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Monday, June 30, 2008
Oakland Wins Inoa Sweepstakes
According to industry sources, Inoa, represented by Adam Katz of WMG, has agreed to terms with the A’s for a $4.25 million signing bonus. Other clubs pursuing Inoa, including the Rangers, Reds and Yankees, were told this weekend that the deal was done, and that A’s general manager Billy Beane would announce the signing this week.
The Yankees initially were the leader for Inoa, reportedly agreeing to terms with Inoa’s Dominican buscon on a deal with a $2.7 million bonus. However, multiple sources have indicated that Katz was then brought into the deal and raised the signing bar to a minimum of $3.5 million. The Yankees reportedly dropped out at that point, in principle over having had a deal struck and then taken away.
How can the Yankees and teams of similar ilk expect to compete when the system is rigged for teams like the A’s?
Templeusox has reached his genetic threshold
Posted: June 30, 2008 at 07:03 AM | 125 comment(s)
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Stick it Yankees!
But it does make one wonder if this is the sanest way to invest the A's resources, which are very limited.
If nothing else, Inoa should be very well insured, and the A's will need to have a personal assistant or such with him as much as possible to avoid a Brien Taylor situation.
Latin America is the wild west and until MLB decides to change that, I don't feel sorry for any of the teams when they get screwed, Yankees or A's or whomever.
But it does make one wonder if this is the sanest way to invest the A's resources, which are very limited.
Maybe, but the payroll is low now, they aren't a team that goes after expensive free agents, and they picked a player in the first round that's been described as very signable. If they are going to roll the dice on a "once in a decade talent" this was the year to do it.
Good for baseball.
How is breaking a contractual agreement, and spending ever increasing amounts of money on a 16 year old, good for baseball?
Are you Yankee fans really going to be sour about this? Did you guys turn away CJ Henry out of principal when he retired from baseball for three weeks just to get out of the Phillies organization? Something like this is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the dirty tricks used to acquire international talent.
A's have lowered their payroll more than $25 million from last year. They have plenty of money to sign Inoa, and hopefully some of the draftees with supposed signability issues. Given Beane's track record in signing expensive major leaguers, I'd rather he spent the money on draftees until he proves equally bad at that.
Diss the Yankees all your want, but an agreement to agree should be considered a contract no matter who the parties are.
David Wells
And Cashman, he is one stubborn #####.
It sounds to me that when the Yanks made their offer, Inoa's buscon decided he was over his head and brought in an American agent. Sounds like they were smart to do this. I'd lay 50-50 odds this kid will be out of baseball by the time he's 21, so I wouldn't get too fired up about it. What makes me excited about this is that the A's are getting more aggressive in the international market. Yay!
So before Katz entered the picture the kid's family/coaches/sponsors were knaves, but somehow were able to get a contract worth $2.7 million? I find that hard to believe.
A person's word is supposed to mean something, whether the other party is the Yankees, the Sox, or a small market team.
Believe it or not, I would feel the same way if the Sox were in the Yankees' shoes. What the kid and his family did is unethical.
I wouldn't blame the kid. He's 16 and he's probably being pulled from every different direction by people who all want a piece of his fame.
The moral relativity argument.
To make it clear - I was joking here.
I have some sympathy for the Yankees' position, but I can't blame the advisors for trying to make the best deal possible for Inoa.
-- MWE
Very likely, what happens next is that Inoa remains in the DR and pitches for one of the A's two teams there. I'd be surprised if they bring him to the States until next year, and he could even pitch in the DSL in '09 as well.
-- MWE
He's probably poor, and the Yankees had to know that (a) he was not signed until he was signed; (b) all extra money to him would mean the world to his family, and (c) vultures would keep on preying on the young man until he signed.
(The lawyer in me basically sees what Inoa had with the Yankees as a non-binding LOI, since by definition, no firm commitment could be made until and when the signing period opened).
As a Yankee fan, I wish the A's the best of luck, but I'm still not convinced that this was the wisest use of resources by the A's, even if they have a low payroll and have a signable 1st rounder this year.
If Inoa had actually made a contractual agreement with the Yankees, it would have been disallowed by MLB for violating the July 2nd starting point of the international signing period. Either the Yankees formed an illegal contract, or they formed no contract.
And why is spending ever increasing amounts of money on a 16 year old any worse for baseball than spending ever increasing amounts on a 36 year old?
Thanks Mike.
A representative willing to sign away a kid for 2.7 when his market value is 4.5 sounds like a knave to me.
Because of something specific about Inoa, or just in signing international free agents in general? What do you think a better use of their money would have been?
This needs to be heavily emphasized here...
We've got vague rumors as the basis for the Yankee side of the story. We're really going to get on the kid for that?
EDIT - That said, even if he did back out, given he wasn't able to sign a binding contract then anyways, it's not something that troubles me morally either.
