The top 8 prospects in baseball are international signees

[joelala]

3 hours ago, Tx Oriole said:

Don't be stupid. I don't think DD or Mr. Angelos are Nationalists for whites only. What you are saying borders on a no no. 

C'mon, have a sense of humor Tx Oriole. I did say it was a joke.

 

3 hours ago, spiritof66 said:

I don't know much about how the market for Latin American talent works, but I do know that for a lot of teams -- including the Dodgers, NYYs, and some others with visible operations and, I think, a lot of success in these signings -- the Latin American spend consists of more than signing promising young players to contracts. They have extensive infrastructures, with scouts, instructors and training facilities. They spend many millions of dollars in overhead in the Dominican, and I'm sure they spend significant (though much smaller) amounts elsewhere in Latin America. 

The Orioles' owner has not been one to spend many of his own dollars in ways that do not immediately put talent on the field. My guess is that when teams started investing heavily in Latin American operations (in the '90s, not long after Angelos bought the team), he thought it was a fad in which too many teams were spending too much and in which his money was not well spent; there may have been a "But American" component at play, given his union background. Ten or fifteen years later, and continuing to today, the Orioles got so far behind in building an infrastructure that he was unwilling or unable to make the investment to compete effectively with them. Just a guess.

This is the best theory I've heard thus far, and definitely makes sense.  Discouraging as it is.  Thanks.

[Frobby]

12 hours ago, joelala said:

C'mon, have a sense of humor Tx Oriole. I did say it was a joke.

 

This is the best theory I've heard thus far, and definitely makes sense.  Discouraging as it is.  Thanks.

Makes sense to me, too, though I thought the O's had invested some money in facilities a few years back.   https://www.camdenchat.com/2007/11/28/64419/693

[Tony-OH]

On 7/25/2017 at 0:30 AM, hoosiers said:

Most teams with Jonathan Schoop would be like - thank you, sir, may I have another? - and our ownership/front office says, "no, we don't need another."

If the Orioles actually funded their international scouting and let Calvin Maduro compete with other teams, they could be real players in the international market. With almost no funds, Maduro was able to get Eduardo Rodriguez and Jonathan Scoop. He's a great scout with very good connections, but he has to work twice as hard because he's not given the funds to go after the premium players.

[spiritof66]

52 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

If the Orioles actually funded their international scouting and let Calvin Maduro compete with other teams, they could be real players in the international market. With almost no funds, Maduro was able to get Eduardo Rodriguez and Jonathan Scoop. He's a great scout with very good connections, but he has to work twice as hard because he's not given the funds to go after the premium players.

There's the rub. 

I know only the bare bones of Peter Angelos' biography, but enough to suggest some speculative assessments of some of his decisions. I suspect that when Angelos bought the team with the fortune he had made building a large asbestos litigation machine, he looked at the other owners and saw corporations (Blue Jays, Cubs, Braves), scions of great family wealth (NYYs, NYMs, Red Sox, Pirates) and longtime baseball families (Phillies). Since then, a number of self-made men have become team owners, but they were few and far between in the 90s.

I am further guessing that Angelos planned to compete successfully in a smaller market by not following the herd, and by coming up with different, fresher and better ideas than owners who were throwing around corporate/family money or were baseball lifers wedded to conventional strategies. He spent in some ways others wouldn't spend, and he skimped where others didn't.

My guess is that Angelos saw he couldn't pour money into speculative Latin American player development like the big-market teams, so he decided to put his dollars elsewhere. That may not have been such a bad decision in the mid-'90s, and things went pretty well for the team -- briefly. In hindsight, we see that it was a horrendously bad decision. But he's kind of a stubborn guy. 

[joelala]

2 hours ago, spiritof66 said:

My guess is that Angelos saw he couldn't pour money into speculative Latin American player development like the big-market teams, so he decided to put his dollars elsewhere. That may not have been such a bad decision in the mid-'90s, and things went pretty well for the team -- briefly. In hindsight, we see that it was a horrendously bad decision. But he's kind of a stubborn guy. 

Of course it would be speculation, but I wonder if Brady were to become our next GM, if he could convince him to change his mind.  I've read on these boards that Brady is very close and trusted by Angelos.

[hoosiers]

I think internationally PA was influenced by the scandals in Latin America from scouts overpaying bonus $ and getting kick-backs, to the false ages and more.  And he never really had a GM who understood how to grow the operation from the ground up until AM.  There was obviously a trust value between PA and AM that started with an understanding of what was going on in the market, where the value was and then implementing a targeted approach that focused on going where that value was.  Interestingly, I believe AM's plan involved the same scouts who were tracking US draft prospects and having them cross-check the better Latin American prospects before signing.

AM's two biggest signings were relatively low $ with 1) EdRod became a top 100 prospect and then into the Andrew Miller rental and 2) Schoop has blossomed into an All-Star.  Presumably, PA hired a GM who was known to focus heavily in the international market.

