CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Yep you hit the nail on the head. The Sox have had a good off season no doubt but we aren't yet in any position to be laughing at them. Every fan base on every fan forum has knowledgeable and not as knowledgeable fans posting. It would be real easy for a Twins fan to come here and make fun of numerous posts.

You LOL'd at stepping in a hole not the facts surrounding it because there were no facts before this.Both sides thought they could lose or win the arbitrator decision so they compromised. You said stepping in a hole is probably not what happened when in fact that is what happened. You never questioned how he ended up stepping in the hole , you just didn't believe he stepped in the hole. Don't go moving the goalposts . You could've ignored my updated post or admitted you were wrong but instead choose to try to change your story when it's right there on the page in black and white.

He stepped in a hole. https://nypost.com/2020/01/03/yoenis-cespedes-ankle-fractures-came-during-incident-with-wild-boar/

Ohtani. when he came the the Angels .had one of those kicks and he learned that it wasn't effective and changed it to a toe tap and it made all the difference for him. This is a good article on it. It explains who suggested it and explains Ohtani's willingness to learn and listen and inquiry and learn from others like Pujols. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/23298771/shohei-ohtani-made-one-small-step-way-mlb-success

I listened. Good job. I know in those situations to make it more interesting to the listeners you have to focus on players. But I'm glad you asked about the Sox facility in the DR. I'm one of those guys who is more interested in the process and how things work in other country's. Do some teams not only pay their U.S. based scouts to travel to see players but also hire locals ? I don't know what Tatis Sr. does now but someone like him might be a good hire. Give him a yearly salary and let him be a local scout in the DR and if not him maybe he could recommend someone. I think someone respected in the area would go a long way. Pay him enough to be not tempted to make underhanded deals give him an expense account and be a Sox only type scout who doesn't pass info on to other teams. He would be much better at building relationships living there full time and knowing a lot of people . Do the same thing in other parts of the world. I probably have to watch some of those videos Caulfield always recommends about the "coyotes" to understand more about the dark side of the process.

Congrats . Good job !

Here's last years list , I can't tell what it's based on. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2019-20-mlb-international-bonus-pools/

There might be a $1-2M difference between the top and bottom teams. Bad teams get more than the good teams , You can also trade for more. Some teams might already have committed some of their money with players they have already established relationships.

You are terrible at self promotion . Give a link when you say things like that. I'm not real good at keeping up with podcasts on a regular basis .

I think he likely has to realize $3M isn't in his future.

I see it like this as well. Something is brewing. One or 2 of our catchers are out of here. Zavala released ,someone else traded ?

I know that but the strength of having a strong presence around the world and committing the funds necessary to do that was my point. Sorry if you though my response was thinking that Paddy was the only scout. I think I have built up a strong presence on Soxtalk here based on my knowledge and posts over 15 years to know you can't run a whole international department with just one scout. I only mentioned Paddy because you said: "There's either a reluctance to pay a "premium" in this marketplace or Marco Paddy can't scout and close the deal. I don't believe the latter is true. So my response was Paddy can't be everywhere. He just can't be everywhere the talent is so i'm not sure how strong the commitment around the world is using others beside Paddy. The strength of the whole department is what I am questioning and perhaps the funds needed to make it a stronger presence. More scouts , more travel a longer time in many areas ,network, build relationships close the deal. The reluctance to pay a premium not only means the signing of top players but the premium that goes into networking.

I still don't think it's risk aversion alone. Baseball is a worldwide game and talent comes from everywhere.Paddy is just one scout. He can't be everywhere. You need networking and continuity in many many parts of the world and often in some unstable places. Sure you can rely on lists of the best players and then plan trips to see them but I think you get the best results by having a strong presence in many areas making contacts . That is an expensive and time consuming endeavor. You need to establish relationships with the family's of 14 year olds for 2 years until they can sign or you decide they have not developed enough in the 2 years to warrant signing them. I am just not sure the Sox are willing to spend the time and money needed to do everything required to get the top players and settle for less in a few select areas. It's one thing to spend your whole allotment but it's another thing to spend time and money keeping scouts in different parts of the world for long periods away from their families. At least we can all agree that the Sox need to do better . We just have different theories on why they are so bad at it. To me it just comes down to spending more on scouts, establishing a presence, networking, building relationships and doing the job the way other more successful teams do it. It help's to have a "closer" , a guy like a top salesman who can close a deal.

