Past Overslot Signings VS Present Overslot Signings

[MiLFanatic]

Yeah, and I like that. I believe that the draft is one area of talent acquisition where the O's can compete evenly with the megamarket teams, but to do it they need to be aggressive and press the advantage wherever they can.

I like the willingness to take a risk at a price that won't cripple them, and I also like the fact that they're the only player working this end of the game so aggressively. Obviously the attrition rate will be high, but the odds of a success look a lot better when you scoop up a half-dozen or more in a year.

Of the players on your list, I believe the biggest bonus was to Coffey, who may have represented the biggest risk, being a HS pitcher who had just started flashing plus velocity when he blew out his elbow. That shows a lot of confidence in the scouts and the doctors. It also shows a lot of cojones.

I like!

I agree with what you say here. It is a market we need to venture out into, and obviously the O's thought enough of Coffey and his ability to come back 100% or better to throw that much money at him. I wonder if Scheppers was around in the 2nd round would they have picked him. The other guys whose injuries dropped their stock were Tolliver, Henry, Ryan Berry, Tim Berry, I think even Cowan may have had an injury.......The attirition rate may not be much higher than with uninjured ball players because we took guys with injuries that normally you can bounce back from, but there may end up being a pitcher or 2 who cannot come back. But I am pretty confident in their abilities to come back strong, as long as no one has labrum problems.....

[Stotle]

Yeah, and I like that. I believe that the draft is one area of talent acquisition where the O's can compete evenly with the megamarket teams, but to do it they need to be aggressive and press the advantage wherever they can.

I like the willingness to take a risk at a price that won't cripple them, and I also like the fact that they're the only player working this end of the game so aggressively. Obviously the attrition rate will be high, but the odds of a success look a lot better when you scoop up a half-dozen or more in a year.

Of the players on your list, I believe the biggest bonus was to Coffey, who may have represented the biggest risk, being a HS pitcher who had just started flashing plus velocity when he blew out his elbow. That shows a lot of confidence in the scouts and the doctors. It also shows a lot of cojones.

I like!

I'm content to let the results sort themselves out. Relying heavily on this approach means you need to be dead on with your scouting. If BAL pulls out a handful of productive players from the class, that would be quite impressive. At the same time, if there was a targeted effort to land certain players who BAL thought were undervalued, I think I would be a little more comfortable with safer picks in the early rounds -- but I'm conservative by nature in that regard (likely because I don't trust my reads on amateur players enough to go out on developmental limbs).

[Arthur_Bryant]

I wonder if Scheppers was around in the 2nd round would they have picked him.

Going just on a single inning in the AFL ASG, I'm almost sorry they didn't pick him in the first round. I didn't count on his FB being quite that good, consistently hitting 98-99 with good movement. Radar guns can vary, but he he had perceptibly the best velocity of the 10 or so pitchers I saw that night.

I wonder if there is a better FB in the O's system.

[Arthur_Bryant]

If BAL pulls out a handful of productive players from the class, that would be quite impressive.

What is their total outlay from that group--maybe $6MM?

If just one of that group of nine becomes an above-average MLer for a couple of years, they've made back their investment in dollar terms. And the opportunity value of picks below #5 or so is slight.

Unless the scouting is really bad, they'll have to be unlucky for this to turn out to be a bad draft tactic.

[Stotle]

What is their total outlay from that group--maybe $6MM?

If just one of that group of nine becomes an above-average MLer for a couple of years, they've made back their investment in dollar terms. And the opportunity value of picks below #5 or so is slight.

Unless the scouting is really bad, they'll have to be unlucky for this to turn out to be a bad draft tactic.

I think if you use this to judge draft tactics, you are missing a lot.

The Rule 4 is HEAVILY skewed towards the drafting teams. Setting a financial "break even point" is a poor way to determine whether a drafting strategy is successful. Put another way, you're drafting very poorly if at the end of the day you are just making your money back.

