Money hasn’t done the Yankees any good this decade.   Their greatness of the 90′s was built on young, home-grown products like Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Pettitte, etc.  surrounded by very modest free agent acquisitions like Scott Brosius and astute trade aquisitions like Paul O’Neill (picked up in a trade for the washed up Roberto Kelly when he was just a spare, 29 year old, career .250 hitter).

Just some random observations and bits of information I picked up while at the RoughRiders game on Wednesday, August 8:

You know that Frisco third baseman Chris Davis is a powerful man, but his defense is dramatically underrated.    Davis made two nice plays last night that challenged both his glove and his arm.  Pitcher Michael Schlact told me that the big lefty’s glove work was inconsistent through the first couple of months of the season but that he "worked his tail off every day.  I mean hard.  And he’s gotten to the point where he’s really strong.  He’s made a lot of great plays behind me." Schlact is one of the more pronounced ground ball pitchers in the organization, and so good infield defense is certainly not something he takes lightly.

If you have an opportunity to catch the Riders over these final few weeks of the season, make sure you get there very early.   You do not want to miss batting practice.   Davis launched one into the parking lot in right field with a blast that soared over the scoreboard.   A few rips later, he cleared the batter’s eye in dead center.   The raw power is literally breathtaking.

You just shake your head at the Junkmeister General Danny Ray Herrera.  The 5’6" lefty brings the 82 mph "fastball,"  subtracts about 12 mph to give you a fluttering 70 mph change and then drops his 65 mph bender on you.   And he seems to throw each pitch from about three different arm angles.     I asked Rangers pitching coordinator Rick Adair "what do you make of this?"  after Herrera worked  through a perfect seventh during which he induced an array of embarassing swings from Tulsa’s three best hitters:   "I’ve never seen anything like him," said Adair shaking his head.  "I’m not going to mess with that.  Just leave him alone."

Adair, by the way, was just back from Spokane where he’d seen  flamethrowing Neftali Feliz, acquired in the Mark Teixeira deal:   "there’s a lot to work with there.  A lot.   He’s only pitched about 50 innings in the States.  He’s really like a part of this draft class [with Blake Beavan, Michael Main and Neil Ramirez].  You add Neftali and those three? It’s just an amazing amount of pitching talent coming in at one time."   

Adair also shared some thoughts on Schlact, recently promoted from Bakersfield to Frisco.   Schlact’s Texas League debut (5.1 shutout innings, allowing three hits and a walk while recording six strikeouts — all swinging — in San Antonio),  was a statistical departure from the 4.66 K/9  he posted in the Cal League.  "Don’t make the mistake of reading too much into statistics.   Mark Twain said that there are three kinds of lies:   ’lies,***** lies and statistics.’    The Cal League is tough on pitchers, but it’s really tough on guys like Mike who rely on movement and sink.  There’s no humidity in Bakersfield and the ball doesn’t do what you want it to.   A kid has to really learn how to pitch there.  Mike worked his plan.  He learneda lot and he’s ready for this."     Schlact, a 6’8"  righty, is the third youngest pitcher in the Texas League, by the way.   

Schlact’s neighbor from back home in Marietta, Georgia, is center fielder Brandon Boggs.   Two thoughts on Boggs from last night’s game:   I’ve never seen a Texas League center fielder wait for more balls.   Boggs has good speed.  He’s not an Olympic sprinter like Freddy Guzman or Julio Borbon, but he seems to read the ball off the bat better and react more quickly than just about anybody I’ve seen in Frisco.    He also has less use for a cutoff man than anybody whose come through Frisco in the last several years.

Finally, I’ve been working on a feature about Edinson Volquez but I’m going to sit on it for now.   There’s a bigger story to be told about this situation and I’m going to wait until the time is right.   I think that the wait will be worthwhile. 

In the 2002 draft, the Rangers had one first round pick (Drew Meyer) and then didn’t have another selection until the sixth round (John Connolly Barnett).  As we sit here today, the draft netted the Rangers a grand total of one big leaguer (20th rounder Kameron Loe).

That same year, Oakland  — wielding seven first round or supplemental first round picks — added outfielder Nick Swisher, starting pitcher Joe Blanton, third baseman Mark Teahen and  catcher Jeremy Brown.   Teahen was later flipped for closer Octavio Dotel.   Brown, currently batting .281 / .373 / .472 in triple-A, is poised to assume a major role with the A’s in 2008.   Those were the only big leaguers who came out of the famous A’s "Moneyball" draft of 2002.

The  Atlanta Braves selected Jeff Francoeur and Dan Meyer (later traded for Tim Hudson) in the first round and Brian McCann in the second, that year.   No other big leaguers were found by the talented Braves scouting department in that year’s draft.

Adding one big leaguer a year to your organization is certainly a recipe for long-term problems.    The odds of adding mulitple future big leaguers to your roster through the draft increase dramatically when you have multiple first round picks.

For every one Loe (20th round) or Ian Kinsler (17th round, 2003), there are a dozen Blantons, Swishers and Teahens — first rounders — who make it.  As an example, 29 of 52 first-round draft picks in the 1997 draft eventually made a big-league appearance. Only five of the 30 players selected in the 6th round of the 1997 draft ever did so, and only two of those five played more than 40 innings in the major leagues.

