On Spending In The Draft
"Whupped dogs oughta stay whupped."
- Seligula
UPDATE by Charlie: Just noticed this. This is a great article. I wrote a little response over at SB Nation Pittsburgh.
9 months ago
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I think I'm going to be sick,...
"In some drafts, there are picks that are worth the highest order, and in other drafts, there are picks that are worth a lot less," Boras said. "So (baseball shouldn’t) create some falsity and take away that intellectual evaluation because talent doesn’t run uniformly every year; it runs in flows and streams."
…because I actually agree with something that Scott Boras said.
It's just my two cents. Could be worth more, could be worth nothing.
Agreed
That seems to be a point that is either ignored completely for whatever reason in terms of anything I’ve read on hard slotting. Comparing Luke Hochevar and Bryce Harper is like comparing Mr. Ed and Secretariat. Just because they’re both #1 picks doesn’t mean they deserve the same cash.
by NastyNate82 on Aug 23, 2011 10:59 PM EDT up reply actions
Proposed deal
In exchange for hard-slotting, teams have to be able to trade the actual draft picks or be able to trade the players drafted immediately instead of not until one year later.
That way, the worst team can get something valuable for itself in exchange for its draft picks instead of ponying up ridiculous money for Bryan Bullington, Matt Bush or the aforementioned Luke Hochevar, or could exploit a large market team in a year that has a Strasburg or Harper into overpaying with MLB-ready talent to provide immediate improvement to the bad team.
To your point, someone HAS to be #1, but not all of them are created equally.
It's just my two cents. Could be worth more, could be worth nothing.
If you’ve got hard slotting, you wouldn’t be paying much for those players anyway. Couple that with no longer being able to pay over slot to get worthwhile players in later rounds and the value of being able to “trade down” to pick up a player or more picks later is significantly less. It’ll end up being like Rule 5 where teams pay other teams $15 and a burrito to pick someone for them and immediately trade him over.
Two things.
One, you would be paying for those players. Hard-slotting only says that a team can’t take chances on picking up premium talent in later rounds where they fell due to signability concerns. 1st-round picks, especially #1’s, are going to still get paid.
Two, I didn’t say "trade down.’ Crappy teams could deal high-1st round picks to large market teams for players that could help them TODAY. The large market teams get cost-contained top-level talent that they will just eventually buy on the FA market, while the bad teams get a chance to improve now.
Think of it like this. Say the Pirates had the #1 pick the year Strasburg came out. The Yankees offer Phil Hughes, Brett Gardner, Jesus Montero and a third-round pick for the Pirates’ 1st-rounder. Do the Pirates take that deal, getting three players to help them immediately, improving the team that year and for years to come, or do they draft a kid that may progress through the minors slowly or never make it? Those are the decisions that NBA, NHL and NFL GMs make every year, but ones that are taken away from MLB GMs.
It's just my two cents. Could be worth more, could be worth nothing.
Secretariat
couldn’t talk.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Aug 24, 2011 9:42 AM EDT up reply actions
Have you heard Mtt Diaz
talk?
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Aug 24, 2011 10:25 AM EDT up reply actions
I was thinking
the same thing.
Whatever else you can say about the guy, he knows what he’s doing. He’s sort of the Marvin Miller of player agents. He’ll always find a way to get over on TPTB. He’ll always win.
Whenever Boras says something rational about the draft, you just have to remind yourself that his goal is to abolish the draft completely. He wants Dice-K type bidding wars going between the Red Sox and Yankees and he’s willing to sacrifice a client’s career in order to achieve that. If JD Drew had sustained a career-ending injury while in the Northern League, he’d have spent the remainder of his years hobbling around Boras’ office doing light filing for him and Boras would pat himself on the back for his compassion.
And JD Drew would have no responsibility
for his decision?
by Horace Clarke on Aug 24, 2011 12:20 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Come on. Boras represents these guys.
It’s their decision in the end. Jared Weaver is a Boras client. Think Boras told him to take Angels offer?
by Horace Clarke on Aug 24, 2011 12:28 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Jared Weaver is a grown man. JD Drew was a punk kid and, like all kids his age, probably had no idea of the risk he was taking.
JD Drew...
..was old enough to legally drink, smoke, vote, get married, and get drafted. Ultimately, the buck stops with him.
He wants Dice-K type bidding wars going between the Red Sox and Yankees and he’s willing to sacrifice a client’s career in order to achieve that.
When was the last time Boras “sacrificed a client’s career” in an effort to “abolish the draft completely”.
