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Nov 2024
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Jan 13
May 11
andyb
Jan 12

We have done it before with Muzziotti though those circumstances were different (rule breaking rather than walking away from a deal). Assume we will be aggressive since we seemingly have not committed a bunch of our pool yet.

Maybe this will be the impetus towards a draft. Negative is that maybe Sasaki would not come over before he is 25 if he is not allowed to pick his team. Positive is that we are about to expose a whole bunch of illegal handshake deals that teams are backing away from. Not positive for the kids of course, but positive for the sport to put more order into this.

Edit - maybe the process has already started if Sasaki is headed to the Dodgers.

zambonir
Jan 12

Yeah it seems like it would be more of a wild west for these 8 days, with unofficial deals and non-public $ amounts, whereas the Red Sox thing created a late pool of free agents with known voided contract amounts.

The MLBPA is still so much against the draft.

The MLBTR post you shared offers a lot of the info from the BA story for those of us who don't subscribe. Certainly suggests the Dodgers are getting their ducks in a row but I guess doesn't mean they are the frontrunner or only team doing so.

Dodgers had supposedly promised this kid $900K and Pirates are giving him $1.8 million. That's certainly something Phillies could do. And he's not even Top 50.

andyb
Jan 12


Well this does seem an overpay and even a PR-related move for Pittsburgh (as in why aren't we spending more money on the major league roster in free agency?). Pirates are under $80 million still for the major league payroll and all we hear about are how the A's need to spend to get to like $105 million.

I am not a fan of overpays. I have been pretty consistent in disliking many of the big contracts the Phillies give out (for the amount and not necessarily the player). Ortiz is clearly the classic case but I would have been fine bringing him in for somewhere in the $1.$2 million range knowing what we knew back when he was 15 or 16. Bergolla always seemed like an $800K-$1M player to me. Even Caba should have been $2 million instead of $3 million.

That being said, I hope there are a bunch of $500K players out there and we sign 6-10 of them. That would be my ideal class in this situation since we pretty much are out on anyone else in the top 50 and our top guy now (Izaguerra) is below $1 million reportedly. Let's sign 5 more kids in the 50-100 range and be aggressive on pitching since seemingly good arms can be had for modest sums ($100K-$200K) given the analytical risk that discriminates against all young pitching.

Pat_Burrell
Jan 12

I recall previously reading that the buscones (sp?) were most against a draft since they would lose all leverage and threatened trouble if a draft was ever on the table

zambonir
Jan 12

If the MLBPA agreed to it, the league would just crush the entire system. Not saying it's right (at all!) or that the draft is the best thing for the players necessarily but imagine Rob Manfred and Scott Boras as Exxon or United Fruit in this scenario. There's not much doubt who wins.

Austinfan
Jan 12
andyb

If you don't think you're signing a "sure thing" you're probably better off spreading your money around on kids who are less physical mature than their peers at 15-16 instead of getting into bidding wars for early bloomers.

Almost all the players the Phillies gave big money to have flopped over the years.
And most of their LA major leaguers and top prospects haven't been million dollar bonus babies.

andyb
Jan 13

That is actually not true. Big money guys have become good players (even going back to Carlos Silva and Carlos Carrasco). The real issue is giving players $2 to $4 million when they should get only $1 million..

All these 16 year old kids have risk. You still need to spend at the top of the market though to get the better tools. We just need to negotiate a better price on the top kids than the Phillies have done historically.. A "never spend big money on anybody" strategy like you seem to advocate probably does not work either. I want more players with medium money. I do not think signing 50 players for low money works.

zambonir
Jan 13

The answer is not for the Phillies stop signing big money guys, the answer is to get better at it. No different than the high end of the domestic draft. If they can also find an Altuve for $15,000 or an Acuña for $100,000 that's good too. They don't have much history doing that either.

Austinfan
Jan 13
andyb

Unless you have a "sure thing," and history shows most multi-million dollar LA signings are a waste of money, you're better off spreading it around to a portfolio of small and medium signings, Tait was $70K for example. You can sign a lot of lanky pitchers who might fill out and add 5 MPH. You can look for kids with good tools who aren't physically mature at 16 and bet on them filling out. You'll miss on most, but the Phillies missed on most of their high priced signings. Silva did what? Carrasco is the only name, Ortiz, Encarnacion, the overage OF, etc.?

Matt_Winkelman
Jan 13

The Phillies just flipped Starlyn Caba at probably top 100 prospect value as possibly the best defender in the minors and best players in his class. I would say that signing was both good and worth the value they paid.

allentown
Jan 13

Which is why I think the Phillies spend more on pitcher bonuses in their international signings. We've spent the vast majority of bonus $ on positionn players and the results aren't good. We do better on pitchers. We do horrendously on OF, where we spend a ton of $. Better on IFs and catchers, but not as good a return as with pirtchers.

allentown
Jan 13

i think the time has come to crush this whole corrupt system and begin anew, preferably with an international draft, but definitely with an honest system which certain teams cannot take advantage of, pretty much with impunity.

Squire
Jan 13
1

BA Updated their list to a Top 100

Phillies are linked to:

59 - Nieves Izaguirre, SS, Venezuela (Phillies)
67 - Elias Marrero, SS, Dominican Republic (Phillies)
72 - Deivis Velasquez, C, Venezuela (Phillies)

phillychuck
Jan 13

Are they BA's #1,2,and 3 prospects overall? If not, where do they sit? The original post shows 1, 2, and 3 before their names.

Squire
Jan 13

The formatting on this page always does that to me when i drop in information. I need to figure out a way to defeat it. In any event

Nieves is 59
Marrero is 67
Velasquez is 72

phillychuck
Jan 13

Not bad if we get them all. It's hard to rank LA guys at such a young age, maybe they are all better than the scouts think!

owaistabish
Jan 13
Squire

Phillies, by my count are also linked to two other catchers: Anderson Araujo and Gabriel Azocar (from GT baseball academy).

julio
Jan 13
Squire

Squire - Take a look at what I did in your earlier post. It's a cludge, but it worked.

andyb
Jan 13

$3 million was a very large bonus though. $2 million might have been more appropriate for someone without much power. The Phillies tend to overpay based on where the prospects rank. There is no question Caba is a good prospect. Bottom of the top 100 now (or just outside the top 100). Some of that is due to performance since he was signed though. And I suspect most of the $3 million bonus guys in his class are top 100 too since they have so little high level performance to change their rankings.

A player can be a really good prospect and the bonus at the time could still have been a bit high. Both things can be true. This organization just has a long history of overpaying. The errors on players are mostly scouting and development issues. The negotiations on bonus however are about us overpaying to get the player and these overpays can hurt if we start at a smaller bonus pool level than other organizations.