Looking ahead to the 2018 draft

bigegypt0417 2017-05-25 19:12:14 UTC #21

So basically the Phillies aren't interested in winning because they'd rather spends their allotment every year vs. signing a high priced lottery ticket?

The Phillies will spend the money when they have some semblance of a contender to build around. This isn't about being cheap.

allentown 2017-05-25 22:52:13 UTC #22

In the case of the under-23 international market, these are 16-18 year olds we are talking about. It makes no sense not to trade for extra allocation and spend 50% more. You don't need a contending nucleus to do that. This is how you build a contending nucleus. And yes, we do want to sign more of the highly regarded LA kids. That's the source of a lot of the LA stars in MLB.

Austinfan 2017-05-25 23:06:40 UTC #23

The Phillies missed the boat on LA signings in the past.
Last year, they probably couldn't have spent a large additional allocation, who was available (i.e. wasn't locked up in advance).
They signed a large number of guys, and spent up to their 5% overage.
Given they traded for allocations in the past, I'd be surprised they didn't test the waters.

Next year it should be easier to trade for allocations, a number of teams are limited to $300K signings and might find more effective to trade allocations for prospects, but even then, they're gonna want real prospects, since instead of trading for marginal prospects they could just sign 4 guys for a $1M total. So it's going to be a tough allocation v opportunity cost decision.

I'm not against hitting the FA market next year or the year after (though given this season, 2019 probably makes more sense), I just don't think we have a shot at the top FAs (I wouldn't sign with the Phillies if I could go to Hollywood and sleep with the stars), and I don't want to pay $30M a year for a 31 or 32 year old pitcher on a 6-7 year deal (see Lee, Halladay, et al). But each year there are a half dozen FAs who are solid starters who sign fairly reasonable deals that won't cripple the team going forward. It's just a matter of identify the right guy at the right position and closing the deal.

Trading for a bad contract is also a good use of money, you can get a solid player, get his team to throw in some money and a prospect to boot by taking that contract off their hands (i.e. a 2-3 WAR player making $25M with 2-3 years left on his contract).

But we're not going to spend our way into contention, you still have to do it the old fashioned way, develop players and make good trades.

teabag259 2017-05-29 16:57:33 UTC #24

Is there an early top 10 out or won't those start appearing until after the 2017 draft?

andyb 2017-05-29 18:41:04 UTC #25

You are kind of like Trump on this. There is absolutely no evidence that they could not have spent an additional 50% allocation and you really should stop repeating this. There were a dozen Cubans that became eligible throughout the year.

They CHOSE not to trade for additional allocations. This does not mean that their current class is not good. But they chose not to add a $2 million addition to the class which they easily could have. But it was not because there were not available prospects. And Trump's inaugural crowd was not the largest in history.

fish 2017-05-29 21:32:51 UTC #26

I haven't seen a ranking, but my personal cheeseball is Vandy outfielder Julian Infante- that guy is a beast who can really mash. Beer controls the strike zone better, but Infante isn't too far off.

bigegypt0417 2017-05-30 17:43:30 UTC #27

Is it possible they decided the talent they would have to give up would not be worth it?

Austinfan 2017-05-30 17:48:38 UTC #28

Or another question, who did trade for allocations?
Which is the Holmes question: "why didn't the dog bark in the night?"

andyb 2017-05-30 17:48:53 UTC #29

Possible but unlikely. We gave up nothing substantial in the Ortiz allocation deal and the sheer number of teams in the penalty this year meant there were lots of unused slot allocations up for grabs (remember each team gets $700K to spend even before we got to the slot allocations).

The lack of trades for allocations was not likely the high price of them. It was the reality that the Padres and others were exceeding the cap this year. Most teams could not trade for allocations large enough to make it worth it. The Phillies are the exception though since they had the largest allocation. Thus we could trade for the largest allocation increase.

