Would you offer Austin Hays the Scott Kingery deal?

[DrungoHazewood]

16 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

He would have to be worth more than the salary in the option years. Not just a little more, a lot more, otherwise you would not take the risk in locking up those dollars. The number of guys who are worth a lot more than $13-$15M in MLB is pretty small. Trout only got, what, $35M per? Hays would have to be worth half of Trout for the contract to work significantly in the O's favor. He would need to have at least that kind of upside to take the risk on the front end. I don't think the odds are good that Hays will pan out on that level given we have seen he is capable of .230 in AA in a down year. I think he's much more likely to be worth $0-5M than $25-30M.

The average player gets $8M per win in free agency.  Trout's deal is very team friendly on that basis.  Lots more players would be worth much more than $13-15M, if not for the fact that they're pre-free agency and get $550k or whatever they can in arb.  

Unless you get lucky $15M will buy you an average player in full time play on the free agent market.

[Natty]

I would wait to see Hays have much more time than 20 games in the majors before signing him long term. 

[Ohfan67]

12 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

The average player gets $8M per win in free agency.  Trout's deal is very team friendly on that basis.  Lots more players would be worth much more than $13-15M, if not for the fact that they're pre-free agency and get $550k or whatever they can in arb.  

Unless you get lucky $15M will buy you an average player in full time play on the free agent market.

It would be a lot of fun to see the best models developed by ML teams to evaluate this stuff. I guess some of this stuff would be pretty easy to calculate...things like probability of average WAR in season eight, etc. 

[Ohfan67]

11 minutes ago, Roy Firestone said:

Im sure its been written on this page but Orioles brass deny its a service time issue for Hays being sent down. They say the analytics thing. Ive been told that the numbers say he's not ready. I see with my eyes, that he's about as ready for the OD roster as anyone else.But I only use my eyes. What the hell do I know?

Oh man...you shouldn't put the joke setup on a tee! So many easy shots. 

[Frobby]

20 minutes ago, Roy Firestone said:

Im sure its been written on this page but Orioles brass deny its a service time issue for Hays being sent down. They say the analytics thing. Ive been told that the numbers say he's not ready. I see with my eyes, that he's about as ready for the OD roster as anyone else.But I only use my eyes. What the hell do I know?

They really didn’t say much about analytics in their explanation — just that he had a bad year last season due to injuries, he hasn’t played AAA yet, and minor league stats are more predictive than small samples in spring training.   I guess you can call that last part analytics if you want, but it’s pretty widely known and reflects common sense.    

Bottom line, if Hays is ready for the majors then he should do very well in AAA and then we’ll know.    There’s no harm in sending him down and making him earn his way up.  

[Aristotelian]

46 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

The average player gets $8M per win in free agency.  Trout's deal is very team friendly on that basis.  Lots more players would be worth much more than $13-15M, if not for the fact that they're pre-free agency and get $550k or whatever they can in arb.  

Unless you get lucky $15M will buy you an average player in full time play on the free agent market.

Exactly. So for the option years to be favorable, Hays would have to be an above average, multiple WAR major league outfielder. I don't see how you can project that after his mixed success in the minors. He might have that ceiling, but the odds of that happening are very, very low.

[LookinUp]

58 minutes ago, Frobby said:

They really didn’t say much about analytics in their explanation — just that he had a bad year last season due to injuries, he hasn’t played AAA yet, and minor league stats are more predictive than small samples in spring training.   I guess you can call that last part analytics if you want, but it’s pretty widely known and reflects common sense.    

Bottom line, if Hays is ready for the majors then he should do very well in AAA and then we’ll know.    There’s no harm in sending him down and making him earn his way up.  

Analytics or not, the O's have the the benefits of low expectations and time. Practically, that means they can identify parts of a player's game that need to be further developed and keep them in the minors to focus on that development. In that sense, I'd wager that the org's perspective on Hays isn't that he's not ready, but that he's not as ready as they want him to be. 

In terms of what this means for the 2019 Orioles, I now think they'll be even worse than I had previously expected. I think there's a cavalry of sorts that we can defensibly say are "ready," but that will be held longer than I had expected. That includes hitters and pitchers, so expect more Mike Wright and Joey Rickard and less Hays and Kremer/Akin types. 

 

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, LookinUp said:

Analytics or not, the O's have the the benefits of low expectations and time. Practically, that means they can identify parts of a player's game that need to be further developed and keep in them in the minors to focus on that development. In that sense, I'd wager that the org's perspective on Hays isn't that he's not ready, but that he's not as ready as they want him to be.

