Yoennis Cespedes?

[allstar1579]

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

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

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'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.

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.

And what did the A's win exactly? And how did that work out for Depodesta when he got his own team? The A's are stuck in a cycle of being a minor league feeder team for the rest of baseball. They'll be good a couple years, and then trade everyone and be awful again. They can't seem to get that last couple pieces they need when they have enough talent together and then they break the team up.

It means you lean very heavily to the Moneyball school of thought and have looked down on scouting a couple times in this argument. I appreciate that it has been a good, intelligent discussion, but you still laughed at scouting and praised Moneyball. I'm interested to see if this conversation continues for another 26 posts or not. I tend to think you'd be a welcome addition to the board, but that doesn't mean I'm still not a bit ruffled by the view you've had on scouting.

Yes people get found for minimum value, but I think you are overstating how easy it is to do that. If it were that easy, every team in baseball would do it every year. Gibbons wasn't worth anywhere near $20m so why should they have resigned him for that? That would be stupid.

Yes. I am.

And as all of this started, I would need to see more video on him to put a % on how sure I am about Cespedes.

That's what scouts do.

Ok, I exaggerated, but I was generalizing you talking down about all of those contracts when the ones you used were a bunch of guys that got hurt, and a couple guys that a have barely played yet. I'm sure you're going to tell me that Albert Belle also wasn't worth his contract...of course he wasn't he got hurt and didn't play.

[allstar1579]

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.

On a side note, I feel like the entire room went silent and like 50 people are just sitting back reading this argument right now...

Yeah we pretty much agree on it all. That's why I wouldn't say jump in on Darvish because that doubling his contract makes it almost impossible to earn his value back over the length of it, but maybe a team like BOS takes a shot because they eat the money and he is the piece that puts them into a WS win. I don't think it helps a team like us at all, just not a good allocation of resources. Spend that $50m posting fee on 50 500k latin american prospects over the next couple years instead. Fifty chances at a raffle is much better than one.

[allstar1579]

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.

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

Yet another example of you looking down on scouts. Do you think we watch videos of them running in place and doing fly ball drills? Really? I mean just for a second of common sense does that even seem right? No, the videos scouts use to evaluate are put together by people using specific drills, situations and hopefully game footage to be able to pick out things just like you were there in person. We look to see if they are over aggressive chasing certain pitches, or attacking certain parts of the zone. We look to see if they can hit offspeed pitches in every area, if they chase outside the zone. And 1,000 other things that I feel like you have no interest in knowing.

Again, you just showed how little you actually know about scouting, but then preach that I don't know what Moneyball was about. I know good and well what Moneyball was, and is designed to do. I just don't agree that it is the only way to do things, as the Sabr vs. Scouting issue that has arisen from it shows. And for the record, Moneyball wasn't JUST about maximizing value on players other teams were undervaluing and getting the most bang for your buck. It was also about using complex statistical evaluations to identify those players, and the problem that has come from it is that some schools of thought have gotten too reliant on the statistics (Riccardi for example) and started to not trust the evaluation of scouts IN ADDITION to the stats (like the movie exaggerated).

[Pickles]

Yet another example of you looking down on scouts. Do you think we watch videos of them running in place and doing fly ball drills? Really? I mean just for a second of common sense does that even seem right? No, the videos scouts use to evaluate are put together by people using specific drills, situations and hopefully game footage to be able to pick out things just like you were there in person. We look to see if they are over aggressive chasing certain pitches, or attacking certain parts of the zone. We look to see if they can hit offspeed pitches in every area, if they chase outside the zone. And 1,000 other things that I feel like you have no interest in knowing.

I watched this kids video; there was about 30 seconds of actual baseball content in the whole 10 minutes. Did you watch the video? Did you see anything relevant to performing in the MLs, beyond the obvious display of athleticism? There was no game content; there were about 20 swings in a cage against BP and him loping around the outfield catching a few fungoes. He didn't even throw the ball.

The greatest scout in the world could watch that video for another 30 hours and come away w basically nothing about this guys baseball abilities. That's my point. Nobody knows much at all about this kid, except he's a hell of an athlete. That isn't a 30 million dollar risk. He hit some hrs in the Cuban League- a record actually- but against what competition? You say scouts say this is better than the Japanese Leagues, and AAA-AAAA, and then in the next breath you say scouts essentially ignore it and don't watch it b/c the players there aren't available. So they've evaluated a league they're unfamiliar with? That does't make sense.

