iamshack

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 01:55 PM) If we're going to be playing the spin-this-into-a-negative game this offseason, then I'm leaving. Unbelievable. The guy hasn't even started his first day on the job and we hate him. Well, like two people did that. The rest pointed out what he said was actually right on cue.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 01:48 PM) Now if it had been a complete hard slotting refusal to sign a contract, I couldnt tell you if that has ever happened. That would be a very dumb thing for a rookie prospect to do. I remember Josh Childress leaving the Hawks offer on the table to go to Greece, but thats about it. Yeah, it doesn't really happen...the closest it might get is when a player drops out of the draft because he realizes he isn't going to get picked high and would do better off improving his game and trying again down the road. Baseball could do the same thing, ultimately. Allow a player to declare, but then have a pull-out date. If he doesn't pull-out, his rights are owned by the team that drafted him, whether he signs or not.

It's not dumb at all. He's thinking outside of the box about how to create the most runs possible. I hate to break it to you, but creating runs is the entire goal here. Obviously, all things being equal, the more runners on base, the more runs, but he's talking about not taking a walk for the mere sake of taking a walk. He's talking about your best hitters knocking in runs as opposed to taking a walk to increase their on base percentage.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 02:15 PM) Were the TWolves even allowed to do that though? I thought Ricky actually had to pay the "Posting fee" out of the salary the TWolves would have paid him, basically eating up his entire rookie salary for a couple years. Yes. A lot of European players came with conditions like this...Rubio's was just more $.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 31, 2011 -> 12:06 PM) But that's hardly important. The fact that he set the framework for two terms being the max, to be referred to as Mr. President and not His Excellency, or to flat-out become the monarch of America is something that was set up by the legislators in Philadelphia. George Washington was merely selected because he was the leader of an army that owes its victory to French generals that set them up to win. And once he was selected, he was put into a framework that he could in no way alter by creating an entirely new monarchy. All I can say is look at how all of them were viewed in their own times... Washington demolishes the rest of them.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 28, 2011 -> 10:53 AM) poor john jay. I'm embarrassed to say I don't know jack s*** about John Jay. Isn't he like the only one to have signed all the major documents at the beginning though (or some trivia of the sort).

