World Series Preview: Rockies Vs. Red Sox

Approaches to team-building not as different as it seems

By Chris Kline and John Manuel
October 23, 2007

The storyline of the World Series seems to be David vs. Goliath, with the red-hot, homegrown Rockies playing the $143 million payroll of the Red Sox. The Rockies arrived ahead of schedule; the Red Sox now plan on the playoffs every year, making their fourth appearance in the last five seasons.

LOOKING BACK

At Baseball America, we love to follow guys as the come up through the minors to become big league stars. Here's a look back at some of the stars of this series and what we said about them before they made it to the bigs. • Just this spring Franklin Morales was looking to establish himself and was proving to the Rockies that they were glad he decided to become a pitcher. • Ubaldo Jimenez has been on the BA radar since 2003 when he impressed despite his 6.53 ERA. • Matt Holliday took a while to develop, but he was a frequent member of the Rockies Top 10 Prospects lists in the early 2000s. • Rockies righthander Jeff Francis put together a dominant final minor league season to win our 2004 Minor League Player of the Year Award. • Over in Boston, Jonathan Papelbon first popped up as a raw draft eligible sophomore in 2002. Not long after he was ranked as the No. 3 prospect in the Red Sox system. • Dustin Pedroia's grit has been a story ever since he was Arizona State. • This year's Red Sox Top 10 Prospects list includes current Sox Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia. • Josh Beckett was being compared to Nolan Ryan as a high school senior.

The truth, however, is that these teams aren't as different as you might imagine. The Rockies have followed a traditional playbook of building through scouting and player development, with 15 of the players on their 25-man roster having been drafted or originally signed by the Rockies. However, while the Red Sox have the second-largest payroll in the game, they also have worked two rookies into their everyday lineup and have depended much more on their farm system than they did during their 2004 World Series championship run.

Boston's system ranked No. 9 entering 2007 in our Prospect Handbook, in large part because of its big league-ready talent. No one expected the Rockies to make the leap to 90 victories and the postseason this year, but BA readers knew the Rockies had young talent in the majors and more in the pipeline. The National League Championship Series matchup of the Rockies and Diamondbacks matched the Nos. 2 and 3 farm systems in terms of talent entering the 2007 season.

Colorado's amazing hot streak (perhaps you've heard) helped the Rockies sweep the NLCS, but in Boston they meet a much stiffer opponent, one that has been built through trades and free agency but also has key homegrown pieces of its own.

Avalanche Of Talent

First, the Rockies. Lefthander Jeff Francis was our Minor League Player of the Year in 2004, and he has become the front-of-the-rotation ace that championship teams require. And in the introduction to the Rockies section of the 2007 Prospect Handbook, Tracy Ringolsby wrote, "Few teams have broken as many quality young players into the big leagues the last two years as the Rockies." The list included Francis, Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe.

While Francis was the ninth overall pick in the 2002 draft, a key for Colorado has been the success of later draft picks such as Hawpe, a 2000 11th-round pick out of Louisiana State, and Atkins, a fifth-round pick that year out of UCLA.

The 2000 draft got off to a disastrous start for the Rockies when first-rounder Matt Harrington didn't sign after some of the most acrimonious negotiations in draft history, and second-rounder Jason Young, a righthander out of Stanford, didn't pan out after getting a record $2.75 million bonus. Such failures would have ruined most teams' drafts, but Colorado still got two championship-caliber regulars. Scouting and player development have been crucial to the Rockies' surge, and the club is paying those scouts back, flying them all to Denver for Games Three, Four and Five of the series.

"Hawpe could always hit," one scout with an American League organization said after watching him hit .291/.387/.539 with 29 homers and 116 RBIs this season. "It might not have been the 'first-round guy' or a guy you would have envisioned driving in over 100 runs in the big leagues. But the tools to hit and the tools to hit for some power have always been there.

"I never thought Atkins could play third base. He played first base a lot (in the minors) and his third base skills are always on the bubble. I thought he was real shaky . . . So he kind of surprised everybody by being able to play third base defensively up there. He could always hit, but the power was always the other question."

Four key Rockies ranked among the organization's top 11 prospects entering this season, led by No. 1 prospect Troy Tulowitzki and No. 2 prospect Franklin Morales. Tulowitzki had a solid if unspectacular pro debut in Double-A in 2006, but was BA's No. 1 prospect in the Arizona Fall League last year and has been a huge factor in the Rockies' roll.

