Growing Dodger Blue
One to the oldest, most prolific farm systems in baseball produces top picks for 2006. Is this a return to the Dodger farm of old that produced World Series contenders from the 1950s to the 1980s?
The MLN Farm System of the Year 2006 award is presented this year to a club, not an organization.
Many of the teams in major league baseball and their associated farm systems are really organizations. They function by fielding teams full of players bought and sold who hopefully will generate a winning-enough record to keep the fans buying seats, hot dogs, drinks, and souvenirs. It's a business with a soul.
The Dodgers fall into that rarer category of being a baseball club. As Tommy Lasorda will tell anyone within earshot willing to listen, "God is Dodger Blue." It's not just hype. The Dodgers are a club, a band of brothers who pass through one of the most rigorous training systems in professional baseball. It's easy to see. Each Spring at Vero Beach, the Dodgers display the science and art of generating great players. Everyone works hard at their Spring camps. The Dodgers players, particularly the farmhands, work that much harder.
No matter whether you end up in Dodger Blue as a major leaguer, or with another team, or you stay on the farm, you are, first and foremost, like the United States Marines, a member of one of the most elite clubs in baseball.
The mighty Dodgers farm system is to player development what Iowa is to corn production. Over the years, the Dodgers have produced massive talents for their own use that are so numerous that you almost can't mention a few without being unfair to so many other superstars. Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Steve Garvey, Don Drysdale, Ron Cey, Orel Hershiser, Mike Scoscia, and literally hundreds more have filled Chavez Ravine with nights of stellar major league play.
From the era of the club, where the owners O'Malley drove a championship major league club almost exclusively from the farm, the Dodgers farm system's cup has runneth over.
Big Blue has been a big net exporter of superstar players. Champions like Pedro Martinez, and Paul Konerko, and top talents like Hideo Nomo, Mike Piazza, Chan Ho Park, and Paul LoDuca launched major league careers from the Mecca of Baseball, Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida.
In this second year of presenting the MLN Farm of the Year to the major league team that produces the highest quantity of talent in our FAB50 and Ones2Watch rankings, there are few clubs so deserving, yet, in the case of the Dodgers, seemingly overdue.
Many of the players in this year's FAB50 we have been following in development for years. There are wines that will mature faster, it seems, than third baseman Joel Guzman (35), who found himself on the outs and on his way to Tampa Bay when we went to publication.
The Dodgers, who have won the most National League pennants (21), have not hoisted the championship flag over the stadium since 1988, which was their last year as a World Series Champion as well.
The last 18 years ended the O'Malley era and ushered in the Fox era. "Modern" corporate ownership, and high-dollar free agency did not sit well with a club that had a very organic tradition of growing their own.
The Dodgers track record for big name trades has been awful. From the ill-fated Don Stanhouse trade of 1980 to the under-performance of modern-era Dodger acquisitions like Gary Sheffield, the Dodgers have not had a pennant-winning club since they started playing the acquistion game in the Yankee/Red Sox model.
The trades that have always worked better for Dodger Blue have been the acquisition of discarded or underused plow horse players like Kirk Gibson, who have delivered yeoman service with clutch play.
In 2004 Frank McCourt and wife Jamie purchased controlling interest of the Los Angeles Dodgers from Fox Entertainment Group, which purchased the team in 1998 from the O'Malley family, and Robert Daily who was added in as managing partner in 1999.
While it is still early in their ownership tenure, what is clear is that the Dodgers farm system, long under-utilized, is making a steady comeback in the overall operations of the club.
The combination of stagnancy in career growth and ego undermine the value of prospects in the development system. During the highly stagnant Fox years, players like Joe Thurston, poster-child of green cap players stuck and frustrated, were left on the farm like so much overproduced corn.
Now we see more movement of players in quality and quantity who have a real shot to make the major league roster. James Loney, Andy LaRoche, and T.J. Nall top a list of impressive talents turning up the heat in the Dodgers organization.
If the major league front office continues to broker and manage their trades as wisely as they have been in the McCourt era, and draws on the club's traditional power, the farm, the Los Angeles Dodgers can look forward to seeing 21st century NLCS pennants flying from the poles above the zigzag bleacher roofs of Dodger Stadium.
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