That absolutely means Rizzo is smart. He drafted, developed, traded for or signed all of those players, and they won a good deal more games the past three years than the crap that preceeded it.
The winning strategy a few years from now might be to keep our stars, but it might also be to trade away some of them for younger talent. In any case, a potential future can't detract from the realities of the past.
that's fine (just curious, when can we remove the 'preceded it' bar and judge the team compared to other baseball teams?). Right now, none of the big Rizzo picks have aged past their arbitration years, lets see what happens when they work through the system. Of the big contributors to the team, only Gio, Zimmermann and Werth are signed long term- that may be shrewd and a great thing, or it may not- we'll start getting the first inkling when Zimmermann, Fister, Desmond (unless he's permanently broken), Ramos (if he ever stays healthy), as well as key relievers (detwiler and clippard) all come up in two years- maybe the young guys just step in without the team missing a beat, maybe some extensions get signed, and maybe more trades get made, but I'd like to see- until now, everything has been about building by adding pieces, soon keeping pieces will become a big part of the process.
