and Connor is incompetent

i don’t think he’d be having the same success

But not necessarily because of our coaches being inferior or such. I think it has more to do with the fact that he would not have gotten the amount of playing time Chicago was willing to give him had he remained here.

I I remember correctly, when Danks was traded he was not considered ready for the majors by the Rangers (my understanding is, that was the entire reason for making the trade in the first place). So had we kept him, one would assume that it’s very unlikely he would have been allowed to take his lumps in the rotation last year, or that he would have started the season in the rotation at all. At best, he probably would have been a second-half callup, or a replacement for an injured starter at some point midseason. And had he struggled like he did last year, he likely would have been yo-yoed back and forth to AAA by the Rangers, rather than being allowed to pitch and adapt to the majors the way he has in Chicago. I don’t know how far along he’d developmentally right now had he remained Ranger property, but I’m willing to wager that he would not be in the top 5 in ERA in the american league right now.

That’s just life though. If he would’ve stayed in our system he’d have different experience and thus be a different pitchers. One of the big changes we’ve seen him in this year is the cutter which he has credited to Buhrele. I can’t 100% say he wouldn’t have developed that here, but chances are probably not.

All that said I still think he would have been a good pitcher for us, we’ll just never know how good exactly.

When someone talks about Danks or Volquez on this board you see 2 or 3 people say they wouldn’t have been this good in Texas. Yet these same people never criticize our own coaches for their inabilities for making these pitchers good. I personally think it is Bullshit but instead we weren’t patient enough with Volquez (he turned it around in his Halladay minor league experience and did well in limited action in the majors last year). As for Danks, it was just a bad trade.

I’d be more upset about him if his peripherals suggested he’d continue to pitch well.

As I mentioned elsewhere, though, I thought cutting him loose instead of Tejeda or Cruz was a mistake.

but I look at Scott Feldman and see how he has been developed and see something really wrong. Our development guys took the Feldman that we see now and turned him into a tricked up softball pitcher. When that went wrong, they let him go back to the arm slot he used in college and bada-bing he turns into something that might be pretty serviceable.

If they hadn’t forced him into throwing like a girl in the first place, he might be 2 years further along the path that he is now on.

I don’t see how you can say that Scott Feldman is evidence that our development folks know what they are doing.

Sounds kind of hollow.

This has turned out to be a very good thread to read, as JBI pointed out – who cares if LSJ was trying to be snarky when he posted it? He’s usually that way irregardless, it’s just part of his shtick.