I'm all for using a financial "break even point" when you are talking about whether or not a pick was a bust -- but really only with a player in which a large amount of money was invested. For example, if Hobgood turns into any kind of Major League starter, he isn't a true bust (for me). But that doesn't mean he's a good selection if he only amounts to a #5 starter. The same, if someone like Rowell never turns into anything, that's a bust and a big miss.

The best drafting teams make a killing from a value standpoint. Consider ATL with Hanson and Heyward next year. Those two players alone are likely to produce several drafts worth of signing bonuses in value over their first six seasons.

EDIT -- To be clear, the ATL example is in reference to the financial "break even point" idea. When specifically dealing with rounds five and later, if the chances of finding a successful ML player are so slight, isn't that an argument for not going overslot down there and spending the vast bulk of your money on early picks? I think there is plenty of opportunity to find future productive players after round five -- you should be looking for more than simply making your investment back.

[MiLFanatic]

I'm content to let the results sort themselves out. Relying heavily on this approach means you need to be dead on with your scouting. If BAL pulls out a handful of productive players from the class, that would be quite impressive. At the same time, if there was a targeted effort to land certain players who BAL thought were undervalued, I think I would be a little more comfortable with safer picks in the early rounds -- but I'm conservative by nature in that regard (likely because I don't trust my reads on amateur players enough to go out on developmental limbs).

Hmm, it seems for some players injuries and the player being undervalued run hand in hand, but then there are some guys like Coffey who dropped not due to them being undervalued IMO but strictly due to heavy commitment and the injury. IMO Randy Henry is one of those guys who was undervalued due to restricitons(limited exposure) caused by the injury. It seems both Tolliver and Cowan were undervalued due to injuries(injury concerns for Tolliver, Cowan was actually injured) as well.

I too would feel a bit more comfortable with some of the higher regarded names, but it seems as you said that JJ's strategy here was shoot for undervalued picks. Not necessarily injured guys, just undervalued. Of course, injury is one of the main reasons for a ball player to be undervalued if they didn't get much exposure or if they had injury concerns themselves like Arrieta did in the 07 draft. Furthermore, going after the industrial favorites isn't Joe Jordan's style. No matter how much we want and beg for him to take our own personal favorites, he goes after his guy, he has his own team and he obviously has an enormous amount of trust in them to disregard industrial favorites for his personal team's concenus favorites. I mean, you have thousands if not more scouts and publications telling you that the next best player on the draft board is player "X", but you and your team go with player "Z" because you have a gut feeling, or because you plain and simply see more in him than in player "X".

So my question for JJ would be, did you specifically target injured ball players because they would sign for less and other teams would have less interest in them? Or did you target the ball players that were undervalued for various reasons, and that injury just happened to be the biggest reason for undervalue?

Sorry to ramble on and on, I am just curious as to this part of the process.....

[Stotle]

Hmm, it seems for some players injuries and the player being undervalued run hand in hand, but then there are some guys like Coffey who dropped not due to them being undervalued IMO but strictly due to heavy commitment and the injury. IMO Randy Henry is one of those guys who was undervalued due to restricitons(limited exposure) caused by the injury. It seems both Tolliver and Cowan were undervalued due to injuries(injury concerns for Tolliver, Cowan was actually injured) as well.

I too would feel a bit more comfortable with some of the higher regarded names, but it seems as you said that JJ's strategy here was shoot for undervalued picks. Not necessarily injured guys, just undervalued. Of course, injury is one of the main reasons for a ball player to be undervalued if they didn't get much exposure or if they had injury concerns themselves like Arrieta did in the 07 draft. Furthermore, going after the industrial favorites isn't Joe Jordan's style. No matter how much we want and beg for him to take our own personal favorites, he goes after his guy, he has his own team and he obviously has an enormous amount of trust in them to disregard industrial favorites for his personal team's concenus favorites. I mean, you have thousands if not more scouts and publications telling you that the next best player on the draft board is player "X", but you and your team go with player "Z" because you have a gut feeling, or because you plain and simply see more in him than in player "X".