Again, you just showed how little you actually know about scouting, but then preach that I don't know what Moneyball was about. I know good and well what Moneyball was, and is designed to do. I just don't agree that it is the only way to do things, as the Sabr vs. Scouting issue that has arisen from it shows. And for the record, Moneyball wasn't JUST about maximizing value on players other teams were undervaluing and getting the most bang for your buck. It was also about using complex statistical evaluations to identify those players, and the problem that has come from it is that some schools of thought have gotten too reliant on the statistics (Riccardi for example) and started to not trust the evaluation of scouts IN ADDITION to the stats (like the movie exaggerated).

I haven't at any point denigrated scouts or scouting. I have questioned how much you can guage a baseball players abilities by watching him do sit-ups and squats, and most scouts would agree w me on that point. I have no desire to get into some stat vs. scout argument w you; it was stupid 10 years ago and it's still stupid. However, the most important lesson of Moneyball wasn't about stats, but about exploiting ineffeciencies in the marketplace to compete in an imbalanced competitive enviroment. You seem to agree w me that the high-end international FA market isn't the most effecient place to spend money and are arguing w me about somekind of non-existent, percieved slight. I'm sorry you misinterperted what I was saying.

[allstar1579]

I watched this kids video; there was about 30 seconds of actual baseball content in the whole 10 minutes. Did you watch the video? Did you see anything relevant to performing in the MLs, beyond the obvious display of athleticism? There was no game content; there were about 20 swings in a cage against BP and him loping around the outfield catching a few fungoes. He didn't even throw the ball.

The greatest scout in the world could watch that video for another 30 hours and come away w basically nothing about this guys baseball abilities. That's my point. Nobody knows much at all about this kid, except he's a hell of an athlete. That isn't a 30 million dollar risk. He hit some hrs in the Cuban League- a record actually- but against what competition? You say scouts say this is better than the Japanese Leagues, and AAA-AAAA, and then in the next breath you say scouts essentially ignore it and don't watch it b/c the players there aren't available. So they've evaluated a league they're unfamiliar with? That does't make sense.

I haven't at any point denigrated scouts or scouting. I have questioned how much you can guage a baseball players abilities by watching him do sit-ups and squats, and most scouts would agree w me on that point. I have no desire to get into some stat vs. scout argument w you; it was stupid 10 years ago and it's still stupid. However, the most important lesson of Moneyball wasn't about stats, but about exploiting ineffeciencies in the marketplace to compete in an imbalanced competitive enviroment. You seem to agree w me that the high-end international FA market isn't the most effecient place to spend money and are arguing w me about somekind of non-existent, percieved slight. I'm sorry you misinterperted what I was saying.

That video floating around the internet is not a real scouting video, it's a hype tool. Hence why I said I would need to see more video. All I've seen of him was some stuff from the WBC that I DVR'ed. My initial thought seeing him there is that he's legit though. I'd want to focus on some of the finer points I didn't get to see, and actually study it for a day before I was really willing to brag about it on the internets, but he looks to have legit hit tool, his power is for real, mechanics didn't look too bad but I didn't get a really good look. Overall it's someone I would seriously look into and be willing to pony up some cash, and I don't say that lightly. The only other expensive IFA I've ever really gotten behind was Sano. Real scouting video is completely different from that travesty. It's not that scouts ignore it, but they don't get a ton of access to it, Cuba doesn't take kindly to scouts scouting their players that aren't allowed to leave the country. So to scout Cubans you need guys that are already in the country to do it for you, hence why you need video for these guys, not just seeing them live (except for international competitions). Cuba is a weird situation. Could be more talent than we know, but it's hard to get too much data out of there.

No one watches them do exercises, there are specific things we look for, and a lot of scouts won't even look at guys unless it's real game situations. Sometimes we'll catch workouts and practices, but it's not ideal, you don't get as much reactive info. I do agree with you about the high-end IFA market, I just took offense to the slight at scouting, some of us really work our butts off to do this stuff, and it takes a lot of skill and knowledge (others have much more than I, but I'm no slouch). If I took things the wrong way, sorry, but that's just how it came off to me.

[srock]

Anyone else think the training section is a bit pedestrian?

1300 lb is a nice leg press, problem is he only moved the weight a fraction of the possible range of motion. And leg press isn't that great to start with.

Hack squat? Why not do a squat? And whats with the bounce on the ball?

This video is mostly him doing weird stuff that looks cool to a really odd soundtrack.

More importantly, his swing is absolutely incredible. I'll take him.

[Brendan25]

Lynn Henning of the Detroit News reports that the Tigers have "strong interest" in Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes.

Add another team to the list, which includes no fewer than at least a half dozen that have interest in the talented Cuban. Cespedes, 26, is expected to command a deal in the $20-30 million range and probably will need little to no time in the minor leagues before being ready for a starting job in the outfield.

Source: rotoworld

No chance the O's outbid all the teams in on this guy.

[mweb]

Completely different circumstances. This is more akin to Yu Darvish than a FA flavor of the week.

