I don't argue that the premise of getting as much value as possible is incorrect. However, unless you succeed in doing so you are screwing yourself. Assuming they got 3 picks in 2012 for the price of 1 then you also have to hold them accountable for getting 0 picks out of 3 (or 2 depending on how you view it) in 2014. Just because the methodology was valid doesn't mean they didn't blow the draft. They did. They took a player with no history and they paid the price. Had they selected Rodon they wouldn't have Nix but they also wouldn't have had to pay him off in a settlement and they would have an almost ready ML pitcher on the roster. Instead they are out the 1.5 million to Nix, Marshall didn't sign and Aiken gave us a black eye with the media.

As I said before, Aiken being injured only exonerates the astros once you accept the fact that they drafted him in the first place. I don't believe a #1 overall pick should ever be a high school pitcher. That's simply irresponsible. They should be held accountable for that.

As for their farm system they were rated #1 or #2 overall prior to the 2014 season by many publications. By the end of the 2014 season our farm system had dropped to anywhere from #4 to #12 based on a cursory google search. What that tells me is our 2013 draft didn't hold up when they started playing regularly and they don't think much of our 2014 draft class. I think that if you assume we had such a good farm system at the beginning of 2014 then you no longer had to be trying to draft for quantity and could pick purely based on quality. If our farm system is so good you simply didn't need to play the game of getting 2 or 3 good players and should be thrilled with getting a superstar, even if he is only a single player.

I'm not trying to bash the front office or Luhnow because I do see some intelligence behind what they do. I'm also not saying that Aiken or Appel are such horrible picks as to be obvious mistakes. What I am saying is that the end result is we blew the 2014 #1 overall pick. That ended up costing us at least 2 players and we missed out on a guy who could be a stud. We probably also blew the 2013 #1 overall pick with Appel instead of Bryant. I bring this up again because I truly think it is insane what we missed.

You and Pat say that getting the most out of your drafts is smart and that is what the Astros were trying to do. I say, based solely on the first couple rounds, the Astros didn't do that.

Which teams do you think would be getting more out of the draft?

2012: Correa, Mcullers, Ruiz,
2012: Buxton

Obviously in 2012 we got a ton out of the draft.

2013: Appel
2013: Bryant

We didn't really sign anyone else with the money saved from Appel (unless i'm mistaken) but I think it is clear most people would rather have Bryant who is being praised as a phenom and already ML ready vs. Appel who has almost no professional success.

2014: Aiken, Nix, Marshall
2014: Rodon

Considering we got none of those players mentioned it is an easy pick to say Rodon but even if we had signed all three I think you could say that we still didn't get more than Rodon (although it is much closer).

My point here is that I would rather have Correa, Bryant and Rodon than all the other guys the Astros did or tried to sign. Because of that I think, for a franchise that is supposedly reinventing the way we value players and is hiring guys to fill titles like Decision Sciences, we should be even harder on them for trying and failing to sign the best players possible. Excusing their screw ups in 2014 is insulting the intelligence of guys hired to answer these exact questions. You should assume they knew the risks because you hope they hired the right people to do the job and those risks became real life issues. Drafting a high school pitcher is a massive risk that most intelligent baseball fans are aware of. They did it anyways with the #1 overall pick and they got hosed. This screw up is on them. That's my entire point. You can't go back and try and say that we were all wrong for giving them crap because Aiken really was hurt. They should never have drafted him in the first place. When you have that pick you have to weigh the risks involved and the reality that you don't get picks like that every year. I get Pat's feeling about no good agent allowing his player to take that physical pre-draft but it is exactly that reason that no good team should be taking that player without the 100% belief that the reward outweighs the risks. I assume they felt that was the case. They were absolutely 100% wrong. No amount of future injuries to Aiken will take that away.