Yoennis Cespedes?

[Fan4Life]

Well, the Orioles have basically said they aren't signing Fielder or Wilson, yet it doesn't stop you from talking about them.

This will without a doubt go down as the quote of the day!

It's the quote of the day everyday.. several times a day.

[allstar1579]

Having grown bored with agreeing with you, now I'll argue against you. [i'm kidding. Though I imagine more than a few people may imagine this is how I operate.] I do have some issues with what you've written, however.

[1] "Dice-K was great and worth his contract before he got injured, and honestly everyone saw the injury coming because of his high pitch totals through the years."

First, Matsuzaka was, by all accounts, a bad signing due to an inflated contract. He's provided a total of 10 WAR for his career, and only 3.4 over his last three years. He never put up an FIP of xFIP under 4.00. His elevated pitch counts are, in part, due to personal style - however, they're also emblematic of the struggles transitioning from the shallower talent pool in Japan to the US (where line-ups, unlike the Nippon League, are full of guys who can hurt you.) If everyone knew, or could predict, his pending injury issues, he wouldn't have been the prospect he was, or have received the contract he did.

[2] "Chapman has needed some refinement of his secondaries so he hasn't been rushed, but he's got a 100mph fastball and has been unhittable in some stretches."

Chapman needed refinement of everything. And I don't think there are many who believe, at this point, that he's ever going to be an MLB starter. In the end, he may provide the full $30m value of his contract, but it's hard to believe that his actual value as a reliever couldn't be found for less money. Hard-throwing relievers are probably not the best target for a 8-figure contract (Int'l-FA wise, or even MLB FA-wise), given the risk of arm-injury, translating performance, variability of performance and even age issues.

[3]"Ynoa in OAK was graded as being the best latin pitcher since Felix Hernandez after he got here and was evaluated, but he had TJ surgery in 2009, you can't predict that stuff."

You have to predict that stuff. Or at least factor it in: pitching prospects, when you have an opportunity to watch them constantly against good amateur competition and can verify all factual background info, carry a lot of risk. You don't get to disregard that because they're Int'l FA. Rather, Int'l FA pitchers carry all of that risk and a ton more.

[4] "Sano is another one in MIN and is one of the top 30 prospects in all of baseball at 3B."

This we agree on. Sano was awesome last year. There are questions, but the power is real.

[5] Iglesias put up a sub-.700 OPS at AA and a sub-.600 OPS at AAA. The Sox may think he'll be playing shortstop for them this year, but I'm skeptical. He's an all-world fielder, to be sure. But he's no lock to be a starting SS, and his upside might be Cesar Izturis. That said, Iglesias may be worth it. Seems an OK risk to me, but not one I'm enamored with. I would guess similar production can be found in both the Rule IV draft and the Int'l FA market for a lot less money.

In the end, you're both over-stating your point.

Hahaha, as soon as I got into this I just knew you were going to show up somewhere

Dice-K: I said that he was worth it BEFORE the injury, I just can't factor in injuries when you are talking about risk of signing because that's a risk that comes with EVERY contract you sign, and if you start down that road you're going to end up never signing another player out of the "what-if" factor. Injuries suck for sure, but I can't blame them for not earning their money when they can't even get on the field. Now as to your other point, you're right there are a ton of concerns that people voiced with transitioning from 1 start per week and higher pitch counts to every 5 days over here, it's the same talk you hear about Darvish, but he's still going to get a monster contract because teams will pay the money to add a player without giving anything up. I don't know where I stand on the overall Japanese risk, I actually lean a little against it, but again I can't say Dice-K wasn't worth it when he was unreal for 2 healthy years, and I feel if he stayed healthy he would have been worth much more than $52m over 6 years.

Chapman: Yeah he needed some work, he was signed based pretty much solely off that fastball, and I have doubts he can work as a starter, but as a closer I think he could be unhittable, and a good closer is worth much more than the $5m a year he's earning. Let's see his WAR this season and see if he doesn't balance out that contract already. Not that I would have personally signed him for that, pitching has more question marks than most and I'm not in love with the power arm guys myself, but if Gregg can get $6m per year, and Madson $11m then Chapman should get $5m.

