January 15, 2022 International Signing Period

andyb 2022-12-21 18:11:52 UTC #164

The moment an organization gets over confident about their high minors depth in one area (i.e. starting pitching currently) is also the moment where they create a problem 5+ years down the road. Frankly we got a little lucky with Painter, Abel, and McGarry. Smart drafting of course, but pretty lucky that 3 arms developed all at once.

We might be just forcing ourselves to spend a few hundred million on 30-year-old arms in the 2030 free agent market.

Matt_Winkelman 2022-12-21 18:23:07 UTC #165

They are still filling their rosters with pitching, so not signing more just means no cycling what they have a higher rate. Because of the missed season in 2020, the entire 2019 signing class did not pitch until 2021, the 2020 class didn't get to do any instructional things until 2021 Spring Training because they are now the 2021 class. Much of the 2019 class was still in the DSL and everyone but Daniel Mejia from the 2021 class was in the DSL. I can also say from my own observations, it really takes special or older arms to make the jump stateside after just one year in the DSL.

Some of this backup is due to domestic roster rules. With 180 spots allowed domestically and no short season, it is hard to fill two FCL teams and that means there are not a lot of stateside opportunities (and that has been further exacerbated by the domestic pitching stacking up in the FCL as well). This has also already had a chilling affect on the number of players brought in. The last three classes have been in the 20-30 range, prior to the rule changes it was 50-70+, which would correspond to the loss of a complex level team in Florida (the draft contraction shows the loss of shortseason).

Pitchers do historically make up a disproportionate amount of signings after the initial date, indicating it is an active scouting situation and you are signing what you can as players pop. They also even including their successes make up a majority of the players older than 16 who are signed.

bkeich 2022-12-21 18:47:09 UTC #166

I also can't help but wonder how often a guy who is signed as a SS is actually thought of more as a pitcher. For 16 year olds, probably most kids play the field, even the ones that are more likely to be pitchers. I suspect some of these kids are signed based on arm strength / throwing with the idea that it will be determined in camp whether their future might be as a position player. I don't really mean the upper end signings, more the mid to lower prospects.

I knew one Phillies minor leaguer (American) who signed and they decided to make him a catcher because he had a strong arm, some power and poor hitting skills. It was realized that his only path was at catcher, a position he had never played in High School or college. He never made it out of A ball and was released after 2 seasons, but he was very thankful for the opportunity and agreed that catcher was his only chance.

(Edit: I was wrong, he was a catcher in college, he must have been referring to the fact that he never caught before he got to college, but my point is still the same)

andyb 2022-12-21 19:01:06 UTC #167

What do you think of the Phillies' strategy though of spending less than 5% of their pool on pitching? I get the backlog of arms and the lost pandemic year. The whole industry had that however. I am looking at our top 30 on MLB. com and the only recent signees from Latin America are ranked 23rd (Cabrera), 28th (Estanista) and 29th (Segura). Morales was signed way back in 2016 for significant dollars. Cabrera also might drop out of our top 30 after last season.

We just don't seem to be developing lots of high end pitching. Everybody signs $10K prospects and some develop like Estanista might. It just does not seem like a good strategy if one depends on that. The new world of limited minor league roster size really depends on the organization being able to identify their best prospects rather than just throw 50 arms out there and hope a few develop.

Matt_Winkelman 2022-12-21 19:30:50 UTC #168

I generally think once you get below like $500,000 on bonuses you really are now into low probability and bonus $ and player talent are not correlated, it is more about signability and leverage. In big money pitching signings I think you are generally paying for now stuff, and that doesn't guarantee future growth, especially when you are running big reliever risk because you are paying on things like velocity and not really mature pitch mixes. It also isn't necessarily a strategy that is playing out across orgs, there are not a lot of J2 pitchers on top prospect lists and there are not a bunch of big money guys out there either.

Generally with pitching you should sign it when you see it. You can't churn so be vigilant on older players and make the signing. I would rather be scouting 16-18 year olds than 14-15 year olds when it comes to pitchers. That means less money spent, but not less talent. It also isn't less money as a plan, it just is the market forces. In the same way that in the draft you only can sign so many high school pitchers, but you are bringing in a lot more college arms and especially senior signs at the end.

My overall thesis is that using bonus as a measure of talent acquisition is generally a flawed piece of analysis in a space where market forces drive certain outcomes. Looking at actual player outcomes, especially as they arrive stateside is going to be much more telling.

Now if you want do your own digging, I tracked a bunch of DSL games I got access to and recorded the data I could. It is easier to find on the 2022 tab here, but almost all DSL pitchers should be present.

andyb 2022-12-21 19:45:29 UTC #169

So this speaks to a strategy of now spending much money on Latin American pitching bonuses. It probably also means that the Phillies are not great at the signability and leverage side though.