Ok hope the spread sheet helped any research you are doing. We basically have the same argument that it doesn't seem to be risk aversion but then again you haven't given your reason for why the Sox have had so little success in finding guys who can become MLB stars among the normal IFA signees among the guys who didn't require a penalty to sign.

Right I'm sure that's the reason and I edited my post before your post came up.

And what the explanation for that ? Is it just the full amount that they were allotted ? Sorry researching this is hard without a subscription to Baseball America which probably has more accurate info on the IFA draft and bonus pool allotment than the rest of the internet combined .

Here is a spreadsheet that I found for every major league team international signings from 2012 to 2016 . You can scroll around and find the Spx in the AL Central section and see for yourself. For example in 2013 the year they signed Adolfo they only spent $2.2M . https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rCfd8UiXUEGhhlwxhAES8BGjfQPLwrCLUTcB-k806Dc/edit#gid=0

Tampa Bay has had a $3M miss before yet that didn't stop them from giving $3.8M to Wander Franco. If Tampa Bay can see the importance of international scouting and player development despite one the lowest payrolls in baseball , it's hard for me to imagine a smart guy like JR would even have an over simplified risk argument . If an over simplified risk argument includes being too cheap to actually scout and develop relationships with 14 yr olds and invest in these players then the Sox will always be behind the 8 ball.

It also didn't hurt that Abreu was a big part of the video pitch to Robert especially IIRC he was also a team mate at some point. Being a known commodity does not remove the risk. Yes some were hyping Robert as the best player on earth but we all know is something that has to be proved over a period of years at the highest level' Other Cubans, though not exclaimed in such glowing terms, were known commodities like Rusney Castillo who at the age of 27 signed for a $5,4M bonus and a 7 year contract worth $72.5M . Yasmany Tomas signed at age 23 to a 6 yr. $68.5M deal , I think his agent specifically wanted that much just to beat the Abreu deal. Those 2 known commodities failed miserably despite whatever prompted the teams that signed them to big contracts. Big money equals big risk no matter how you slice it, known commodity or not. WIthout Abreu maybe it's the Cardinals that end up with Robert despite the scouting and showcases . The biggest concern is still how they operated in LatAM for years not developing relationships and maybe even to this day. They just are not networking enough and that shows in the results . As I said before it's a crap shoot like with all amateur talent so I know the risks involved in the top picks, lesser known and younger kids. I was looking at all the top ranked talent from the 3 main sources that ranked the International players in 2014 and who they ended up signing with and for how much the bonus was and I don't think I recognized any name except Amado Nunez who signed with the White Sox for $900K. Most were either Dominican or Venezuelan with a few exceptions being a few Colombians and 1 Korean counting all 3 resources lists of the top 30 . One of the top kids in 2014 was SS Adrian Rondon who Tampa Bays signed as a 16 yr. old for $3M so even a team with little money knows the importance of spending it despite the pratfalls that come with it. He had never got higher than A ball with the Rays and then they traded him to the Angels last year. https://www.minorleagueball.com/2014/7/4/5867329/2014-international-free-agent-ifa-signing-bonus-central

That's usually a concern more like some of the scrawny 16 yr old kids who later blossom like Acuna, Jr.

Yea my post was a long excursion but I knew it was still short of all the stuff that has revealed the Sox as bumbling fools in that area. Signing Robert does not excuse years and year of incompetence in drafting and developing of any player be it IFA or the American draft. It's just Internationally the Sox have been a fiasco year after year after year. Thank you for your support.