Ynoa: I know in general you have to worry about pitching risk, but it wasn't like he was a super high-risk delivery like Strasburg was, it was just one of those things that happens in baseball. He had the talent to back up the contract though, and if you trust your scouts that they really are worth the money I think you sign them. If you add a healthy Ynoa to Gio, Cahill, Anderson etc. in OAK that is a NASTY rotation. It was a good gamble, better risk than signing Vlad for a meaningless season.

Iglesias: I know the $10m is a huge price tag, and I doubt the bat ever earns that much, but that glove is something special, and the dWAR could end up making him worth close to that contract. I'm higher on him than most, but as a #9 hitter, if you teach him how to bunt, he's going to save you enough runs to make him an interesting sign. I agree, I probably wouldn't have done it, but it's BOS and they had a giant hole in their farm system at SS, so they overpaid for it. Could be Izturis, could be Ozzie Smith.

Yes, there is overstating going on, but isn't that how these arguments work?

[Sports Guy]

No the media has speculated they aren't signing Fielder and Wilson.

All Duquette has said is that the free agent market has a lot of risk and that he won't actually reveal his FA strategy.

Buck danced around the subject as well.

And unlike Cespedes, Fielder has been linked to the Orioles several times over the past few years.

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

And Duq has essentially said, we are not signing Fielder. You just don't want to hear it.

[Lucky Jim]

You're nitpicking and not even using all the facts to make your assessments though. Dice K did not get paid 100m, 50m of his money was a posting fee.

As I noted earlier, this is irrelevant if the posting fee is required to purchase the talent.

Iglesias' bat is very soft, but he's already Vizquel level defensively. Back in the early 90's before the juiced-era teams would put a premium on that kinda middle infield defense. In the NL plenty of guys have jobs in the #8 hole because they play great D. He's also extremely young and still growing. If you want to be able to acquire talent without giving anything up (draft pick, trade) you have to pay for it, that's how the system works.It's better to risk a player not panning out than to tread water for 3 years winning 70 games each season and spending the same amount of money on a RP.

He played this year at 21. He's not that young. He still has some upside. As I said, Izturis looks like a better comp than Ozzie Smith right now.

Again, you can't fault injury for any of these players. Injuries happen, so you need to throw that out of your argument.

If you throw injury out of your argument talking value and pitching prospects you're pretty much insane. The risk is a constant, and it's part of the risk profile of any pitcher. It makes signing pitchers risky (necessary or not) and makes signing pitchers with other issues (translation of stats, age issues, mechanical issues, command issues) all the more risky. You can't eliminate it.

Yes there are players that don't earn the money they get on sheer playing ability, but there are tons of Rule 4 players that never earn their bonuses either, does that mean you aren't going to draft anymore? Staying completely out of this area just puts us even more behind other teams.

The point is that Rule IV is a more efficient market because of the bargaining constraints. The downside is that it may not supply enough talent to compete, standing alone. That doesn't make expensive international signings a good idea. No market offers ideal return, but a smart team is going to lean more heavily on efficient markets.*

You follow up talking about Gregg and others - which are universally derided as bad contracts. And no one disputes that teams are likely to get some value out of these prospects; the point is really the return on investment and whether you can get the same kind of hit-rate for top-flight prospects internationally by focusing on guys who aren't "obvious."

[Fan4Life]

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

And Duq has essentially said, we are not signing Fielder. You just don't want to hear it.

How many times did the boy cry wolf when you heard the story?

[allstar1579]

But again, guys, its all about effeciency. This is Moneyball 101.

Iglesias might be "worth" 10 mill for the Red Sox. But if they could have got the same production for a MiL FA, and I bet they could have, then that's what they should have done.

