I look at the draft this way:  to be a self-sufficient organization you want to draft 9 "average to star" position players and five "average to star" starting pitchers every seven or eight years and along the way, you'll also find your relievers and bench players.  It's a crude analysis but it tells us that over seven years, we need to draft 14 future pros that will ensure we maintain an above average offense and pitching staff.  This equates to two per draft.

JP drafted 1 (David Bush) in 2002, 2 in 2003 (Aaron Hill, Shawn Marcum), and 3+ in 2004 (Adam Lind, Casey Janssen [I see as a league average starter or slightly better], Jesse Litcsh).  It's too early for 2005-07, though 2005 looks weak and 2007 looks strong.  Along the way, plenty of bullpen arms and potential bench players were accumulated.

This crude measuring stick doesn't account for international free agents.  Really it's too early to tell, but despite the misses, JP is holding his head above water.  The 2007 GCL Jays count some 12 solid prospects in their midst. 

I think you missed Jesse Litsch. 

There's actually a draft score ranking system at "thebaseballcube.com" that ranks teams based on how many players have reached the majors.  Since 2002, the Jays have done very well.

The Adams and Romero picks in particular were thought to be strange picks at the time, and with the benefit of hindsight, they look even worse.

Romero, yes, but Adams wasn't all that controversial. A bunch of players picked after him have done better, but guys like Kazmir and Hamels, the obvious "JP Screwed Up" choices, both carried some risk. (particularly Hamels) If you look at BA's commentary at the time, they were pretty positive, though not glowing, about Adams.

Totally agree. While we are talking about perception vs. reality, I think it is skewed even further by the fact that the big two in the AL East have a monstrous hype machine in ESPN here in the US (I am in PA). Although Lester, Pedroia, Buchholz, Hughes, Chamberlain etc., have not yet done all that much yet, anybody south of the border is constantly hearing about what studs these guys are, and how brilliant the FO of their respective teams have been. Meanwhile, almost nothing is heard about the likes of Marcum, Hill, Janssen who have contributed as much or more to their big-league clubs.

That said, that Romero pick is not looking good right now, even through the most objective eyes.

He seems to be very good at assembling hordes of soft tossing 5th starters and enthusiastic 4th outfielders, but not very good at developing true superstars.

I think you're missing out on a rather large middle-ground there. Shaun Marcum might not be an ace, but he's a heck of a lot better than a fifth starter. Adam Lind should be more than a fourth outfielder, and Casey Janssen has been an excellent reliever and has the chance to be a very good starter. Jesse Litsch doesn't have to improve a whole lot to be more than a fifth starter, and he was just drafted three years ago.

Mike, are you on crack?  Who cares if Adams has more win shares at this stage? 

I believe that is exactly the point Mike is making.  He's pointing out the flaw in the ranking because Adams rates higher today in this calculation than these obviously better prospects.

Only considering the players listed and not players who have made their major league debuts I would expect the following teams to leapfrog the Jays:

Atlanta

Arizona

Detroit

Milwaukee

SF

Boston

LA Angels

Tampa Bay

Kansas City

Yankees

I would imagine in time they will be in the 11-15 range.  Not bad considering many of the teams ahead of them will have chosen earlier or have much larger budgets.

What you expect with prospects isn't always what you get. After 2005, it would have been reasonable to expect Russ Adams to be a decent player. Not a star, maybe not even a terribly good player, but a roughly-average middle infielder. And I don't think we need to revisit the ups-and-downs of Alex Rios: He went from struggling prospect to Future All-Star at AA, to an emergency-yet-capable MLB fill-in, then slumped back down to the point where many people were insistent that the Jays couldn't possibly contend with him in right field, and has since come back to be their best hitter.

There are some good prospects who will flame out. There are some mediocre ones who will blossom.

Things are about to get ugly for Troy Glaus.  Both ESPN and SI are reporting that he received shipments of banned steroids in 2003 and 2004.

Maybe they were for his wife's horses.

"How do you determine who's a high upside guy? "

There are players who are seen as "safe picks" with less upside. That is, they might have a 75% chance of being a middle to late of the rotation starter and a 0% of being an ace versus a player who has 33% chance of being an ace or dominant closer, and 67% chance of  not contributing at the ML level.   Determining who has upside can be difficult of course but the feeling for many about J.P. is that he went for guys who had no chance of being ML stars. Aaron Hill is not going to be a star major leaguer and nobody ever really thought he was going to. Russ Adams was never going to be a star. Romero was projected at draft time to be a middle of the rotation guy.  Romero is an example of this as he was taken as a "Safe pick": while the Tigers drafted Maybin straight out of high school as an unpolished and toolsy player 4 picks later.  Obviously "upside" doesn't work out a lot of the time, but at some point, you need to get guys who can hit 40 HRs or throw 200+ very good innings a year.

It's really an exercise in futility to try to grade recent drafts this soon. Especially with respect to pitchers. If you have 5 guys who look like they'll anchor your staff for years, you normally end up with 1 good pitcher, 1 or 2 guys who are ok, and 2 or 3 guys who get hurt. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior looked like future hall-of-famers not long ago. And it's too simplistic to blame Dusty Baker; pitchers get hurt all the time, which is why you need quantity.