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 02:04 PM) FWIW my "gas guzzling" SUV gets 23 MPG, not bad with a Hemi V8. Hey Rock, what do you get on your Ducati?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:48 PM) Ricky Rubio Rubio was also already making money professionally...it's a lot easier to refuse to sign if you're already making quite a bit of money.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:29 PM) Except now a person can refuse to sign and hold the Yankees/Red Sox/Tigers/Angels over the head of the team negotiating with that player. How? Those teams can only pay him less since they are in a later drafting position.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:16 PM) 1. If a player is drafted #1 overall and does not want to sign for the hard slot money...then that player will never enter the league. There is no price at which that player would be willing to enter the league if he did not want to sign for hard slot money. So long kid. Keep the rule where a player not signing means that a team keeps their pick the next year if it happens in the first 2 rounds. 2. Enter the draft as many times as you want. Who cares if a player enters several times and then goes back to school trying to earn a higher draft pick and a college degree? Exactly. There is little to no upside to refuse to sign unless one thinks he can improve his position in future drafts, which is no different than it is now.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 01:03 PM) I have a few problems with hard slotting. At what point do you stop the slotting process? Do you have a hard slot through the first 10 rounds perhaps and then set a maximum salary and signing bonus that players can sign for beyond that? The NFL has gone to a hard slot and, as far as I was aware, there were no real holdouts from anyone and the NFL only had a month or so to negotiate contracts whereas in years past, they've had 4 months to do so and still have had holdouts. But there are only 7 rounds in the NFL, compared to 50 in baseball. On top of that, you can only enter the NFL and NBA drafts once (EDIT: correction, you can enter the NBA draft multiple times, but you have a set date to pull out by and if you sign with an agent, you can not go back to college), whereas in the MLB, you can enter the draft 3 times (and there may be exceptions to the rules where you can enter more than that, though I'm not perfectly clear on the rules). So what happens if you draft Bob Pole 1st overall as a junior in college and he simply doesn't want to sign for the hard slot? That's a pretty impossible situation for that team. Drawing from that, how are you going to prevent a player from simply turning down the hard slot money? You could simply have said player be assigned to that team for the rest of his career or for a year or whatever, but if he doesn't want to play with that team for that money, he's not going to. And then he's just going to re-enter the draft the following season and small-market teams will avoid him like the plague, but then he's going to get less money while having a year wasted in his development as a player. And, seriously, how many times are you going to be able to enter the draft? You almost have to limit it to once, but then you will get fewer high schoolers involved, which means less development from a team standpoint and more from whatever college said player attends, which may not be what MLB teams want. That's not to say college players don't develop into superstars...the greatest player in White Sox history went to Auburn...just that there are teams that prefer to develop their own players. On top of all of that, the MLB draft is still an absolute crapshoot, even more than the NBA and NFL. In both of those, you have a failure of a draft if you don't develop a superstar or like 50% starters or extremely valuable role players within those. If you got any of that in an MLB draft - one superstar or even 25% of your draft becoming valuable role players - you are already having an incredible draft and if those role players turn into good starters, one of the best drafts of the past 5-10 years. I don't see any way that hard slotting is somehow going to improve the 50+% bust rate of 1st round picks while very possibly not significantly cutting 1st round costs (except in the case of a Stephen Strasburg type). There is also the argument that some teams would rather build their team in the middle rounds as opposed to the higher rounds because it is cheaper and they have enough faith in their developmental system that they can afford to. The best pitching prospect in the game right now was drafted in the 8th round and one of the best hitting prospects was a 20th round draft pick, and for years Brian Sabean would sign guys before there were even offered arbitration, signifying to the former team that they could offer arbitration freely because he did not want his first round pick (the best example I can think of with regards to this is Ray Durham, and I recall reading several articles at the time citing the exact thing I just said). And, in the end, player compensation through Type A and B statuses will either be eliminated or significantly reduced because you will have to allow for the trading of draft picks...I don't see any way you can do this without having the ability to trade draft picks, just as in the NBA and NFL. I see far too many problems with hard slotting right now to allow it. The best bet is to simply go with the soft slot and hard luxury tax for the time being and if the need arises 5-10 years from now to tackle it then. Tell me why a player is going to refuse to sign in a hard slot? If the compensation system is set already, why is he going to refuse to sign if he knows he's most likely not going to make significantly more money by waiting an entire year? And if he does, why is this any different than it currently is now? There will still be signability concerns with a hard slot, but they will be reduced due to a set compensation system. The more of a risk the player is to sign, the less money he will make as more teams pass on him. If he decides not to sign, he has to wait a year and risk injury or a performance decline. I'm not sure I see how the downsides of a hard slot are going to be any greater than those with a soft slot.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:47 PM) 2004, Padres take Matt Bush first overall in no small part because of signability concerns, Justin Verlander goes 2nd to the Tigers, Jared Weaver falls to 12th because of signability concerns, Boras negoatiates for a full year before getting a deal done. Add Jared Weaver to the 2007 Padres. Why couldn't they have just taken Verlander? There is a distinction to be made here between not signing a guy because he is just a tremendous pain in the ass, and not drafting a guy because he wants a decent payday. A lot of teams are going to avoid the former, for many reasons beyond just $. Far fewer teams will avoid the latter.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:46 PM) I don't want to get involved in this argument, as it seems that it's being taken care of extremely well already, but I can't believe that the logic isn't getting through to a couple of posters. I'm curious to know which side you come down on...

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:41 PM) Yes. But it's not like the Royals ended up having to draft a soft tossing college arm because they couldn't afford Porcello. My point is, Porcello put a price tag on himself, the Royals felt he wasn't worth the money and risk. Everybody still won. So why should we restrict players by what they can and cannot make. The point is that the Royals would still be able to make that pick in a hard slot system. They lose nothing. The only way the small market teams lose anything is if they are spending more in the later rounds by taking on signability risks and actually realizing success via that strategy.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:39 PM) But back when they drafted him they were not a top 10 payroll team. They have a high payroll because they're built to win now. They were 14th in '06 and 9th in '07...

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:37 PM) I'm confused (sorry I have multiple things going on). Did you make a typo? No, that is exactly what I meant to say. I think you are misunderstanding the issue here, to be honest.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:34 PM) And the Royals ended up with Mike Moustakas. Not bad, no? Moustakas was the second overall pick in the draft!