It doesn't make much sense to me to have a low payroll team go for broke on one 16 year old, who may or may not pan out, who may get injured, etc.
Unless you know something I don't, I suspect the A's are not going to be signing all that many extra international FAs, since their resources are rather limited.
That is obviously going to be influenced by great payout they've made to Inoa.
But...but...the Yankees are exemplary!
I suppose the same holds true of the A's.
Two more days for another team to swoop in.
When the A's dropped from an $80 million payroll last year to $50 million this year, they said they'd spend some of their savings on international scouting/signings and draft bonuses. They took a lot of guys in the draft who were considered unsignable at the slots they were drafted at, including 11 of the BA's top 200 prospects and several other high school players assumed to be headed to college because of signability. They've signed a couple of those guys already, including shelling out $600K for their 10th round pick (Rashun Dixon), to buy him out of his football scholarship at Miss. St.
For a young team that didn't expect to be too competitive, I think using cash to buy prospects is a better use of money than spending on free agents. Not only are prospect signings generally more efficient, they also fit better into the team's timeline of opening the Fremont park with a good squad.
Yup.
For reference, here's a nice piece by Saber Scouting on Inoa. A great athlete, 6'7" and projectible, sitting in the low to mid 90s as a 16-year-old, with the makings of two strong secondary pitches, one that projects as plus already. Damn.
Technically, the A's agreement isn't on paper yet either, right? Isn't July 2 the first day when these contracts can be signed?
All baseball teams have limited resources, even the Yankees.
The A's may or not have the money to go after Inoa and others, but please bear in mind that this is long term bet, since the kid will probably not be up at the MLB level until sometime after the London Olympiad (IMO, a reasonable ETA is 2013).
A wealthier team can afford to make MULTIPLE bets of this size without missing a beat, since $10 to $20MM a year in young players is the cost of a Pavano, a Farnsworth and a Hawkins.
Teams with limited resources are by definition less able to do so (though I could see someone like the Marlins or the Rays go for broke NOW and say, the hell with it, we're so low in payroll in 2008/09 that we can afford to pad it up this year and still turn a profit for this and following years).
But, is the best way to get super-stars to sign realtively few, very very risky, but very good 16-year olds?
I would think, if you wanted to spend $4M on 16 year old pitchers, a portfolio of 8 $500K guys is WAAAY more likely to generate 1 major league SP 8 years from now, than 1 super-prospect, no matter how good he is. And, you might get 2 or 3.
What are his chances of ever being a contributing major leaguer? I would guess a career ending injury between age 16 and 22 has to be more than a 50% likelihood.
Whoa whoa whoa, pardners. I don't think the A's are going to make a habit of this. As Danny mentioned, they are also paying over slot for lower draft picks, as well. They aren't going all in on Inoa but his signing is a dramatic illustration that they are going to invest a lot more money in development. Inoa's being described as a "once a decade" talent and that's about how often I see the A's opening the wallet like this.
If there were 80 pitchers out there worth a $500k bonus, no one would be spending $4.5M on Inoa, they'd be taking their pick of the lesser guys. There aren't, so they aren't.
Also David Thomas and Matt Fitts
For a young team that didn't expect to be too competitive, I think using cash to buy prospects is a better use of money than spending on free agents. Not only are prospect signings generally more efficient, they also fit better into the team's timeline of opening the Fremont park with a good squad.
Especially given Beane's track record with high salaried acquisitions
I think that the point of player development, for a low payroll team, should be superstars. That's where the percentages are in the salary structure of MLB - it's getting a $10M player for 1/10 of that for several years that will throw a team into contention if they're reasonably smart with the rest of their payroll.
Absolutely. They're already pretty good at getting averagish players cheaply -- through the draft and trades for minor leaguers. They haven't developed a single player with superstar potential since Giambi, Hudson or Chavez. They've also shown no interest in spending free agent money on such players, other than Chavez.
OK. But what are the odds that the best 16-year old of the decade actually ever pitches effectively in MLB? 10%? 20%?
Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely.
I put this in the same category as the Royals drafting of Tim Melville in the 4th round on this year's draft - you're taking a risk, but the potential reward is huge.
-- MWE
The question is, what are the odds he can drive a team to a championship? Inoa, by acclamation, has some of the best odds of being a difference-maker for a contending team of all the amateurs in the world.
Becuase it's completely impossible. How many front office people would you need to build the right relationships with every one of the those players and their agents, and how many times would you need to make a new bid when of the other 29 teams placed a better offer on the table. You'd suddenly be overpaying massively for most of the supposed $300k talents, even if you somehow found the front office resources to be able to make credible bids to each of these kids.
The odds of that are likely very, very low. The success rates of 22-year old super prospects turning into real aces is low enough, that for 16-year olds (no matter how good) it has to be infinitessimal.