Not only did the Rangers roll into the 2007 draft armed with five first round (or supplemental first round) picks, but in the past week, GM Jon Daniels topped that astonding haul by adding three teenaged prospects whom, "if they went into the draft, would all go in the first 10-15 picks" according to one anonymous GM  who spoke to ESPN’s Peter Gammons in the aftermath of the trade deadline.

With the addition of Blake Beavan, Michael Main, Julio Borbon, Neil Ramirez, Tommy Hunter, Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus and Engel Beltre to the system in the past 60 days,  Daniels has radically altered what Baseball America ranked as the third worst farm system in baseball at the beginning of the year.

Baseball Prospectus minor league guru Kevin Goldstein told me today that:

The Rangers system looked pretty bad going into the year, and with injuries to some of their bigger prospects like Thomas Diamond and Joaquin Arias, the trade of John Danks, and the early struggles of Edinson Volquez, things looked even worse for a while.

The trade to the Braves alone considerably beefed up the system, as not only did they get a budding your star in Saltalammachie, but Harrison, Feliz and Andrus are all guys who should be in the team’s top 10 prospects in the offseason.  Beltre certainly has top 10 potential as well, but will need some time.

Throw in two first round picks like Main and Beaven, and a third arm in Neil Ramirez (if he signs) with first-round talent, and the system has gone through a complete overhaul.  It might not be a top-10 system yet, but it’s close.  The Rangers have gone from pretty horrible to awfully strong in 60 days and to do so is pretty remarkable.

Will the Rangers strike gold on all eight of these kids?  No chance.   But Daniels has tilted the odds in his favor in a big way.  One or two of these kids will almost certainly end up in a trade (such as Teahen for Dotel, for example), one or two won’t make it at all anywhere.   But in a few years,  the odds suggest that you can expect a number of them to be key players, perhaps even elite players, in a Rangers uniform.

DVD is so last year.   Get ready for the BMF’s.

You already know that the Rangers added two blue chip pitching prospects in this summer’s amateur draft in 18 year old Blake Beavan and 18 year old Michael Main (assuming the former signs in the next two weeks, as most seem to believe that he will). 

What you might not know is that a third teenaged pitcher has joined the fold whose accomplishments and stuff make him arguably a better prospect than either Beavan or Main:   Neftali Feliz.

A little context for where I’m coming from:

Eric Hurley took a swim throught the short season Northwest League the year that he was 18 years old on opening day (2004).   The hitters, almost exclusively college guys, lit him up to the tune of a 5.40 ERA and a .295 batting average.

The year that John Danks began the season as an 18 year old, the older NWL hitters pounded out an 8.53 ERA against the first rounder while hitting him at a .267 clip.

2006 first rounder Kasey Kiker competed marvelously as an 18 year old in the NWL, holding the far more experienced hitters to a 4.13 ERA and a .232 average.   

Neftali Feliz — the kid who many probably think of as an extra, inconsequential name thrown on to the back of the Mark Teixeira trade if they think of him at all — began the season as an 18 year old and he held NWL-level competition in the Appy League to a ridiculous 2.05 ERA and a .178 batting average.

Feliz is not some marginal afterthought in the Teixeira deal.   He is, for his age and level of competition, arguably a better prospect and more accomplished than Hurley, Danks or Kiker and belongs in any discussion of the two blue chippers added to the system in the first round of the 2007 draft.   

The Rangers have been stung badly this decade with "afterthoughts" like Feliz being added on to the back end of a deal.    When Texas traded for a washed up Randy Velarde back in 2000, they threw in a young arm toiling in the Appy League named Aaron Harang.   A couple of years later, the tacked a rookie league third baseman named Edwin Encarnacion on to the back end of a deal to get Rob Bell.

This time, it seems that Jon Daniels is going to find himself on the right end of one of those seemingly unexpected bonanzas.

The numbers and the scouting reports suggest that Feliz has the goods to rank as one of the most dominant young pitchers this system has ever seen.   In 55.1 career innings over his first two pro seasons, his K/9 (strikeouts per 9 innings) ratio is a staggering 11.45 (among all MLB starters this year, only two are better than 10).

Last year, as a 17 year old pitching in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League, the 6’3",  180 lb. Feliz — a Dominican Republic native finding himself on American soil for the first time — did not allow a run over his last 11 innings of work, and he fanned 15 during that span.   

His manager Luis Ortiz told Baseball America that Feliz was the best prospect on his extremely talented young club:   "He’s tall, smooth and he does it so effortless. When it comes out of his hand, it’s ‘Bam’–96, 97."

Think about that:   17, 18 years old and throwing 96, 97… "effortlessly."

According to Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA projections, the two most similar pitchers to Feliz are Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez and Joel Zumaya.

He’s awfully young, far away from the big leagues, can be a bit wild at times and he needs to refine his secondary pitches, but it’s abundantly clear that had Feliz been in the 2007 draft — like Beavan and Main, both of whom are roughly the same age — he wouldn’t have made it past the first ten or 15 picks.  Arms like this one just don’t make it that far down the list very often.