher leagues.

Why not do that again? Why should baseball employ hundreds of people in player development, spend millions on salaries, transportation, equipment, etc. -- and bring up two good players a year? Each season, more and more accomplished players enter the game from Japan and Cuba, never having been in a North American farm system. They are expensive, but in the long run, probably less expensive than the perennial expense of maintaining the infrastructure necessary for a farm system.

Farm systems don't just develop players. They develop managers (John Farrell was a farm director), and general managers (so was Ben Cherington). They develop broadcasters, coaches, groundskeepers and even fans. Minor league teams can mean a lot to their cities, and there is no better example of that than Pawtucket.

This can all still happen without minor league teams being affiliated with major league ones. It's just that, if it does, there will be...

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