Peter Gammons: The road to success begins with youth

The commissioner’s office has tried to convince clubs not to spend on the draft, to limit the salaries of front-office and development personnel and shrink budgets, which has hurt several franchises. The Padres are still feeling the effects of owner John Moores’ going along with the commissioner and refusing GM Kevin Towers the right to select Stephen Drew and ending up with Matt Bush. The Pirates are digging out from the center of the earth because of slot drafts. Wayne Krivsky and now Walt Jocketty are rebuilding a bankrupt Cincinnati organization. The Giants are now trying to retool after giving up on development to try to win with Barry Bonds. Royals ownership for years limited signing bonuses for anyone other than their first-round picks, which left the cupboard thin. Houston is headed into a serious long-term recession because owner Drayton McLane let the commissioner’s office, not his scouts, rule the Astros’ drafts.

And the Orioles’ dysfunction and laughable drafts are now being replaced by layers of young talent drafted and traded for by Andy MacPhail; a year from now, Baltimore’s young pitching might be the talk of the AL East.

All winter long, we are told that teams’ offseasons are judged by the veteran players they acquire, sirens of past performance. When the A’s traded Mark Mulder to the Cardinals in December 2004, the lead on “SportsCenter” was that the A’s had become the Royals; check now to see how Dan Haren and Mulder have fared since then.

Of course CC Sabathia will be a major contributor to the Yankees this season, but one NL scout said, “for the $158 million difference, [22-year-old] Junichi Tazawa might have been the most important long-term signing of this offseason. Seven years from now, Tazawa will be 29, have four prime years of his career performed for less than one year for Sabathia. CC will be 36 [in 2016].”

Wouldn’t investing in the draft and player development lower a team’s payroll so they don’t have to sign expensive Free Agents to fill needs as much? Seems that Bud Selig and MLB did some shoddy analysis if their goal was to limit spending.