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Hey, Brad Pitt is up for an Oscar!
Doesn't acquiring 6 years of control of a young raw talent fit into a re-building plan?
Will they still control him for years 5 and 6, or is there a "can't offer arb" clause?
Just kidding. So far.
*Which likely have huge error bars, but are still the best projections that I know of.
"Driven insane by his attempts to keep a small-market team competitive, Billy Beane opts to surgically implant a new Cuban recruit into the world's most disturbing batting order"
I'm ashamed to admit that that made me LOL.
Maybe they are. Nothing says they can't sign both.
Slusser sez this ends their pursuit of Soler:
Sounds like the A's will have Smith in LF, Cespedes in CF, and Crisp in RF. That likely puts Reddick and Gomes on the bench and Cowgill in AAA. It also looks like Kila has the inside track at DH, which leaves 1B for Barton and Sacto for Taylor and Carter.
I'm very interested to see when they plan on the theoretical new stadium opening. They've got him now through 2015, which is the theoretical first year in San Jose.
That would be pretty funny considering his noodle arm. That being said this signing doesn't make much sense to me.
It will depend on the terms of his contract, but it's likely that he'll have a clause (like Matsui did with the Yankees) that states they can't offer him arbitration.
I'm guessing this is a budget issue, but still. Soler's going to cost what, $8-10 million? Maybe 6 or 7 upfront? I wouldn't declare myself out of the race at that price. Or am I wrong on what he's expected to sign for?
With the new terms of the collective bargaining agreement, is arbitration really that scary any more? If you're going to have to offer $15m (or more, in 2015) for one year to keep a guy, you're talking about only pretty good players who are going to get arb offers. Good enough that one would expect teams aren't going to be (as much) scared off by the thought of losing a draft pick to acquire. Nobody worried about arb picks in signing Reyes or CJ Wilson or whoever.
Recent reports have the Cubs ready to offer in the mid 20's.
Would he be eligible for FA arb? Or would he get a 2nd arb year (4 years service time) award?
The player would rather free agency...
Please tell me that they're going to have Smith's Crisps as a sponsor.
Has Beane lost his mind?
Then it makes some sense why they would go after Cespedes rather than Soler - preserving their relationship with Uncle Bud. If Soler is going to cost $25m and is 3 or so years away, then that's probably $15m at least up front. Selig wants to keep bonuses to draft picks and IFAs as low as possible. Cespedes at least goes to MLB payroll, which in Bud's eyes is good.
Obviously. I'm saying from a bargaining standpoint - it's not AS important to make sure you get a no-arb clause as it was a year ago or five years ago or whatever, so it's less of a negotiating point. In 2004 that was a big thing to offer/get in your contract. Now, not nearly as much because if you're good enough for arb, someone's going to pay you regardless.
Yes, but this guy is 26.
But I think the no-offering-of-arb is the necessary mechanism to get the player early free agency, and not something that the player is negotiating for in and of itself.
It's a weird world when signing what could be a very good player at a decent price is proof that a GM has lost his mind.
I've been saying all along this offseason that the A's were a 70-win team and should strive to get worse to get a better draft pick. But the point of getting good picks is to get a guy who potentially could be a very good player. Like Cespedes. So I can't be too upset they went out and got one now. No, the years don't line up perfectly. But if the idea is still that they get to San Jose by 2015, then not having the ability to re-sign the guy is less important because they'll have more money.
I'll note also that if the A's keep Cahill, Gio, and Bailey, they don't sign Cespedes b/c they don't have the money.
Superb.
I have zero faith that he is a very good player, though. Hopefully he is, of course.
That may be so. Which in this case makes the question moot. But I do think that in general arbitration is much, much less scary for players now than it was in the prior CBA.
OTOH, it would seem that a fairly low pressure situation like Oakland is about as good a place for Cespedes to start his U.S. baseball career.
It seems odd that the strategy is apparently to get rid of all their relatively expensive established players except Coco Crisp so they can use the money for someone with literally no track record. Until today many of us had presumed the strategy was just to cut costs.
I'll note also that if the A's keep Cahill, Gio, and Bailey, they don't sign Cespedes b/c they don't have the money.
Oh, you agree.
26 is young
Of course. But we don't know that any high draft pick is going to be a very good player either, in fact the great majority of them aren't. I wanted the A's to get worse and draft a potential impact player. If they go out and sign one instead, great. Even if Cespedes is awesome and puts up 2 WAR more than whoever they would have put in his spot, is having won two more games really going to affect their draft position that much? No. So they'll be picking #14 instead of #13. Is that difference worth not having the impact player? If he sucks, bummer, but oh well. Starting MLB outfielders cost $9 million anyway. They have to hit a payroll floor, it's not my money, and no established MLB player of any value is going to sign with the A's regardless.
How would you know? You didn't know they had these nine millions to spend, maybe they have more money to pull out of their ass in case of need.
Oh, you agree.
Huh? What were they going to win with Cahill, Gio, and Bailey? People act like they traded Koufax, Seaver, and Mariano. The A's have no hitters. They very clearly have a very difficult time drafting or developing hitters. They pick pitchers off of trees like fruit. Cespedes might be an impact hitter, they'll have him for as long as they would have had those other guys, with the potential to develop a relationship with him, get good, and move into their new stadium right about the same time the Angels get old and Texas's payroll starts to cost a fortune.
So the A's have him for his prime seasons, and he walks when he's on the decline. Seems to be exactly how Oakland operates.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm saying. The six years of service time thing is moot. I'm talking about arbitration at the end of a contract, like Cespedes will be, when the player is a free agent. Given the new arb rules, getting offered arb is less scary because you're getting paid big money regardless and, if you're good enough to get offered that big number for a year, you're probably good enough that another team isn't going to worry about giving up a late 1st round pick or a second round pick to sign you.