I think this has more to do with the Phillies old-school notion of what a $2 million prospect is worth. They probably would have needed to overpay a prospect to have used that allocation. That upsets their historic play-by-the-rules sensibilities.

zambonir 2017-05-30 20:03:21 UTC #30

But, who, organizationally makes that call, or continues to hold that belief? Seems to me it would have to be Sal, as well as Almaraz (who spent much of his career doing Sal's job for Atlanta). Middleton wouldn't even have an opinon. Now, maybe Klentak and MacPhail feel that way too, but it's hard for me to believe, given the timing and context of their arrival, that they wouldn't have signed off on the moves if their people, who they chose to keep and know more than they do in the trenches, were lobbying hard for certain players, or allocation $ in general. There are just too many variables (including what kind of deal that might have made) to know anything for sure.

Austinfan 2017-05-30 21:22:17 UTC #31

"The lack of trades for allocations was not likely the high price of them. It was the reality that the Padres and others were exceeding the cap this year. Most teams could not trade for allocations large enough to make it worth it."

That's pretty unlikely because bonuses fall rapidly once you get past the first 15-20 players and they're locked up early, so the players you'd trade allocations for were certainly affordable for every team out there, including the ones limited to $300K.

The answer may simply be that once all the $500-$1+M players are locked up, teams aren't willing to trade real prospects for allocations to sign $100K guys who are long shots.

Of the top 50 bonuses in 2016-17, only 32 were over $1M, in comparison in the 2016 draft, 70 players received bonuses over $1M (and they have less leverage). #50 was $700K.
11 of the top 18 (and 3 of the next 11) were Cubans, which reflects their age (most are much older than other LA players, so lower risk) and probably what it took to arrange these deals (as we've found out, Cuban baseball smuggling is a very corrupt operation which often involves kidnapping and extortion).

andyb 2017-05-30 22:04:01 UTC #32

There were over a dozen high priced Cuban players that became available in the last year. These were not deals that were already locked up. The Phillies chose not to spend here. The price of allocations had almost nothing to do with that decision since so many allocations went unused by teams in the penalty. They would have dealt them for a warm body if there was a market.

andyb 2017-05-30 22:13:37 UTC #33

There was one pool trade a couple of weeks ago and it looks like the O's are being cheap and dealing their slots:

Alex Katz for $750K in slots.
Damien Magnifico for $850K
Paul Fry for less than $200K.

All warm bodies. Magnifico was #11 in the Angels system which is among the worst. May not have been top 30 with us. May have been released by us even.

allentown 2017-05-30 23:30:30 UTC #34

I am fairly certain that it is Middleton and the other owners who decide how much the team will budget for the draft and international talent, then Sal and Almaraz get to decide how they will spend the budget they were given. I think it a lot more than coincidence after coincidence that in the years before fixed caps that the PHillies draft spending almost always equaled the sum of their suggested slot $. They could have exceeded that value without penalty. They could have signed 20 $100K guys after round 10 and technically not even violated the suggested guidelines. They almost never did. The team sets a budget at the annual meeting and that seems not to change, come heck or high water or the opportunity of a lifetime, like spending not all that much more than budget and for only one year to take a run at a second championship with both Lee and Halladay, rather than just salary dumping Lee. Likely Sal and Almaraz didn't have another high profile LA guy they could sell to the owners at the annual meeting. Going over budget, because Cubans became available has never been the Phillies way. The budget is sacrosanct and they don't budget to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. I'm quite sure that Sal would have signed some Cubans, had he been given the budget $ to do so.

zambonir 2017-05-31 02:55:16 UTC #35

I think Montgomery made the overall budget, which, under the previous regime, was tantamount to ownership making it, but I really don't think the other owners got involved in how the money gets spent. For a major decision like the Halladay trade or the Howard contract, sure, the GM goes to the President and they may take it to the owners.