We really are not generating much Latin American talent and there is an argument that virtually all of our million plus bonuses for any Latin American talent are not cost effective. Luis Encarcion was never a great hitter or athlete. Jhailyn Ortiz seems to be a huge overpay even if his talent was as advertised. Starlyn Castillo was a short pitcher with present stuff that never projected much more before the injury. Luis Garcia at $2.5 million felt like an overpay at the time (there were other SS prospects signed that were bigger and faster). Bergolla at over $2 million seems an overpay too looking at his physical frame.

I suspect the Phillies will do better with an international draft. We just are not good at this game of locking up talents early and figuring out how not to overpay. A team that scouts fairly well but is terrible at negotiation should prosper with draft slots.

Matt_Winkelman 2022-12-21 20:00:04 UTC #170

Your premise here seems to be there is an untapped market of pitchers who get low 6 figures who the Phillies just are missing out on, and that market doesn't really exist. I am no opposed to spending big on a pitcher assuming they are worth it, but think about how many high school pitchers are worth high picks vs high school hitters, now imagine there is almost no track record. There are probably 0-2 pitchers per year worth major bonuses.

Even if you want to point to teams that do well in the latin american pitching market, like the Astros, it is all sub $100,000 bonuses on guys over age.

If you want to argue they haven't been great in Latin America overall, that is fine and that is largely what you seem to be driving as your point (though I will disagree on Bergolla who probably doesn't have a superstar frame, but is well worth the money so far). I just think you are hunting ghosts with your point on pitching, you are looking for a thing that just doesn't exist and are pointing that the Phillies haven't been signing the thing that doesn't exist.

andyb 2022-12-21 20:11:49 UTC #171

My point was not that there was necessarily an untapped market. It was part that they are bad at this.

And part a question on what they SHOULD do.

It is probably worth a study on the Latin American success rate at various bonus levels. I agree (and the industry agrees) that the million dollar bonuses were not cost effective. I am not sure we have seen any study of the market in the last 5 years though that really looks at these middle bonus levels. I assume the Starlyn Castillos of the world that got $1.6 million are now getting $500K and the guys that used to get $500K are now getting $100K.

What is their success rate? Obviously too early to tell for the last few classes, but I don't think there is much evidence to dismiss this outright.

The point on Bergolla is not that he isn't a good prospect. Just not sure he is a $2 million prospect. We really won't know much for a few years, but power is important in today's game so not having much power potential would make me question the bonus size.

Austinfan 2022-12-21 21:34:51 UTC #172

I think a big problem with LA, and to a lesser extent HS, is the projection fallacy.

Guys who are throwing hard (or hitting with a lot of power) at 15-16 are probably self-selected to have physically matured early (or in some cases are on steroids), which means they're likely to have less upside as they age. But if an organization thinks all players mature at the same rate, the standouts will get big money relative to the late bloomers.

This is a good area to apply analytics, look at all the players signed by all teams over a decade, and see their "maturity rates" v current skills, that is, which players make big jumps and which don't - and which variables predict those jumps. Then invest in those likely to make the biggest jumps (since if other teams haven't determined this, they'll be undervalued relative to their peers).

julio 2022-12-21 21:42:14 UTC #173

You don't think that amateur scouts try to evaluate exactly these things? Whether the kid shows signs of early physical maturity (look at his siblings, his parents - bloodlines); whether he's juicing (look for physical signs, behavioral indicators, scuttlebutt); etc.

Now granted, this could be harder in the Dominican, where buscones might do what they can to paint a picture that obscures issues with a kid. But good scouts should be able to see through this; if they can't, then you need different scouts.

Scouts aren't just sitting around looking at Perfect Game videos. Part of their job is to explore these very things - not just hold a radar gun up or click a stopwatch.

fish 2022-12-21 22:13:41 UTC #174

I'm curious what, if any, advance metrics they have to try and scout Latin pitchers. If perhaps buscones now have access to accumulate hawkeye data on the prospects they are peddling, or if teams have the ability to do a rapid assessment on the guys they try out. It seems like the Astros have an ability to identify guys with a foundation for pitch shape, metrics and/or arm action that they like, or that they think they can develop. Like a genuine plan, not just guys that pass the eye test that they throw into the system to see what shakes out. Maybe I'm making more of it that what they really do.

The Phillies seem like they are getting closer to having that ability, or having some of that ability anyway. Dominic Pimpkin was a guy that caught my eye at the end of the year- they started using him like they were Abel and I think that was a telling sign what they thought of his development.

allentown 2022-12-21 22:43:52 UTC #175

The Phillies record on H.S. pitching is actually quite good. Their record on H.S. hitters is atrocious. That tells me where I'd put my money.