How have we taken a step back from the annual investments under AM?  How is it possible that DD could not expand on spending commitments that existed under AM ESPECIALLY given how prepared PA appeared to be at the time of DD's hiring to invest more internationally?  AND, given how much $ ownership has expanded the investment into the major league payroll, how has it not been possible to carve out appropriate $ to spend internationally?

Answers to those questions are speculation, but it seems as if DD or PA has decided to investment almost every last incremental resource into the major league team to help propel the recent competitiveness and that anything that could not benefit the team in some (three year?) window was shut down.  We've sold off multiple draft picks, we've sold off international slots, we've dealt away young talent in lopsided trades, and now here we are at the end of that window period, with a tremendous under-investment in the most value rich areas of talent acquisition, and that window slamming shut.

It's very disappointing to think of the talent and processes that DD inherited then, the lack of investment in talent acquisition and DD's trades, to arrive at where we are today.  We've won a lot of major league games, but this run is ending much, much sooner than it should have and the reasons are obvious.  How is it possible to look back on that day when DD was hired and believe that we have tremendously under-invested in both the US draft (by trading and forfeiting high draft picks) and decreasing our international commitment?  One would have expected DD to create a system that flourished with spending on the US draft and international spend - yet here we are.

[Camden_yardbird]

On 7/25/2017 at 7:25 PM, Three Run Homer said:

I agree that it doesn't make sense to throw big money at 16 year olds if you haven't invested in scouting the region.  But that just underscores that the O's need to invest more resources in the region, including scouting as well as signing bonuses.    

Well this comports with my remembering that Angelos has voiced frustration that the international market is improperly skewed towards those teams that have money.  That said, there are small market teams succeeding with international prospects.

The real answer is MLB really needs to institute a draft for these players.  They tried during the last CBA negotiations and failed.

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Camden_yardbird said:

Well this comports with my remembering that Angelos has voiced frustration that the international market is improperly skewed towards those teams that have money.  That said, there are small market teams succeeding with international prospects.

The real answer is MLB really needs to institute a draft for these players.  They tried during the last CBA negotiations and failed.

With the slotting system in place Mr Angelos needs to find a new excuse.

And a draft is a terrible idea that exists only to make the owners more money.

[Tryptamine]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

With the slotting system in place Mr Angelos needs to find a new excuse.

And a draft is a terrible idea that exists only to make the owners more money.

Exactly, let's not screw the international talent out of even more money It's bad enough what they did with this cap system.

[pastorfan]

7 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

With the slotting system in place Mr Angelos needs to find a new excuse.

And a draft is a terrible idea that exists only to make the owners more money.

Why is an international draft a bad idea? A kid grows up in our country where his parents, and perhaps him, have paid taxes, but he has a cap if drafted, yet someone else can come to this country and get more money.  That is quite backwards.

[Can_of_corn]

So the tax status of a player's parents is a valid reason for MLB owners to keep more of their profits?

My head hurts.

[pastorfan]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

So the tax status of a player's parents is a valid reason for MLB owners to keep more of their profits?

My head hurts.

I have no issue with what you are saying about the owners and money. (Though I personally think an owner deserves the right to make as much money as they can--none of the players are starving.) But nonetheless, I was simply suggesting that there should be an international draft if there is a national draft. Perhaps, what you are saying is that there should not be any drafts, just wide open free agency?

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, pastorfan said:

I have no issue with what you are saying about the owners and money. (Though I personally think an owner deserves the right to make as much money as they can--none of the players are starving.) But nonetheless, I was simply suggesting that there should be an international draft if there is a national draft. Perhaps, what you are saying is that there should not be any drafts, just wide open free agency?

Are you familiar with minor league baseball?

While I am sure that none of the players are actually starving a considerable number are quite poor.

 

An international draft is designed to increase owners profitability at the expense of not only the international players, but the quality of the players as a whole.

How long did it take PR to recover from being added to the draft?

 

[pastorfan]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Are you familiar with minor league baseball?

While I am sure that none of the players are actually starving a considerable number are quite poor.

 

An international draft is designed to increase owners profitability at the expense of not only the international players, but the quality of the players as a whole.

How long did it take PR to recover from being added to the draft?

 

Ok, I see your concern. I do not think, however, that implementing an international draft is going to change life for the rest of the minor league players. But I take it that you were merely venting about the issue more than trying to begin an argument, so I'll let it be

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, pastorfan said:

Ok, I see your concern. I do not think, however, that implementing an international draft is going to change life for the rest of the minor league players. But I take it that you were merely venting about the issue more than trying to begin an argument, so I'll let it be

I'm not interested in arguing but I do feel that adding an international draft will only benefit owners and will hurt both the quality of the game and a large number of players and their families.

For a lot of players that signing bonus is the only real paycheck they will get out of professional baseball.