Now MacPhail makes the budget. Given how little money they have been spending on major leaguers I find it hard to believe money is the reason they didn't take full advantage. I guess I'm just choosing to be more optimistic about their process because in truth, your version of it really does suggest they are stupid and cheap and things haven't changed. Maybe, maybe not.

allentown 2017-05-31 22:08:29 UTC #36

I think this is the specific Phillies ownership pathology. They hate spending money on amateur talent. This was Giles' thing. When his team bought the Phillies, the first thing he did was gut the scouting system and reduce spending on the minor leagues. They have been stingy on minor league bonuses ever since. I don't think Middleton is as driven by the bottom line as Giles and Middleton were -- I don't think he would have ordered Gillick to trade Burrell and his salary (became Abreu, when Burrell invoked his FNTC) to balance the budget, nor would he have dumped Pence for the same reason. Given a chance to make a really serious run at a 2nd WC, I believe Middleton would have given RAJ permission to go $9 mill over budget and go with both Lee and Halladay in their primes.

However, as of today, no indication that Middleton cares about maximizing the farm and spending an extra couple of million on under-23 international and perhap $5-10 mill on over-23 internaitonal to do so. He can be sold on spending $tens of millions on marginal vets like Kendrick and Saunders, but it seems hard-wired in the DNA of the post-Giles Phillies that you don't spend aggressively on the farm. You spend just 'enough'. You do nothing to irritate the commish. You don't seize opportunities. Good enough is good enough, even if you have the weakest team in MLB, while the Braves have the strongest farm.

It is not a question of being cheap overall. Middleton, in total, has spent about as much as is reasonable to spend this season. I don't think he's spent it wisely and he seems to have deliberately chosen not to do as much as he could on the farm. He has been an owner for a long time. He has soaked up the vibe of Giles and Montgomery.

Austinfan 2017-06-01 00:09:55 UTC #37

Notice Chicago using the slot to reduce their penalty for signing Roberts, i.e., trading marginal prospects to save money.

Dirk41 2017-06-02 19:10:57 UTC #38

Do you think Middleton says no to these things? I can't imagine that he would assemble a presumably capable front office who doesn't prioritize building the system. It just seems like common sense that they would invest on all levels and not simply go on the radio and tell the city they will invest when it's time. Bryce Harper is great but having a burgeoning team for him to join is even greater.

allentown 2017-06-02 20:26:23 UTC #39

Yeah, I think he says no to international spending. I guarantee you, if he tells Sal that he had $8 mill to spend, Sal will find a way to spend it productively. Scouts and scouting directors want to sign talent and want as much budget and leeway to act as possible. The odds of Sal telling TPTB that he didn't think it wise to get and spend an extra 50% above allocation or that he didn't think it made sense to be a player in the 23+ international market are just about nil. GMs also like to maximize talent, so I think the decision not to must have come from a higher level than the GM. This also was a change of direction, since they did trade for an extra 50% allocation to sign Ortiz and others. The difference this year is the second highest draft allocation and the highest international allocation. One or more of TPTB decided this was enough and they didn't want to devote more $ resources to international talent to spend another 50% above allocation or be players in the 23+ market. It absolutely had to be a conscious budget decision.

The history of the Phillies has always been to 'be in' on expensive talent and come up short. That's why I discount all the talk of Harper, Machado, and Trout. When the Phillies got Lee and Halladay, you didn't hear a whisper from them before hand. When they chatter, it is propaganda.

allentown 2017-06-02 20:32:42 UTC #40

In there view, he has spent enough on all levels. That he has the worst team in baseball seems insufficient reason to change the budget thinking. It doesn't make sense, but if you study the history of the Phillies franchise in acquiring amateur talent from the day the Giles team bought the Phillies from Ruly Carpenter, there has consistently been a lot of excessive thrift on the minor league level, which didn't make any sense. You can trace it from dismantling the Dominican Republic scouting system which signed Juan Samuel and many other talents and was regarded as the best in basement, to chasing Dallas Green and our best scouts out of the organization, to incomprehensible drafts heavy on slow, short, white college kids, to the J.D. Drew debacle, to the slavish adherence to Selig's suggested slots, to the refusal to play in the international over-23 market when, despite what you may think of that market today it was dirt cheap, to giving away draft picks by the dozen to sign mediocre FA, including not waiting a week to see if their teams made them the then equivalent of a QA, up to today. It is in the post-Giles DNA of the Phillies PTB to starve the farm.