I’d like an example, please.
I read it as
sacrificing the client’s career to create a bidding war, not abolish the draft.
it creates more $$ for him in the short term
by BlindSquirrel on Aug 24, 2011 8:00 PM EDT up reply actions
In which case, when was the last time Boras “sacrificed a client’s career” in order to “create a bidding war”?
I'm not
that well versed on Boras history.
by BlindSquirrel on Aug 25, 2011 7:49 PM EDT up reply actions
Francoeur says the draft spending is getting out of hand, and hints that teams should probably spend the money on free agents because they know what they are paying for...
francoeur was drafted by the Braves in the 1st round, 23rd pick… for $2.2 million….
yeah, Jeff, i wonder how much over slot YOU were back then? hmmmmmm?
I'm a little confused.
I’m not sure why Jeff Francoeur would care about what a first-round draft pick makes.
This isn’t the NBA, NHL or NFL, where draft picks making tons of money supplant marginal veterans on rosters every year because of economics, leaving those veterans scrounging for contracts domestically or heading out of the country for bigger paychecks in Europe or, in the case of the NFL, possibly Canada.
In MLB, however, those draftees, for the most part, as so far removed from being MLB-ready, that fringy hangers-on and marginal talents, like Jeff Francoeur and Matt Diaz, will still pull paychecks for a number of years until those prospects are moved up.
In a world where Randy Wolf can get a 3-year, $10MM per season contract, there is little danger of what the Royals or Brewers or Pirates spend on the draft keeping Frenchy from being gainfully employed; he won’t be breaking the bank most likely, but he’s also not going to be worrying about where his family’s next meal is coming from either.
It's just my two cents. Could be worth more, could be worth nothing.
It’s clear that Francoeur will represent the “I got mine and want more” position among the major leaguers this fall. What Monsieur K fails to see is that the major league teams that spend a lot during the Draft want to acquire players better than he has turned out to be. They want to win a championship, not to pay mediocre or worse veterans $6M per season to finish below the McClatchy Line. For about $5M, the Pirates could have drafted or signed Derek Fisher, Kody Watts and Aaron Brown. Why, Monsieur K costs all of $2.5M for one season. That may have been enough money for the Pirates to sign both Watts and Brown.
s.zielinski
Thing is...
…Francoeur is not a bad player. However, the trend for the past number of years has gotten away from rewarding players simply for hanging around forever by giving them increasingly more money at the end of their careers (except for the Yankees with Jeter and Posada).
With the advent of use of advanced metrics, teams are looking at what a single point of WAR is worth, and they will plug an Alex Presley-type into their roster instead of signing a veteran, knowing that they will probably get as much, if not more, production out of the younger player for a fraction of the cost of the older player. This is the real challenge to Frenchy’s continued employment, not what the Royals’ 4th-round pick gets as a signing bonus.
It's just my two cents. Could be worth more, could be worth nothing.
Frenchy is fine enough of a player. problem is, the braves wanted to build around him and mccann
he kind of reminds me of garrett jones. decent player. good guy. very streaky. but when his swing is off, his value plummets.
Interesting sidebar on Lorenzo Cain
linked in the story under other news
Lino Donoso
Francoeur needs to STFU.
NOBODY was going to pay him $13.5MM as a free agent.
He should be happy the Royals have money enough to pay their picks and him both.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
Players are almost never objective about their own level of talent. It’s just the way things are – not really worth getting upset about.
Generally, asking players about organizational strategy is like picking the tallest pine tree in the woods and asking it questions about forestry.
Oh, I know...
I just find it funny.
And he really should STFU, just on general principles.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Aug 24, 2011 10:49 AM EDT up reply actions
Hahaha. Works on many levels.
by Horace Clarke on Aug 24, 2011 11:56 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I can easily see Seligula as the tallest tree in the MLB woods,
one that can’t see the forest for the trees on the draft, the daft thinking on the WBC etc.
パトリック
I don’t get the premise that the small market teams have the most to lose from hard slotting.
It seems like any advantage the so-called small market teams may currently have comes from the current soft slotting system — the system whereby the league puts pressure, explicitly and formally, on teams to conform, but can do nothing to actually enforce it. Under the current system, it seems like certain so-called small market teams may be the least likely to bow to that pressure, although I’m not sure why. I am sure, however, that if whatever “soft” enforcement mechanism may currently be at work continues to erode at the rate it has been eroding, it will erode entirely, and then we will have the open system, and the big market teams will crush the small market teams once again.
