For reference, here are the WAR leaders among drafted pitchers from the 2018-2023 drafts and what their signing bonus was - stopping at players with 2+ WAR. I'm excluding Michael Harris Jr. who is listed as a pitcher in the draft dcontent but made his bones as a hitter)
Shane McLanahan (8.7 WAR, 2.23m)
Alek Manoah (7.8 WAR, 4.54m)
Logan Gilbert (7.1 WAR, 3.88m)
Spencer Strider (7.1 WAR, 449k)
Drew Rasmussen (5.9 WAR, 135k)
Brady Singer (5.8 WAR, 4.25m)
Kyle Bradish (5.4 WAR, 397k)
George Kirby (5.3 WAR, 3.24m)
Tarik Skubal (4.9 WAR, 350k)
Reid Detmers (4.3 WAR, 4.67m)
Joe Ryan (3.8 WAR, 147k)
Bryce Elder (3.8 WAR, 847k)
Tanner Bibee (3.6 WAR, 259k)
Graham Ashcraft (3.4 WAR, 248k)
Josiah Grey (3.3WAR, 772k)
Tyler Holton (3.1WAR, 144k)
Casey Mize (2.8 WAR, 7.5m)
Andrew Abbott (2.7 WAR, 1.3m)
Nick Lodolo (2.7 WAR, 5.43m)
Bobby Miller (2.1 WAR, 2..2m)
Drey Jameson (2.0 WAR, 1.4m)
Obviously this list will grow a lot as notable players from all of these classes as still working their way up - even the 2018 has someone like Grayson Rodriguez which you can reasonably assume will be a guy who breaks that arbitrary barrier in 2024, or Kris Bubic who is at 1.7 WAR, never mind the 2022 and 2023 classes, but my takeaways and maybe...points of caution surrounding the Sox prospect evaluations
- A lot of the "spend' value will be weighted by first round picks and where a team is choosing. For instance, the Pirates' bonus for Paul Skenes was around 9m - the Sox picked 13 slots lower and spent that much on bonus money for Teel, Zenetello, Anderson, and Duffy combined (their first four picks). To put it differently, lets say the Sox chose an SP in the first round from 2018-2023 (they had five picks in that range), they would have spent 18m on pitchers for those five picks, putting them...7th from the bottom. Obviously other picks could have gone there but those first rounders can represent a TON of the pool for teams picking high.
- At least in this sample, you seemingly do need to spend a bit to get pitching in the draft unless you have a great development team (Cleveland, Atlanta) or get fortunate. Given the spike in cost for pitching in the FA and Trade Markets (which underlies all of this), that matters a ton.
- For the Sox, this really does feel like a development/talent scouting issue to me.
- 2018: 6 pitchers got a bonus over 100k, only Thaddeus Ward made the majors and is below replacement level (The Sox drafted Duran and Casas as hitters)
- 2019: 6 pitchers got a bonus over 100k (weird year, no first rounder gave more money to spread around) ,only Chris Murphy made the majors of those and was replacement level, That entire draft was a disaster.
- 2020:There were only four picks, two were pitchers both got 200k+ bonuses, neither are high end.
- 2021: 6 pitchers got a bonus over 100k, two of them have a prospect pulse (IMO)
- It is absolutely a real concern that there is a lack of pitching depth and higher end talent in the system.
My thought is, that ultimately, this comes down to either being willing to sacrifice some of the higher end system talent to draft pitchers in those spots and hope it works out, or they needed to retool their pitching development pipeline, coaching, etc. to really extract value out of those 3rd-6th round arms they and every other team is taking. If it's the former, finding those right names might be a bit more challenging. For instance, the Sox took Kyle Teel 14th - which most people agreed was a major steal - the next pitcher taken was 23 (if you don't case Bryce Eldridge as a two way guy), and next was ten picks after that. An arm like Charlee Soto or Ty Floyd are both exciting but also would be a major reach. In 2022 they took Romero 24th, Noah Schultz (HS Arm) followed two picks later and the rest were in the compensatory round - Noah's been great but is still in A ball. The Sox took Mayer 4th so there were a ton of choices, but a lot of the pitchers after him are far worse outcomes already - Jackson Jobe who went 3rd is very well regarded. Several went after Yorke in 2020 and I'm sure we'd probably like Cavalli or Bobby Miller, but we'd hate a bunch of others.
I do think the Sox need to invest more strongly in pitching, the system is not developing pitching to be a competitive major league squad, but there's some nuance to it.