So my question for JJ would be, did you specifically target injured ball players because they would sign for less and other teams would have less interest in them? Or did you target the ball players that were undervalued for various reasons, and that injury just happened to be the biggest reason for undervalue?

Sorry to ramble on and on, I am just curious as to this part of the process.....

I'm not Jordan and haven't spoken with him. I know hoosiers and Tony have, perhaps they could shed some light on the issue. My guess would be that Jordan's M.O. is to maximize his draft budget by targeting undervalued players, regardless of the reason. As you stated, injury is a common variable among draft-eligibles, moreso now that the "draft and follow" has been eliminated. The fact that BAL broke a couple of records for late round signing bonuses is interesting -- I think a lot of industry folks would say that those players weren't worth their bonuses based on relative skill sets/backgrounds of other players in the draft (which is a huge problem I have with people posting that player X is a "third round talent" because of his signing bonus -- doesn't come close to working that way, you have to look at each individual and the facts surrounding the signing).

So, the question for me will come down to results. Either BAL accurately evaluating these players and we will see the appropriate results. If it turns out, over the course of however many picks/drafts, that BAL is not accurately evaluating these players, you need to either get different scouts or revise the process. For me, it has little to do with getting "known" players (most scouting directors/organizations know the vast majority of these players, regardless). It's about calculating risk and being as "on" as possible in your talent evaluations. The reason looking at a Baseball America list can help is that they are pretty conservative in trying to get the industry consensus in their reporting/rankings (they are interpreting the data, but for the most part are not evaluating the players -- this is why Callis and Manuel will go out of the way to say "I'm not a scout" when someone calls them one).

[Arthur_Bryant]

The best drafting teams make a killing from a value standpoint. Consider ATL with Hanson and Heyward next year. Those two players alone are likely to produce several drafts worth of signing bonuses in value over their first six seasons.

EDIT -- To be clear, the ATL example is in reference to the financial "break even point" idea. When specifically dealing with rounds five and later, if the chances of finding a successful ML player are so slight, isn't that an argument for not going overslot down there and spending the vast bulk of your money on early picks? I think there is plenty of opportunity to find future productive players after round five -- you should be looking for more than simply making your investment back.

I wasn't arguing that break-even should be the standard--just pointing out that the risk is minimal if your scouting is even halfway competent. I agree that the goal should be to blow past the break-even point in value. In fact, the opportunity to do this is one reason I believe that the O's should invest even more heavily in the draft: because if you draft well, a bigger investment will yield a bigger payoff.

That's also why I disagree with notion that there should be an either/or between big money to early picks and ambitious overslotting in the lower rounds. (I suspect that you feel the same way). And if I were going to pitch that idea to MacPhail, try to persuade him to increase the draft bonus budget by about $5mm a year, part of my argument would be the easy break-even threshold with multiple overslot picks:

Look, Andy, it's not a big risk; unless you really screw the pooch with scouting, you will at least be able to get your money back in the next few years. So pay the big money up top, but create a budget for that low-round sniping. You really aren't risking much, and the upside is considerable.

[Stotle]

I wasn't arguing that break-even should be the standard--just pointing out that the risk is minimal if your scouting is even halfway competent. I agree that the goal should be to blow past the break-even point in value. In fact, the opportunity to do this is one reason I believe that the O's should invest even more heavily in the draft: because if you draft well, a bigger investment will yield a bigger payoff.

That's also why I disagree with notion that there should be an either/or between big money to early picks and ambitious overslotting in the lower rounds. (I suspect that you feel the same way). And if I were going to pitch that idea to MacPhail, try to persuade him to increase the draft bonus budget by about $5mm a year, part of my argument would be the easy break-even threshold with multiple overslot picks:

Look, Andy, it's not a big risk; unless you really screw the pooch with scouting, you will at least be able to get your money back in the next few years. So pay the big money up top, but create a budget for that low-round sniping. You really aren't risking much, and the upside is considerable.

