aaaw2385 wrote:

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I don't know if these are the best examples, but bear with me (and please refute if appropriate, I've done almost no research to validate) -- Stolmy Pimintel, Drake Britton, Oscar Tejada, Michael Bowden, Lars Anderson, Jose Iglesias.  I didn't even include Casey Kelly because he benefited from a trade that maxed his value (and maybe that's the other side to this argument, that this strategy inflates trade-value and so allows a hedge against guys who flame out), and I realize you could argue that Reddick, Middlebrooks, Rizzo and others have benefited from this approach (although I'd argue they were examples of players whose track was perfectly matched to their performance relative to competition level), I was curious to see what others think of this idea.  Just really focusing on the concept that we seem to generally support the idea of aggressive promotion as a virtue, but sometimes I get the feeling the idea of sometimes hurting a player with over-aggressive promotions/placements may be missed as a discussion point sometimes?

I agree that the Sox have been aggressive with a number of guys, Almanzar and Bogaerts for example, but I think with the examples you listed you're seeing prospects who have been disappointing in some way, for the most part they really haven't been promoted too aggressively:

Pimentel is certainly age advanced but he had a full season in the NYPL, a full season in low-A, and a full season in High-A before being promoted to AA where he struggled badly.

Britton hasn't thrown many innings at any level but he went to the NYPL in '08 where he was injured, barely pitched in '09, then in 2010 he spent most of a full season in low-A and dominated in short (2-3 inning) starts; you could argue that he should have continued to build his innings in low-A last year but it certainly wasn't crazy to send him to High-A.

Tejeda is another player who is age advanced, but he spent a full year in the GCL/NYPL in '07, spent all of '08 and '09 in Low-A, had 552 PAs and seemed to have a break-out year in High-A in 2010, so AA made sense in 2011 for him.

Bowden spent '06 in low-A, was agressively promoted to AA after 46 innings in high-A in '07, spent most of '08 in AA before moving to AAA late in the year, and has been there ever since.

Lars recorded 533 PAs in low-A in '07, 400+ in high-A between '07 and '08, 750 in AA from '08 - '10, and has been in AAA since early 2010.

Jose Iglesias I completely agree about, he has been agressively placed, and so far it doesn't appear to have worked too well, although the Sox may well think that he will work through his problems just as well in AAA as A+, and want his defense available in Boston if needed.

Kelley did throw 100 innings in '09 between low-A and high-A, but between his age and his transition to pitching full time I agree, AA was an agressive placement for him.

I'm not trying to prove you right or wrong, but reinforcing Yirm's point that there's a difference between having young prospects and being over-aggressive with them. All of the players mentioned have had a disappointing year at some point, but in general it looks more likely that they simply reached a point where they couldn't consistently outperform their competition than that they were too raw or unprepared for the promotions they received. This also doesn't mean that any of these players can't improve and once again become good prospects, just that they reached a level where they weren't automatically better than everyone else on the field.  Personally my belief is that a good player will be able to work out his issues, even against more advanced competition, so I'm generally in favor of moving players aggressively. The list of guys I think they have moved too fast is pretty short, consisting primarily of Almanzar and Iglesias, and possibly including Craig Hanson and Cla Meredith.