Chapman might be "worth" 30 mil for the Reds, but if they could have got the same prodcution from a 3rd draft pick for 300,000, that's what they should have done.

And yes, injuries happen, and it's exactly why you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.

If I thought the O's were going to start spending records amounts of money on the Int. market year in and year out then it wouldn't really matter. But we all know they aren't and really, they probably can't. So they need to be more effecient. And surfing the top of the market is not the way to accomplish that.

Newsflash...Moneyball didn't work.

It's a mix of Sabr and Scouting actually, and it seems to me that you lean heavily to one side of that equation.

If they can get $10m worth of production from a MiL FA, no one else in baseball would ever have a chance of competing because they are just too smart.

You can't guarantee that they can get that production from a 3rd round pick, the failure rate on 3rd rounders is something like 92%. If you have a guy that you are 80% sure is going to earn his contract versus a guy you are 8% sure might make the ML, then it doesn't seem like a real tough choice to me.

Again, NEVER said we shouldn't spread it out, I agree on that, but you started this all off by trying to denounce every big IFA contract ever signed.

[LookinUp]

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

And Duq has essentially said, we are not signing Fielder. You just don't want to hear it.

Nope. I actually beat you to it.

The irony is thick.

[allstar1579]

I'd like to see source info for that. From everything I've ever read the Japanese League is the best in the world outside of ML baseball and the Cuban League is notorious for being thin in talent.

O, so he's the greatest defensive player in the history of the game? Well that's pretty damn good. Somehow I doubt it.

You could, but let's be pragmatic. We could sign Fielder, Wilson, Jackson, and Darvish this offseasn too. We won't. The O's need to make choices, even at the Internation level of where they're going to invest their finite resources. Spreading the money around is infinitely more effecient.

Talk to scouts, they can tell you what the talent levels are like. ALL IFA markets have top value and garbage players, some are more top-heavy than others. Cuba is one that is top heavy, but since it's hard to get into Cuba and scout and their players aren't allowed to leave the country teams don't waste a lot of time there. Japan has some elite talent, but the majority of the league are like A-ball players. Hence why 4-A players here can go there and become HR kings.

I never said to spend finite amounts of money on big guys instead of the small signings. I've said from the beginning that they should be signing those small contracts and then every once in a while splurge on a big contract in ADDITION to the little ones.

[Lucky Jim]

Newsflash...Moneyball didn't work.

It's a mix of Sabr and Scouting actually, and it seems to me that you lean heavily to one side of that equation.

If they can get $10m worth of production from a MiL FA, no one else in baseball would ever have a chance of competing because they are just too smart.

You can't guarantee that they can get that production from a 3rd round pick, the failure rate on 3rd rounders is something like 92%. If you have a guy that you are 80% sure is going to earn his contract versus a guy you are 8% sure might make the ML, then it doesn't seem like a real tough choice to me.

Again, NEVER said we shouldn't spread it out, I agree on that, but you started this all off by trying to denounce every big IFA contract ever signed.

Let's not get into a discussion of what "Moneyball" is, or isn't. In this case, Pickles is talking about teams with serious budget constraints looking for ways to exploit things the market overlooks. I've long said that I think big-ticket Int'l FA is a bad method of doing this because I see two huge obstacles: highly imperfect information and inflation. I would guess Pickles agrees. He's not saying that OBP is the future, or denigrating scouts - he's talking about our approach to spending. And he's not wrong, really.

[Pickles]

Newsflash...Moneyball didn't work.

The A's had a sustained run of excellence by expoiting ineffeciencies in the marketplace. I say it worked just fine.

It's a mix of Sabr and Scouting actually, and it seems to me that you lean heavily to one side of that equation.

I'm not even sure if what this is supposed to mean.

If they can get $10m worth of production from a MiL FA, no one else in baseball would ever have a chance of competing because they are just too smart.