I don't disagree with your general thoughts at all. I think results will determine whether or not the execution of BAL's approach was the right one in this draft, but the idea of going overslot to multiple players you target as undervalued is a good one.

[hoosiers]

So, as you can see, we changed the strategy a bit this year as most of you already know and it will all hopefully pay off.

This is all clearly a new direction in the quantity of over-slot signings including the pursuit and payment of multiple $1M guys drafted after the fifth round.

On thing to keep in mind, however, is that in 2008, we had offers to three guys possibly totaling an additional $750k or so in over-slot signings - Brady, Martin (who we signed in 09) and I forget the third - who did not sign. So, while the 09 over-slot signings would still dwarf the 08 ones, the difference in "strategy" is slightly less than perceived.

I've posted on the subject in this thread many times, but the accumulation of all such signings in one place is both definitive and informative. Well done.

[MiLFanatic]

This is all clearly a new direction in the quantity of over-slot signings including the pursuit and payment of multiple $1M guys drafted after the fifth round.

On thing to keep in mind, however, is that in 2008, we had offers to three guys possibly totaling an additional $750k or so in over-slot signings - Brady, Martin (who we signed in 09) and I forget the third - who did not sign. So, while the 09 over-slot signings would still dwarf the 08 ones, the difference in "strategy" is slightly less than perceived.

I've posted on the subject in this thread many times, but the accumulation of all such signings in one place is both definitive and informative. Well done.

Thank you for the praise. I agree, we did have some money out on the table last year for guys like Brady, Martin and Landers(the other overslotter you had forgotten the name of) that I wish we could have gotten, especially Brady. The difference is that in 09, JJ had a larger budget to work with. If we had drafted Brady this year rather than last year, we get it done IMO. I didn't think it was an ungodly amount he wanted. This year, JJ drafted more overslot guys and as we know signed more. I guess rather than a complete 180 turn around, it was more gradual as far as our strategy, it was just hidden because we didn't sign 3 of them so our dive into the overslot world seemed modest.

There still were about 4 or 5 extra guys from this draft that we didn't sign who were overslot.

[Arthur_Bryant]

On thing to keep in mind, however, is that in 2008, we had offers to three guys possibly totaling an additional $750k or so in over-slot signings - Brady, Martin (who we signed in 09) and I forget the third - who did not sign. So, while the 09 over-slot signings would still dwarf the 08 ones, the difference in "strategy" is slightly less than perceived.

That was Keith Landers from Massachusetts, taken one round in front of Martin.

I just checked the Clemson site; Brady pitched only 10 innings this season. I wonder if he was hurt, or just couldn't find innings on a pretty solid team.

EDIT: And Landers pitched just nine innings for Louisville.

[Stotle]

That was Keith Landers from Massachusetts, taken one round in front of Martin.

I just checked the Clemson site; Brady pitched only 10 innings this season. I wonder if he was hurt, or just couldn't find innings on a pretty solid team.

EDIT: And Landers pitched just nine innings for Louisville.

He wasn't hurt. Just being eased into action. He threw well this summer and should get a shot at a weekend gig this spring, depending on how his fall/winter goes.

[MiLFanatic]

He wasn't hurt. Just being eased into action. He threw well this summer and should get a shot at a weekend gig this spring, depending on how his fall/winter goes.

Did he play for the orioles scout team this year or was that last year? IMO he would be our best pitching prospect from the 08 draft not named Matusz....

[Arthur_Bryant]

Did he play for the orioles scout team this year or was that last year? IMO he would be our best pitching prospect from the 08 draft not named Matusz....

I don't know about this summer (I am sure he played somewhere) but the summer after graduation he played on Walter Youss's team in the Ripken Sr. wood bat league.