"The reason Tulowitzki is Tulowitzki right now is because the Rockies didn't put any extra pressure on him to be 'the guy,' " the scout said. "He wanted to be the guy and to their credit--and this goes to Clint Hurdle and veterans on that club like Todd Helton--they just said, 'OK, you want to be the guy? Go ahead.' They just let him go. You see a lot of rookies get crushed in clubhouses, but Hurdle was smart enough to see the quiet leadership skills in a young player and allow him to have a pretty long leash."

"I'm not sure in terms of tools that people thought he'd be what he's become. But he's a worker and guys around him have always played better with him on the field wherever he's been."

The Rockies obviously got a major contribution from their Latin American program as well, with Morales, righthander Ubaldo Jimenez (No. 6 prospect entering the season) and closer Manny Corpas (No. 11) giving them three fresh arms for their second-half surge.

The boost from those pitchers gave the Rockies the requisite power arms to overmatch hitters down the stretch and in the postseason. Between impenetrable defense and dominant pitching (2.08 ERA during their 21-of-22 stretch), the Rockies have found the formula for winning in Coors Field.

"In the last six years," the scout continued, "(they) stripped the team down after the contracts of (Denny) Neagle and (Mike) Hampton and went to a more traditional standpoint and it worked out. They started doing things the right way and stuck with it."

Player Development Machine?

The Red Sox have done things the right way as well, for a team with amazing resources. Since Theo Epstein became general manager in the fall of 2002, the Red Sox have married statistical analysis at both the pro and amateur scouting level with the financial capacity to overcome their mistakes.

Boston hasn't gotten as much out of its Latin program as the Rockies, but drew obvious dividends from its international work in Game Seven of the American League Championship Series against Cleveland, when Japanese pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima combined for seven innings of work. And Boston's Latin program did produce Hanley Ramirez, who was used in the November 2005 trade to get ALCS MVP Josh Beckett and third baseman Mike Lowell from the Marlins.

"And actually, the unique thing about the trade has turned out to be both teams would still do that trade," one scout said. "That's one of the few times where both teams two years after the fact would still do that deal."

When Boston won the 2004 World Series, the only homegrown player who played a significant role was outfielder Trot Nixon, who was in his 11th season with the organization. Now the Sox have four key homegrown contributors in closer Jonathan Papelbon, second baseman Dustin Pedroia, first baseman Kevin Youkilis and center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury, with Ellsbury emerging as a starter in the final two games of the ALCS.

All four were college draftees from fairly prominent programs--Youkilis from Cincinnati as a senior, Pedroia from Arizona State, Papelbon from Mississippi State and Ellsbury from Oregon State. As one scouting director said, Pedroia and Youkilis were not consensus picks: "We missed those kinds of guys because they don't really profile. Pedroia isn't a great runner; Youkilis has a bad body and doesn't have corner-infield power, above-average power. But they both can really hit; they are ballplayers."

Ellsbury and Papelbon were more typical picks. Papelbon was a college closer at Mississippi State but followed the usual closer track record of starting throughout the minors before becoming a closer again in the big leagues. Ellsbury has become exactly what Boston hoped he could be: a premium defender with leadoff skills and speed.

"Ellsbury was on the first-round board for a lot of teams," a scout in the AFL said. "His Cape Cod was just OK, came out and started the next year and was dynamite. But right when a lot scouts made a push to see him, he had hamstring problems and fell to the latter portion of the first round.

"Pedroia is one of those guys you truly have to go see numerous times and some guys make a mistake and say, 'Dustin Pedroia's a stat guy.' I totally disagree. Because honestly, our area scout was all over him and he was a guy you needed to see multiple times to buy into his hand-eye coordination and his ability to do a lot of things athletically that can't be measured in a 60-yard dash."

The Red Sox have more money than 28 other organizations in the game; only the Yankees outspend them, and that gap has closed. But scouts give the Red Sox credit for supplementing their big-money players with homegrown impact talent.

"You have to give Theo Epstein and Jason McLeod a lot of credit," the scout said. "Theo said when he took the job that he wanted to build through player development, and obviously as a superpower in the game, they have some things financially to help them out. But they took Ellsbury at the latter portion of the first round, they took Pedroia in the latter portion of the second round, they took Papelbon (in the fourth round) and they've got more homegrown guys in the pipeline."