In terms of what this means for the 2019 Orioles, I now think they'll be even worse than I had previously expected. I think there's a cavalry of sorts that we can defensibly say are "ready," but that will be held longer than I had expected. That includes hitters and pitchers, so expect more Mike Wright and Joey Rickard and less Hays and Kremer/Akin types. 

 

Great post.    I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.   

[DrungoHazewood]

19 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Exactly. So for the option years to be favorable, Hays would have to be an above average, multiple WAR major league outfielder. I don't see how you can project that after his mixed success in the minors. He might have that ceiling, but the odds of that happening are very, very low.

I don't think I'd lock Hays up now on the basis of what he's done the last few years.  But the concept of taking a player very early on and signing him through arb years is valid.  Especially with the unknowns in the future CBA and discussions about the inequity between younger and older players.  Now is the time to do it if you're at all confident in the player's projections.  Although the agents are probably looking at the same stuff and thinking it better be a great deal to sign now.

[Aristotelian]

18 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't think I'd lock Hays up now on the basis of what he's done the last few years.  But the concept of taking a player very early on and signing him through arb years is valid.  Especially with the unknowns in the future CBA and discussions about the inequity between younger and older players.  Now is the time to do it if you're at all confident in the player's projections.  Although the agents are probably looking at the same stuff and thinking it better be a great deal to sign now.

I don't disagree. I am just talking about the Hays case. I would have done $100m for a few extra years of Manny. 

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, LookinUp said:

Seems like a very good comp for Hays (from a FV perspective). Apparently the Rays think it's a good idea.

Very interesting.   Lowe posted a .908 OPS in AA and .994 in AAA last year, and then .847 in the majors in a decent sample.   He’s also raking similarly to Hays this spring (.359/.405/.692).   He looks to be a bit of a Ben Zobrist type, playing both 2B and OF, that adds to his value.    

The Rays have always been forward thinking on locking up guys early.

I don’t think Hays is as good a candidate as Lowe for this kind of deal (or at least, on these specific terms), for the following reasons: struggled at AA last year, hasn’t played AAA, less successful major league debut, and doesn’t play infield.    So I think you’d either wait or offer Hays less, or both.   

[OriolesMagic83]

1 hour ago, Roy Firestone said:

Im sure its been written on this page but Orioles brass deny its a service time issue for Hays being sent down. They say the analytics thing. Ive been told that the numbers say he's not ready. I see with my eyes, that he's about as ready for the OD roster as anyone else.But I only use my eyes. What the hell do I know?

Most of the O's roster isn't ready for the majors, but somebody has to play.  I was looking forward to Hays starting in the majors, but it makes no sense for the O's to use up a year of his service time in a year the O's will almost surely lose 100+ games.

[Tx Oriole]

11 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Most of the O's roster isn't ready for the majors, but somebody has to play.  I was looking forward to Hays starting in the majors, but it makes no sense for the O's to use up a year of his service time in a year the O's will almost surely lose 100+ games.

That's not point. If the man is ready and I think he is. He should play. Not Rickard. 

[OriolesMagic83]

The O's need to start doing these type deals with their best young players if they want to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox.  By the time the O's were willing to offer Machado an extension, he wanted near free agent value.  No way the O's can afford a roster full of $20 mill/yr players.

[foxfield]

Excellent discussion.  I am surprised that I didn't see any of the old timers mention the Cleveland Indians who locked up a core group of young un's about 30 years ago and it led to quite a turn around for them.

I didn't answer the poll question, because as a yes or no for Hays today, I'd have to say no.  But I agree with Can of Corn that I like the idea.  And I appreciate the excellent posts that correctly peg the risk/$ measurement to the arb years while giving the full term of the contract to spread the AAV.  In essence overpaying for the cheap controllable years and if gambling correctly saving significantly into the Arb years.  

For teams to consider this ahead of the next agreement CBA, Gm's must calculate the tipping point or inflection points of value going forward.  In short the idea is simply to lock up talent to help control costs and extend a window of competitiveness for teams.  Is Hays good enough to do that?  Maybe, I think he is certainly a candidate for this and I hope Elias is looking at this as he and his staff identify pieces they think will be part of the next run.

But my answer would be to wait on this and give some of these young guys the chance to show they are worth long term commitment.  There are several potential candidates, but that list could look different by late summer.  To me this would be a good time for Elias to allow things to (I am sorry) percolate.