Harden? You said potential, and he definitely shows superstar talent when healthy. Can't write off Buck yet either if you're going with potential. Mulder and Zito came a year after Hudson, but that's nit-picking.
That's a fallacious argument b/c in that case the characteristic is observable. If you're trying to forecast an unknown characteristic about someone, you can be damn sure the statistics matter in making good decisions.
If I'm trying to hire investment bankers and I know that Ivy league graduates have a 50% chance of being good, and high school dropouts have a 1% chance of being good, that information certainly informs my decision making, and how much I'd be willing to pay each.
And if you have information that differentiates and elevates an Ivy League applicant from the rest of the Ivy pool, you should apply it.
Several scouts have told BA that Inoa is a once-in-a-generation talent, thanks to his 6-foot-7, 210-pound frame, athletic bloodlines and present stuff.
If you're going to spend 4.5 million on a 16 year old, this seems to be the guy to spend it on.
1-3%? If you mean being a real ace pitcher (5+ years of >120 ERA+).
You're right that infinitessimal is probably the wrong word.
Precisely. If you have two guys' resumes, then statistics about applicants in general are minimally useful in the face of the more precise information you have. This is the reason that small sample sizes aren't statistically predicative of future events, as well, not that I claim to be an expert on the matter.
This is not an example of the A's putting all their eggs in one basket, it's actually the opposite. They are now mixing in high-ceilinged international free agents with the college and high school draftees that they have become good at acquiring. They are diversifying their portfolio, not narrowing it.
Unless someone can provide evidence that this signing precludes them from procuring a significant amount of talent from another source, I'm not sure what the problem is. And that evidence is going to be hard to come by since the A's went out of their way to draft signability picks this year and throw money at them.
Philly recently had a post on SoSH discussing the signing:
Link
Sounds right to me. This is Bud's last frontier, really. I'm sure they're working on something.
Oops on Harden. The others being superstars (along with Tejada) is highly debatable.
Excuse some of us if we're not as ready to pass moral judgment on poor kids and their poor families from the Dominican Republic. This was their ticket out, they only got one shot at it, and then took all the necessary steps to ensure they made the best of it. To me, the Yankees and ANY other major league team can eat #### in this situation. I have no problem with poor families from poor countries with no idea what they're doing getting every last cent they can.
You would suspect wrongly.
http://athletics.scout.com/2/727625.html
Robin Rosario, Jensi Peralta, Anderson Fortuna, Wilkin Brand, and Wander Rodriguez were signed in February. Rosario was given a 350k signing bonus. As it states in the article, they had already signed Arnold Leon, Franklyn Contreras, and Omar Castillo earlier in the winter.
Leon, 19, has done rather well in Stockton this year.
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2008/06/29/gay-marriage-good-for-winning/
But surely a WS win is close for the Yankees too, thanks to Gov. Paterson.
I might extend that to almost anyone. I'm not as poor as we are guessing Inoa is, but if I have a possibly once-in-a-lifetime chance to make $2 million I will not have many qualms about terminating a weeks old handshake agreement.
I don't think that integrity correlates (positively or negatively) with net worth, but either way, $2.7 million is also a ticket out...and then some.
I don't really mean to be questioning the kid as much as his "advisers," but I take your point in terms of the facts of this case. But as a general point apart from Inoa, I do think that a person's word matters.
This is not because they lack integrity, it's because they're feeling their way through an unfamiliar situation and may come in with no idea what they should be asking for or expecting to receive. It's also a situation that's highly fluid with circumstances changing week to week.
It's entirely plausible that Inoa and his "advisers" believe that the Yankee offer "too low" and that the A's offer was more "fair", with the "real deadline" being July 2. The A's better beware of other suitors before July 2 as well. This sort of thing isn't going to change until the process becomes a lot more professional, which it is very likely to.
That's silly. If the A's get a three or four years of a good setup man or a couple years of below average starter out of this signing they'll recoup their investment easily. If they get 5 years of an ace pitcher this signing is worth well north of $50M.
Fair enough. I don't want to imply that integrity correlates with net worth, and it was unfortunate that I kind of did.
I mean more to illustrate how it's easy for poor families in poor countries to be ignorant in the ways of dealing with major league baseball teams. They found someone to advise them because lord knows they needed help, thought they got a fair offer and agreed to it, and then somewhere along the line a more competent party came along and explained to them that they could have gotten much more and were not particularly well-advised. They simply acted accordingly.
Even as an A's fan, I can acknowledge that the Yankees did get shafted here. I'm just not willing to question the kid's or the family's ethics and moral character as a result. I'd fault the system or the advisers first, because I can only imagine the family, and especially Inoa himself, was rather clueless as to how to deal with the situation.