Guys get picked up off the scrap heap all the time and provide that kind of production. The O's got Jay Gibbons in the Rule 5 and that's what they got from him. It doesn't mean they should have resigned him for 20 mil. The Rays got more than that from Pena, and then wisely let him walk. It really isn't that rare. And let's wait till Iglesia earns a single dollar in the MLs before we acts as if his contract has been worth it.

You can't guarantee that they can get that production from a 3rd round pick, the failure rate on 3rd rounders is something like 92%. If you have a guy that you are 80% sure is going to earn his contract versus a guy you are 8% sure might make the ML, then it doesn't seem like a real tough choice to me.

You're 80% sure that Chapman is going to earn his contract? That's bold at this point.

You're 80% sure this new Cuban is going to earn his contract. Again, very bold.

Again, NEVER said we shouldn't spread it out, I agree on that, but you started this all off by trying to denounce every big IFA contract ever signed.

Do you care to point out where I tried to denounce "every big IFA contract ever signed?" I certainly did no such thing. I qualified every statement I made in my OP. And I stand by it.

[allstar1579]

As I noted earlier, this is irrelevant if the posting fee is required to purchase the talent.

He played this year at 21. He's not that young. He still has some upside. As I said, Izturis looks like a better comp than Ozzie Smith right now.

If you throw injury out of your argument talking value and pitching prospects you're pretty much insane. The risk is a constant, and it's part of the risk profile of any pitcher. It makes signing pitchers risky (necessary or not) and makes signing pitchers with other issues (translation of stats, age issues, mechanical issues, command issues) all the more risky. You can't eliminate it.

The point is that Rule IV is a more efficient market because of the bargaining constraints. The downside is that it may not supply enough talent to compete, standing alone. That doesn't make expensive international signings a good idea. No market offers ideal return, but a smart team is going to lean more heavily on efficient markets.*

You follow up talking about Gregg and others - which are universally derided as bad contracts. And no one disputes that teams are likely to get some value out of these prospects; the point is really the return on investment and whether you can get the same kind of hit-rate for top-flight prospects internationally by focusing on guys who aren't "obvious."

The posting system is part of why I don't like the Japanese market myself, and of course it's an overall cost of acquiring that player, but I have a hard time saying a player has to live up to the posting fee side of the equation to be worth the contract he signs. I guess it's because I come from the player side of things, but I don't think it's fair to hold that fee against them and say you have to earn double your contract to be worthwhile. I imagine a lot of teams feel the same way as if they didn't why would they sign these guys knowing the chance of them earning back both sides of that transaction are few and far between.

21 is still very young, that's a college junior, who if drafted would still spend another year or so in the minors before making an ML debut. To make a comparison it's kind of like Deven Marrero at Az. St., another guy with an amazing glove, and the bat may not play as well. I think Marrero has a little better bat and not quite as good with the glove as Iglesias. But if you could get Marrero signed tomorrow without having to draft him, what would you pay for him?

I consider the talent side of things when I'm considering value, but unless there is some obvious injury risk I can see, I try not to think about that.

I've said from the beginning I agree with the spreading out bonuses in the IFA market, I just didn't like that he tried to denounce all of these signings almost dismissively, when in fact SOME of them work out. I'm not saying we need to go jumping in on them, but selectively you can, kinda like we talked about last night with Cespedes.

[LookinUp]

Let's not get into a discussion of what "Moneyball" is, or isn't. In this case, Pickles is talking about teams with serious budget constraints looking for ways to exploit things the market overlooks. I've long said that I think big-ticket Int'l FA is a bad method of doing this because I see two huge obstacles: highly imperfect information and inflation. I would guess Pickles agrees. He's not saying that OBP is the future, or denigrating scouts - he's talking about our approach to spending. And he's not wrong, really.

I'm not sure how this conversation can continue without bringing the O's of the last few years into the equation.

People try to make the case that ML and MiL/Int'l budgets are separate. Well, if that's true, I think that's absolutely moronic. The O's have been spending a ton of money over the last decade on guys like Mora, Gibbons, Roberts, Gregg, Gonzalez and more. In every case, the justification for spending it could only have been made sane if the organization way over rated the probability of our ML team turning into a competitor.