Well that's great, then we don't have to go over a few hundred thousand $ to outbid the other teams for the best LA pitchers, Maybe a bit over $1 million at times, but less than we've spent on the big $ position players we've bombed on.

Perhaps the approach is to spend all of our allocation on $300-600,000 guys. roughly equal split pitcher/position, leaning a little towards pitching and then fill out the rosters with $10K guys.

Yes, I think Andyb is saying that our LA scouting flat out stinks -- the evidence certainly supports that assessment. I agree 100%. The Yhoswar situation was a disgrace, which should have resulted in bye-bye Sal. How can you not know the age of your top bonus guy? How can you give him full bonus knowing he is a year older than claimed and will miss another year due to suspension? I hear that Sal is now more administrator than scout, but this is a huge administrative problem.

phillychuck 2022-12-22 13:04:40 UTC #176

Given that it's the Astros, I'm not sure if it's scouting or that they have found some way to cheat with some of their signings. It is exceedingly rare for one over-age, non-prospect pitcher to make the kind of jump Valdez and Garcia have after being pretty much bottom of the barrel prospects in the minors (or even before being signed--how unlikely is it for the Astros to have signed two of those guys??). Valdez was signed in the Dominican as a 21-year-old; guys like that rarely make it to high-A ball in the states. Garcia was a 20-year-old Dominican signing who somehow jumped from high-A ball directly to the majors at age 22. Javier seems to have followed a normal progression--18-year-old signing who dominated from the first time he was playing anywhere, and Urquidy, the Mexican hurler, also seems to have followed somewhat of a normal development pathway, pitching well under-the-radar after being signed out of the Mexican Leagues. I have cheating suspicions with both Valdez and Garcia that are, admittedly, completely without evidence, other than it's the Astros and that's what they do.

Even Montero might be a result of Astros cheating--a 31-year-old who has always been a low-innings, mostly ineffective pitcher sets a career high in innings with the Astros and is almost unhittable for the first time in his career? They are either hiring actual wizards or warlocks as coaches or they are finding a way to evade the regulations on substances (either on the hands on in the body). It is just SO suspicious that all these guys have two or three standard deviation jumps from previous performance. If I were MLB I'd be looking hard at them (again).

zambonir 2022-12-22 14:17:02 UTC #177

How exactly do you imagine the Astros doing this, and really, why even single them out in this particular instance? Most if not all teams cheat or are corrupt on the international market - I believe one knock on the Phillies is that they've never been good at it - and several other teams have even gotten caught (didn't seem to stop the Braves' development success, and unfortunately the Phillies haven't reaped much from the the guy they got due to the Red Sox cheating).

And Astros were hardly the only team to do what they did in the big leagues either, even if they did so at a previously unimaginable scope that shredded any notion of unwritten rules (that Manuel's Phillies were also accused of breaking multiple times).

To add to the irony the Phillies hired like three people with Astros experience (hitting coach, pitching coach, player dev), did they fail because the Phillies didn't let them cheat (and if that's the case why did they hire them in the first place, either morally or practically)?

phillychuck 2022-12-22 15:07:17 UTC #178

Both Valdez and Garcia reportedly had dramatic changes in the spin rate on their pitches after being signed by the Astros. Maybe it's coaching, maybe it wa something every other team in baseball missed, or maybe it's cheating. The "everybody is doing it" argument doesn't hold here because everybody isn't getting the Astros' results.

Austinfan 2022-12-22 15:24:29 UTC #179

Phillies signed one of these overage guys, sometimes they just make a jump.
Think of the HS players who weren't good enough to be draft, but three years later as college juniors go in the first eight rounds.

RH Jonh Henriquez : 22 years old - signed as an international free agent 6/7/22 - from San Francisco de Marcaris, Dominican Republic. We only have seen him pitch once in person - in a live BP session during Fall Instructs but the stuff was so electric he makes our list here. The fastball has rising level life, velocity and movement and the slider was biting - we’ve seen a lot of pitchers but few show stuff that jumps at you in a first impression like what we saw from Henriquez.

Jonh pitched for the DSL Red team this summer in 5 games and struck out 7 batters while walking 4 in 6 IP. He converted 2 of 3 save opportunities. A walk on to the academy this summer he just might become a great discovery.

We expect to see him stateside this spring and in the mix for a full season assignment - if he continues to throw like what we saw this fall then it could become a quick climb up the ladder.

The speed gun : fastball ( sits in a range of 94 to 97 mph - max 97 ) and slider ( 79 to 83 mph )