What's silly? The 1-3%. You're right, IF he's a solid major league pitcher for four years, but the odds are overwhelmning that he is never an above replacement level major leaguer. It's probably 2 or 3:1 he never even sees significant servic etime. Also, $4.5M is clearly not the end of the investment, and the payoff won't be for many (8?) years.
I hope at least one chair gets thrown.
I hope at least one chair gets thrown.
"Oakland? Oakland? What the hell's an Oakland? How the hell does an Oakland steal an Inoa from the New York Yankees? Inconceivable!"
I don't even understand how the Yankees got shafted here. They (reportedly) reached an agreement when they knew to be nonbinding. It turned out to be nonbinding.
Where's the beef?
It was a handshake deal. The point is not whether or not Inoa did something illegal, it is whether or not he did something sleezy. If handshake deals are acknowledged by all parties to be meaningless then they would never happen in the first place.
No, they'd still be meaningful, but different in meaning from a full-blown contractual agreement. If these reports are true (a big if), I'm disappointed with NY. No reason to cut off your nose to spite your face over this and no reason to claim moral high ground during negotiations. This is about a kid (and his agent) trying to get as much money as possible for his potential and teams trying to outdo each other in getting his services.
I wouldn't be shocked if they decided 4+ mil was more than what they wanted to spend on another power throwing righty and used the moral issue as a way to back out of the bidding without actually being outbid and/or to use as a scare tactic in their negotiations with other minors in third world countries.
Morally, yes. And, if there was an impartial witness, I think they'd be legally obliged, under normal circumstances..
An oral contract can be binding. The difficulty is proving what was agreed. If it was all video taped or something, and the tape proved that an agreement had been reached, I think the deal is binding.
The issue here, I think, is that NO contract can be binding until July 2. Even if written, either party could, and still can back out. If he breaks his arm tomorrow, I don't think Oakland pays.
If they thought that then, for shame. Are they really suffering from a surfeit of power right arms? Is that even possible?
Regardless of what you or anyone at BTF thinks, I am willing to bet that almost no one in the DR thinks what Inoa and his advisers did was sleazy. I'm also pretty confident that Cashman and the Yankees didn't come off well by making a public issue of it and implying sleaziness on the Inoa team's part. This won't help the Yankees in future dealings in Latin America.
BS. What helps or hurts them is the same as w/every other team, and that's money.
Most likely, yes. I'm just glad the Yanks picked this opportunity to get cheap or moral or whatever.
Yes...um...please point out where Cashman and the Yankees have made a public issue of this or implied sleaziness. Better yet, please show me proof of the Yankees supposed heated involvement in the Inoa "sweepstakes"...
After looking that word up, I would say that if any team is close to that problem, it might be the Yanks. It pretty much sums up they're entire top prospect list, other than Montero and Jackson.
Then again, it's just a guess from some schmuck who has spent entirely too much of the day staring at spreadsheets, I have no idea if that was the Yanks purpose or not.
Bounced Wang from your fantasy rotation huh? For shame.
By the time Inoa is close to the majors, it will be a whole new world. You don't pass on him because of perceived excess at the position. Maybe they just don't think he's THAT good or THAT worth the risk. Maybe they--the Yanks--just see him as a late first round talent. I have trouble believing the Yankees wouldn't negotiate because they felt cheated. If the Evil Empire really had faith Inoa could be a right-handed Randy Johnson, they would have ponied up.
Of course, for years now Philly's been saying that the unspoken reason for the A's depleted farm system was their lack of success in the international market. I don't see anyone saying this is a "new market inefficiency." Rather, A's fans are happy that their team finally re-entered a potentially lucrative market that other teams were already in.
It's a good word.
I don't buy it: every team needs power righties, and I don't know quite who you think is in the pipeline that's a better prospect than Inoa.
Well, that was the first thought I had, that the price was just too high.
I have trouble believing the Yankees wouldn't negotiate because they felt cheated. If the Evil Empire really had faith Inoa could be a right-handed Randy Johnson, they would have ponied up.
Agreed, which is why I'm imagining all these other scenarios, because the truth is pretty plainly dull and I need excitement to get me through the last half hour of work.
It's a good word.
I like it, I will work on incorporating it into my vocabulary. Have to work on pronouncing it.
I don't buy it: every team needs power righties, and I don't know quite who you think is in the pipeline that's a better prospect than Inoa.
Well, as Shooty says (and I meant to say earlier), if they aren't willing to spend 4 mil on the guy, they probably don't think he's that good. As to arms of his quality, I'm under the impression that Brackman (if he's healthy), Betances and this new fellow they drafted in the first round all have superstar, front line starter potential. Well, I'm sure about the new guy, but definitely the first two.
No way Brackman at 21 (22 in December) is a worse prospect than Inoa just because of TJ surgery.
Agreed, and I don't think Inoa acted sleezily.
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