Alternatively, we could have been focusing those tens of millions of dollars into scouting, signing and developing a wide-spectrum of players, in very high numbers. Maybe it never makes sense for a team like the O's to go after a Darvish or a Cespedes or a Chapman. However, it's really hard for me to write off the Sano's and Inoa's of the world (e.g., high upside, $2-3 million ish guys).

In an odd way, this thread mirrors the failures of the O's by too frequently removing the actual ML expenditures from this equation.

[allstar1579]

Let's not get into a discussion of what "Moneyball" is, or isn't. In this case, Pickles is talking about teams with serious budget constraints looking for ways to exploit things the market overlooks. I've long said that I think big-ticket Int'l FA is a bad method of doing this because I see two huge obstacles: highly imperfect information and inflation. I would guess Pickles agrees. He's not saying that OBP is the future, or denigrating scouts - he's talking about our approach to spending. And he's not wrong, really.

He started preaching Moneyball 101 to me, and I have a feeling when I read this next post it will give me more insight that he feels that way, but we'll see in a minute.

You of all people know that I agree with that, I preach for it all year, and I also generally agree with you that the IFA market isn't a really safe way to do things for the same reasons. I've said throughout this entire argument I agree with that part of things, but I took offense to him laughing at people that said we wanted to see more video on Cespedes before we made an informed decision of what we thought he was worth, and then later as he started preaching moneyball 101, it just showed me that he does infact lean towards looking down on scouts (you know that's a sore spot for me). We were never talking about our approach to spending, I would never have signed off on the O's signing any of those guys, but I just had to jump in after being slightly offended and defend some of the defensible signings he was laughing out without a slam dunk argument against.

[Lucky Jim]

The posting system is part of why I don't like the Japanese market myself, and of course it's an overall cost of acquiring that player, but I have a hard time saying a player has to live up to the posting fee side of the equation to be worth the contract he signs. I guess it's because I come from the player side of things, but I don't think it's fair to hold that fee against them and say you have to earn double your contract to be worthwhile. I imagine a lot of teams feel the same way as if they didn't why would they sign these guys knowing the chance of them earning back both sides of that transaction are few and far between.

I think all of us want more "spend." In fact, I'm sure of it. So our disagreement was really more rhetorical than anything else - folks want to inflate (or deflate) evidence to make their point. I want to see what's actually there, if possible. And that means cutting through the rhetoric. But mostly we agree.

About the above, I think from a systemic/institutional perspective you have to divorce this from a context of what a player is obliged to "earn" and just think of it as: do I want to be part of any system that requires me to pay double actual value to acquire talent? The answer is "no." I don't think there's any doubt that the Sox thought Matsuzaka should be worth something like $100m.

[Pickles]

He started preaching Moneyball 101 to me, and I have a feeling when I read this next post it will give me more insight that he feels that way, but we'll see in a minute.

You of all people know that I agree with that, I preach for it all year, and I also generally agree with you that the IFA market isn't a really safe way to do things for the same reasons. I've said throughout this entire argument I agree with that part of things, but I took offense to him laughing at people that said we wanted to see more video on Cespedes before we made an informed decision of what we thought he was worth,

Yeah, it is laughable. You want to watch video of him doing sit-ups and squats and catching fly balls behind his head and then use that to judge how much of a ballplayer he is? That's not going to tell you a thing. He's a hell of an athlete- great, that doesn't mean much when it comes to hitting a ML curveball or taking a walk, and a scout should know that better than anybody.

and then later as he started preaching moneyball 101, it just showed me that he does infact lean towards looking down on scouts (you know that's a sore spot for me). We were never talking about our approach to spending, I would never have signed off on the O's signing any of those guys, but I just had to jump in after being slightly offended and defend some of the defensible signings he was laughing out without a slam dunk argument against.

Then you don't understand what Moneyball was about, and that's not my fault.