As between a hard slotting system and a no slotting system, I’d think small market teams would prefer a hard slotting system. Baseball is headed for one or the other. Formal but toothless pressure systems (the “scolding system”) and informal collusion systems alike don’t last long once some start to defy them.
Regardless, there is nothing inherent in the absence of hard slotting that favors small market teams. The current boon to small market teams is just a short-lived artefact of probably a lot of different pressures that we don’t really know about or understand. Expecting the same kind of thing to continue is not much different than hoping that the Yankees and Red Sox will start trying to align their payrolls with those of the Brewers, Royals, and Pirates.
Totally unfair patthatt
You may not agree with anything RafaelBelliup writes, but he raises a seemingly valid and certainly intuitive point. And does so coherently, which is why I’m taking you to task here. I’d say save pithy responses like this for any of several other posters here. I think his exact point was addressed and discussed intelligently a year or two ago right here at BD.
According to both Charlie's argument at the BD link
and the one by the aspiring economist at the BP link, the Pirates/Nats/KC really screwed up by overspending since the Yankees and other rich teams are now going to respond with a vengence by bidding up the price of amateur talent to levels that the small-market teams can’t afford. If their argument is correct then we should be elated with the prospect of hard slotting now, since the big boys will lose their chance to respond. It seems a bit inconsistent to be upset that hard slotting is now a real possibility.
by WestCoastBuc on Aug 24, 2011 6:27 PM EDT up reply actions
I don’t think any of these arguments really have it right. First of all, it was the big spending teams that really started the practice of going well over slot with later picks as a way of getting top talent without having an early pick. Two of the trend-setting signings were the Angels with Jered Weaver and the Tigers with Rick Porcello. The Red Sox were possibly the first to go in really big for using a bunch of later picks on guys who fell due to bonus demands with the idea of signing as many as possible. The small market teams largely toed the line until, ironically, Coonelly took over the Pirates. So history doesn’t support this concept of the small market teams pushing the envelope and the deep pockets retaliating.
Another problem is that the ability of the Yankees, Red Sox, etc., to bid up prices runs up against the fact that they can’t bid on whomever they want. This isn’t the FA market. They can’t bid crazily on top talent if most or all of it gets drafted before they pick. And if the idea is that they’ll pay more than what they think a guy is worth for the sole purpose of running up market values over the long run, I don’t think that’s plausible. They have budgets just like everybody else, and they’re subject to pressures, namely making the post-season every single year, that the small market aren’t. They want to spend every penny they can on the Texeiras and A-Gons.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
Well, I don’t think the Pirates would have done what they did this year if they didn’t believe hard slotting, or some other major change to the system, was in the works.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Aug 24, 2011 9:22 PM EDT up reply actions
I dunno
That occurred to me, but the situation next year won’t lend itself to that kind of spending anyway, and they knew that. By the time they drafted, and certainly by the time they shelled out all that money, it was clear they were headed for a much better record. The spree this year was mostly Cole & Bell. But they won’t be drafting high enough to get a Cole (and there may not be anybody with that kind of ceiling next year), and there’s never been a post-first-round pick like Bell before.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
But that logic just reinforces my point above
If the Pirates did what they did only because they expected hard slotting next year, why be upset if in fact hard slotting becomes a reality? If that was the case and we agree with their thinking, we should be taking the opposite view and be disappointed if there was no change.
I have always been suspicios of the argument that the Yankees are going to change what they have been doing based on what the Pirates do at least in the short run. Sure, if the approach of drafting tough signs and paying over slot works and we and the other advocates of this system start fielding serious contenders then, yeah, I can see the Yankees reacting. But by then at the very least, I’ll be a happy man as I enjoy the Pirate success.
by WestCoastBuc on Aug 24, 2011 10:07 PM EDT up reply actions
also
pleasantly laid out in structured paragraphs.
Better than some of the tripe that has been presented here.
by BlindSquirrel on Aug 24, 2011 8:07 PM EDT up reply actions
A portmanteau of Bud Selig and the Roman emperor Caligula.
Not sure which one’s getting the worse of that particular comparison.
Francouer says
something along the line of “you giving millions of dollars and you don’t really know what you have”
You think the White Sox knew what they were getting when they paid Dunn a zillion $$$$’s, or the Sox with Lackey or Carl Crawford?
I see Bell as a replacement for Cutch. The Sox payed 126 million for Carl Crawford and his .652OPS , we’re paying 5 million for Bell and a lottery ticket.
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