The moral issues thing is my own take because I could see no reason for signing some 16 year olds but not others. Maybe he gets reports about their family life or who represents them and if he does have moral issues he could be more picky about who they give contracts to based on family or handlers of prospects and perhaps avoid certain handlers. Like with Tatis, Jr. and his younger brother, who we also signed, perhaps they discovered it was a decent family not desperate for money because the father of the Tatis boys ( Fernando Tatis, Sr.) played MLB. Again that's my take, not corroborated with anything concrete. As far as the other question about MLB giving them the money I am probably wrong and the things I have read I misinterpreted such as this : As per the 2017-21 Collective Bargaining Agreement, clubs are each subject to a spending cap for amateur international free agents. Each club will have at least a $4.75 million bonus pool to spend, with those that have a pick in Competitive Balance Round A receiving $5.25 million and those with a pick in Competitive Balance Round B receiving $5.75 million. The key words I may have misinterpreted is "receiving" which you can see twice in the last sentence above. I thought it meant receiving money when it's probably actually referring to receiving word from MLB how much you are allowed to spend. So I am still not certain if I am right or wrong. Yes Robert was different in the way you describe but he was also just 18 when the Sox signed him and he surely would have got more had the Sox not signed him. Scouting reports however, glowing in nature do not remove a high risk. An 18 year old is still just 18 and still has to run the gauntlet through the trials and errors of playing against superior talent. A team will do it's due diligence to find out where is head is at , if he works hard. if he seems mature for his age but there are things that despite your best efforts you may never know about like what's in someones head. How will he respond to having so much money ? Will he become lax in his preparation etc. Will his skills translate when facing the superior talent, How will he respond to injury or failure ? High drafts picks bust all the time and Robert was younger by 3 or 4 years than a lot of the college player the Sox used to and still do draft in the 1st round like Madrigal and Vaughn, Top 5 American draft picks receive signing bonuses somewhere around $10M. Robert got $26M and the Sox paid another $26M in penalty money and also lost 2 years that limited what they could spend. I still call that high risk especially when weighed against how much a team spends in the drafting of American players every year, the majority of them ending up as filler in the minors until they quit baseball. Also IFA's like Soto ($1.5 M at age 16) or Acuna (only $100K to sign him which was twice as much as the next team in line for him.) sign for a pittance compared to Robert so I fail to see why not signing them is risk aversion but signing Roberts had little to no risk. The Sox actually could've signed Acuna even if they were in the penalty though I think he was signed before the penalty when they had a full allotment ! We can keep asking these same questions over and over again "Where is our Soto ? Wheres is our Acuna ? Why did we bother to sign Tatis only to trade the one guy who ended up a major talent ? Would he have ended up a major talent had the Sox signed him ? Like I said, perhaps I was giving JR too much benefit of the doubt with my theory about morality . Maybe it's just another way of not spending what you need to in order to scout and sign those players and they only end up signing the easy ones. The Sox seemed like they used to have a presence in Venezuela which is where Acuna was from plus he also had a baseball pedigree, maybe the Sox only scout in certain areas now and won't spend for trips to so many different places to find the best international young talent. I suppose cheapness is a lot easier to say. Talent from the Dominican Republic has been flowing into MLB for a while now yet I can't recall any DR players the Sox signed that became huge ML talents but those major talents were all over baseball. But if the Sox don't end up with sustained excellence they only have themselves to blame for buying one big shiny apple like Robert when they could've been involved from the start and had another source of talent flowing through the farm system like the Twins do and many other teams. Penny wise pound foolish.

Where did you find he played with Robert ? That's the 1st thing I googled because knowing they were the same age I thought they could ve played together but my research couldn't prove it.

Oh I don't know what to think of JR at this point. I gave him the benefit of the doubt before thinking he might 've had moral issues contributing to the way the youngsters are recruited and used by people who might not have their best interests at heart . But it is what it is If the Sox don't draft these kids others will It's just a matter of who gets paid after a contract is signed. In some cases we don't know how much of that money the kid himself will get especially as a minor. Will his parents use it all up ? Will some coyote get a big piece? Is at least some of it put in a trust for the kid until they reach a certain age ? Are guys like Wilder the rule or the exception ? JR knows enough about baseball to know the any kid you draft and sign, be it the college draft or IFA that it's a crap shoot . So I don't buy that he needs proof because a kid doesn't pan out. It's also money given free to each team . I don't know if the league mandates what can or cannot be done with that money. Obviously they can spend it on the players or trade it away but it must all be gone by the next signing period or the league gets it back , isn't that true ? Signing Robert was not very risk adverse. It was a huge investment and perhaps the odds of it working out were better or equal to a Top 5 pick in the College Draft but not $40M worth of better. JR surely knows that the Robert signing carried a lot of risk too. It's not JR's money (but the Robert signing was his money) it's money from MLB so there is no reason to be risk adverse . You either spend it ,trade it, or give it back . Either way it's gone. If he was going to be risk adverse surely it would've been with Robert because $50M of mostly his own money and the penalty that came with spending that much was extremely risky. Even though Robert wasn't 16 it still carried risk. Maybe Robert knowing Abreu meant something to JR but that doesn't lessen how risky that was compared to signing a few 16 yrs olds for $1 or $2 M once in a while with money MLB gives you .

I swear I'll turn this car around if you don't settle down. And no more "Are we there yets" out of you !