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:31 PM) I was thinking Procello. My bad. Well the Tigers had a top 10 payroll last season. They are taking two bites of the apple, just as NYY, BOS, etc, by spending both in FA as well as on the draft. They are precisely an example of a team that is hurting the advantage the small market teams should have in the draft.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:30 PM) But again, the players that dropped did so for a number of reasons. If the Royals thought that a player wanted big money WAS WORTH THE MONEY, they would sign him, no? In other words, shouldn't Harper and Strasburg have fallen in the draft because of the amount of money they were asking for?* Further, Bubba Starling wanted huge dollars last year and had HUGE signability concerns (and he had leverage since he could have gone to Nebraska to play football). The Royals took him and did sign him to a 7.5 million dollar deal (spread out over 3 years). Again, peanuts compared to free agency. But small market teams can't compete in the draft. Or something. *I know this is a false dichotomy, but my point being teams draft the best talent and then worry about paying. No one is saying that small market teams don't compete in the draft. What people are saying is that a hard slot puts the big market teams at a tremendous disadvantage in the draft, provided they are actually realizing their financial advantage during the season in the form of a better win-loss record. This is the entire point of having an actual draft order, one in which the best players are drafted in that order as opposed to in the order of who wants how big a signing bonus.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:22 PM) I wouldn't consider Detroit a big market, and the only reason they were able to sign Max Scherzer out of High School was because of signability. He fell to the end of the first that year. I know he has not been as good as advertised, but he was a stud coming out of high school. Didn't Arizona draft Max Scherzer? And he was the 11th pick in the 1st round. I'm talking about guys taken in the later rounds, like 6 forward, that the small market teams are drafting that fell because of signability. Edit: Scherzer was drafted out of high school in the 43rd round by the Cardinals, but chose to go to Missouri instead.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 12:13 PM) Well it's not true they spend more. So that's why. And if they spend the same amount then the system is working, right? This theory only holds true if the small market teams are taking players in the later rounds that have fallen for signability concerns while the big market teams are not. Is this true? Are there any big time prospects anyone can name that are examples?

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 10:43 AM) This is tremendously false. The Royals, Pirates, and Nationals have made a living at signing players seeking significantly over-slot. In latter rounds as well. So who are these signability risks (taken after round 3) they have signed that they are making a living off of?

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 10:37 AM) If you haven't been paying attention, the low budget teams that are passing on players with high demands are largely low budget in merely the draft. See the White Sox. Other than the Red Sox and Yankees, teams that need a competitive advantage in any way possible are exactly the teams picking and signing these falling players. See Pirates, Nationals, Rays, Blue Jays, and Royals. Hard-slotting will hinder the teams smart enough to take advantage of this market inefficiency (primarily the teams that need this advantage the most) and level the playing field for teams that have the resources but are too cheap/and or stupid to utilize them on amateur talent. The small market teams need to be at a competitive advantage versus the large market teams, not a disadvantage or equal. The only way to do that is by draft position. Other than signing their first 1 or 2 overall draft picks, the small market teams are not exactly taking chances on guys in the 6th round that are not expected to sign and throwing huge dollars at them.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 11:23 AM) Feel free to expound. Though the issue is about dead via the CBA anyway. Teams like the Pirates and Royals spend a lot more on the draft than a team like the White Sox because they are drafting players in the first two rounds or so and paying the big bonuses because they have to. Meanwhile, the White Sox are singing the signable guy at slot because JR is Bud's pal. But outside of those first few rounds, the small market teams aren't signing anyone that that is falling for signability reasons. This same exact thing could be accomplished for less money by instituting a hard slot.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 10:05 AM) I'm also a fan of baseball and not just the White Sox. Hard-slotting hurts small market teams that aren't able to lure the big time free agents. Teams like the Rays, Royals, and Pirates realize that it's absolutely necessary to be able to develop their own players and they spend accordingly to make up for other deficiencies they can't control as much. I'd rather not see that taken away from them. It also pushes multi-sport and certain prep talent away from the draft if bonuses are set in stone. Hard-slotting is widely viewed by almost everyone as a terrible hindrance of an idea. It might be good for the thrifty White Sox, but it's awful for the rest of baseball. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the small market teams are not competing, they will be able to compensate for this by having higher draft picks. Meanwhile, the big market teams will not be drafting kids later in the rounds that fell for signability reasons.