I'm not saying the Yankee prospects are not going to be good, they probably will be.  But the only thing we can actually measure are things that have actually happened, and even those we don't always measure very accurately.  If Baseball ended tomorrow Russ Adams will have had a better major league career than Phillip Hughes, and that's all we can say with any degree of certainty.  Anything more would be nothing but guesswork and speculation.

Yes, if baseball ended tomorrow, an argument could be made that Russ Adams has had a more valuable career than Phillip Hughes. But that's a silly way to look at things.

Russ Adams was drafted in 2002 out of college. Phillip Hughes was drafted in 2004 out of high school.

So you are comparing an older, more developed Adams who has had more opportunity to be valuable to his team simply because he happened to be born earlier to Hughes, who could very well still be in college had he opted not to sign with the Yankees.

Said another way using your warped logic: Miguel Negron may have been a more valuable prospect than Travis Snider since Negron has generated more wins for his minor league clubs in his eight season than Snider has in his two seasons.

When we wuz contenders we were among the leaders in Latin America with Epy and his scouts. We gave that all away; today we get latino crumbs.

With our mid-pack payroll limits I FIRMLY believe we cannot build a contender on drafting just from the college pool of players. No international impact guys, no HS impact guys, only (if we get lucky) college impact guys. Of all the pools of players there are, we fish from just one pond for the most part. This year was an EXCEPTION because we had 234 picks in the first two rounds. Starting next year JP will revert closer to form - no more than one of our first 5 picks will be HS guys.

You heard it here first, bank on it. Would I lie to you guys?  I love all you like like brothers; only from an-uder modder.

I’ve already talked about JP’s draft history numerous times so I’m not going to repeat myself here. But let me just say I’m not a fan of any GM that states he won’t draft a Boras client or a High School pitcher in the 1st round. It is absolutely foolish to artificially handcuff yourself in the draft by limiting your options in picking players.

With our mid-pack payroll limits I FIRMLY believe we cannot build a contender on drafting just from the college pool of players. No international impact guys, no HS impact guys, only (if we get lucky) college impact guys. Of all the pools of players there are, we fish from just one pond for the most part. This year was an EXCEPTION because we had 234 picks in the first two rounds. Starting next year JP will revert closer to form - no more than one of our first 5 picks will be HS guys.

What are you basing that one? Ricciardi's first pick in 2006 was a high school player. He took several high school players this year. He's added high-ceiling international players like Fuenmayor and Cheng over the past couple of years. He hired one of the Braves' top scouts to run the Latin America scouting department.

What are you basing that one? Ricciardi's first pick in 2006 was a high school player. He took several high school players this year. He's added high-ceiling international players like Fuenmayor and Cheng over the past couple of years. He hired one of the Braves' top scouts to run the Latin America scouting department.

As I said, he took more HS guys this year because we had so many picks, reduced the risk with the extra bodies. As to last years number 1 pick - Snider was a man in all but name. The guy is 6 foot-ish and 240 pounds-ish,  physically there is very little projection - he was more like a college pick.

As to our "new" look in Latin America it's proof that JP agrees that we need more than what he's been doing for us to contend. If we hadn't stopped the Latin search we'd be way ahead of where we are now. However, I do agree our Latin moves are at least a step in the right direction.

Mylegacy alluded earlier to how being a midpack payroll team has certain ramifications.

I've come around to the conclusion that the Blue Jays, if they hope to compete in this division on a regular basis, simply have to bump the payroll to somewhere in the Red Sox range, i.e. near the tax threshold. The Red Sox and Yankees spend the money and also are both being very well run right now. There is only so much you can do to "outoperate" them. No matter how smart you operate, you can only achieve a marginal gain over a smart, capable opponent. If that opponent can outspend you by a huge margin, he's going to prevail other than years where luck is on your side.

Barring some structural change in MLB, either we'll have to content ourselves with this situation or Rogers can go the whole hog with respect to payroll (and here I include amateur bonuses, scouting expense worldwide, posting fees etc.), with the idea that if you spend money you can make money too.

It's Ted's team and he can run it as he sees fit. But Lord knows he has the money to do it if he feels like it.

I think main problem of JP's draft is considering signablity&injury too much-which makes lack of  impact players.

And drafting guys who has fell down because of signablity&injury also weakens Yanks&Redsox- who loves to draft that kind of players.

Why not use some money to guys who has potential to be superstar?

I didn't say more talented, I said 'better in JP's mind'.  JP clearly looks at an equation that maximizes probability of making the big leagues and impact when there.  I think Kevin Ahrens is a safer bet to make the big leagues than Rick Porcello.  I think he has star upside as well.  And for financial reasons, which didn't get into in my brief, casual retort, Porcello was an exceptional example.  The Romero pick was a better argument for signability, as Maybin was safer and at least on par for impact.  At the time he seemed to be more interested in safe pitchers at that point in time.