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. Iglesias the SS you mentioned will be their starting SS sometime this year and is already one of the top defensive SS in all of baseball. 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. 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. Sano is another one in MIN and is one of the top 30 prospects in all of baseball at 3B.

So every example you listed are actually instances where they DID work out.

Why is it hysterical that some of us who know how to see video and evaluate amateur players want to see more of it before we sign off on paying the guy $6m?

You know what's hysterical? Trying to make a point and every example you use proves the opposite of what you are preaching.

I get the gist of what you are saying, and in general I agree with it, but don't try to be condescending laughing about people you don't know wanting to make a more educated decision. Maybe if you did a little more homework yourself before using a bunch of examples that hurt your POV it wouldn't be as hysterical as it is.

I don't understand how you can say this, but then continually say that you can't consider the injury when evaluating the decision to sign him.

[MrOrange82]

Pickles, you misspelled variations of the word "efficiency" 11 times in this thread.

[mweb]

I am not saying Iglesias is some great player. I am saying that for 10M, he doesn't have to have much of a career to justify the signing. BTW, a team with a loaded lineup like Boston could afford to have one poor bat in the lineup if they are providing GG caliber defense.

I agree with some of what you are saying, but be honest, if the O's signed a young international player for 10 million who turned into Cesar Izturis, you would not be particularly happy with that result. Same with drafting a player and paying him a big figure.

BTW, how can you forget about Kazuo Matsui? You loved him.

[mweb]

As far as the player in question, sure, I have interest in him, but I don't see how anyone on here can have that strong of an opinion on whether he should be signed by the O's. We just don't have much information.

[Fan4Life]

As far as the player in question, sure, I have interest in him, but I don't see how anyone on here can have that strong of an opinion on whether he should be signed by the O's. We just don't have much information.

I think we should feel pretty good that Dan the Man will have all the details about this guy and if he fits a need for us.. we'll be all over him.

[Lucky Jim]

As far as the player in question, sure, I have interest in him, but I don't see how anyone on here can have that strong of an opinion on whether he should be signed by the O's. We just don't have much information.

Do folks on here have one?

I know that I said I could (theoretically) see good reason to go after him, provided scouting reports back up the hype a bit. But that was mostly theoretical: having to do w/ advanced skills and translatable defensive value.

[mweb]

Do folks on here have one?

I know that I said I could (theoretically) see good reason to go after him, provided scouting reports back up the hype a bit. But that was mostly theoretical: having to do w/ advanced skills and translatable defensive value.

Does it make me weird if I say that, based almost entirely on that absurd scouting video, I think Cespedes should be the O's top target this winter?

Just seems like a good combination of upside and price (along with a super-strong core).

Haven't seen a ton from him, but honestly, I'd pony up the cash and go in on it. It would give a Jones replacement, and make a statement that we are players in more than one market. It wouldn't be as expensive as signing say Beltran, but it could end up being a value signing. I'm kinda looking at him as somewhere between Austin Jackson and Granderson.

Agreeing with the first quote:

I agree. Sure, there's a considerable amount of risk there but if you could get early career Andruw Jones type numbers for 5-6 years for $30MM, that's something that needs to be looked into.

Your comment:

You know what, I don't have much trouble with signing Cespedes - in spite of my reputation as anti-Int'l FA. And it's not because I think his offense translates. My guess is he ends up a .275/.320/.425 kind of guy. But defense translates anywhere. He's going to have significant value is my guess. Well within the signing range.

Not a strong endorsement, but still an endorsement. I'm also interested in how you are coming up with these numbers and his defensive value.

I would put Cespedes at the top of my wish list going into this offseason.

[Lucky Jim]

Agreeing with the first quote:

Your comment:

Not a strong endorsement, but still an endorsement. I'm also interested in how you are coming up with these numbers and his defensive value.

I think the important quote (among my many in this thread) is here:

Yeah - you're probably aware of how leery I am of contracts and how suspicious I am of translating performance from one (talent) context to another (talent) context, but the contract is so little, and he has a number of ways to earn the money. It really mitigates the risk in my mind.

I don't think we go in, but it's an instance where I would.*

*Provided my scouts do their due diligence and come back with positive words.

My point is: if Cespedes is what, say, Kevin Goldstein has identified (a fast guy, with good defense and pop) then sure, I'd be willing to enter bidding on him. I'd want my best scouts to back it up.

The numbers themselves are just speculation, discounting pretty significantly (from his typical .320/.400/.575ish range in Cuba) for contact issues, acknowledging that I think he'll likely walk far less in the US, and discounting some of his power numbers. Cocktail napkin stuff. Not really science. More common sense and triangulation.

Again, though, my point is largely about risk, and why some bigger ticket Int'l FAs may be less risky than others.