The A's total payroll is very clearly $70 million. Add up how much they spend on the MLB team, the draft, and IFAs for the last 5 years and you're right around $70 million every year. Last year they spent 65.6 on the MLB payroll and 3.1 on the draft. Gio/Cahill/Bailey are starting to get expensive, and will get increasingly so in the years to come. If they're spending $8 million on Cahill and Gio in 2014 and $6 million on Bailey (I'm guessing on Bailey), they aren't paying Cespedes $9.
But that would recognize that there is more than one way to build a team. The only approved way on Primer is just stripping to the bone, being terrible for 5 years and then drafting all-stars year-after year with your high picks until you are on top again.
It's just more of the Beane is bad/dumb/incompetent/doesn't care theme that's been going on for a while in the saber world now. As I've said repeatedly, every movement reaches a point where it feels compelled to liquidate its early gurus. We're smack in the middle of that right now in the saber world. Everything Beane does must be pilloried, because he's part of the old guard, and we don't want to think about him any more. The movement must move on.
They didn't trade Cahill, Gio, and Bailey explicitly to cut costs; they weren't salary dumps. They traded them to acquire prospects who would hopefully be around for 6+ years and be a part of the next good A's team. The weird part isn't that the A's are spending money after dumping contracts. Rather, the weird part is that they signed a good player for 4 years after trading away the guys who would likely have been their best players over the next four years. The trades were more about shifting the window than about saving money, but this signing doesn't fit into the new window.
I don't have a problem with the A's signing Cespedes. I have a problem with them trashing the team and then splurging on him.
In this, and the other moves this offseason, Beane has cashed in his proven assets on what are essentially lottery tickets.
He may end up looking really good, or really bad, but as with any money bet in a casino, the odds are with the house.
But the other piece, that has hindered the a's for several years now, is that their scouting is horrible at identifying hitters, it has become hard to believe that they made the right call whenever it comes to a hitter.
As I understand it, the only way the 6 year service time before FA doesn't go into effect, is if the team doesn't offer arbitration. i.e. if Cespedes' is guaranteed to be a FA after 4 years, it's because his contract says the A's can't offer arbitration. So the new, post-FA arbitration rules are irrelevant.
Really? Cot's has their spending the last 4 years as $48M, $62M, $58M, $67M, and adding up everyone Cots' has on their roster gives me $40M, plus $9M for Cespedes. Obviously Cots could be missing some important contracts/arb awards, but it sure looks like $70M is the ceiling, and that they will be far from it in 2012 even with Cespedes.
You have to add in draft picks and IFAs. And with Cespedes, it's not about 2012, it's about the years beyond. Cahill will make $7.75M in 2014. Gio with his new contact will make $8.5M. Bailey, I didn't check, but it will be somewhere around $5 or $6 I would guess on the low side, probably more. They could afford Cespedes and those guys in 2012. After that they couldn't and fit in their 70M. Which means they couldn't have signed Cespedes, because he wasn't signing for 1/9.
We'll see. Arbitration still has value to teams as an option, even with the presumed higher salaries, and I'd be surprised to see Beane not only give Cespedes a 2 year shorter deal than the Marlins AND give up arbitration rights that could be very valuable if he's a star.
That was my original question, if they could offer him arb after the deal was done. Then it morphed, at least in my eyes, into a discussion of whether arbitration was really a HUGE deal anymore from the POV of a player, like it was in the past, when guys like Juan Cruz couldn't get a contract from anyone despite being more than worthy. Other people might have been arguing different things.
It's two different arbitration rules.
If the A's are allowed to offer him arb after year 4 (they can unless they gave him a contract clause), then they can offer him "regular" arb as a 5th year player. They do not have to offer him FA arb, b/c he isn't a FA, i.e. he doesn't have 6 years of service.
The changes to arb (must offer $12.5M or whatever) affect only to FA arb, which Cespedes can't get after year 4.
Yes, but signing Cespedes doesn't affect the prospects they got. They still have the shifted window, it's just that they have a new player who is hopefully good enough to help them for a few years. It also keeps the MLBPA off of their back for having too low a payroll.
And, of course, villageidiom has a point. Besides the play they will get from Cespedes, it also gives them a player who might have significant trade value two years from now. All without giving up any prospects, or using a draft pick, and without having the limitation on international signings that are about to hit.
That is all.
Is Beane still making the decisions?
I think there is a greater degree of variance than is normal for a free agent signing. He might bomb - or he could be a very nice bargain. Most likely in between, of course, but scouts seem to believe that he can hit, and if they're right and he doesn't require too long an adjustment period then the A's just got a nice player. Before they trade him, of course.
A world where GMs ONLY made moves that made no sense would be awesome.
How unanimous does this theme have to be before people like Joey B. stop complaining that no one's willing to consider that Beane might not be a genius? I think we've been at least 60% anti-Beane ever since the Carlos Gonzalez-Matt Holliday trade, and now it's approaching 90%.
Oakland GM Billy Beane announced today that he had initiated several trades by cutting up a list of all MLB players and prospects in one hat, and a list of the A's players and prospects in another. He then rolled a die to determine how many slips to draw from each hat.
When questioned by reporters, Beane's only remarks were, "Dada dada dada."
In other news, Pirates GM Neal Huntington announced that the Pittsburgh front office had hired a noted 'pataphysics scholar to assist with player evaluation.
That's logical, but it's rarely how Cubans or other major international signings are evaluated. Jose Contreras was a 6.1-bWAR player through his first four seasons, but almost everyone talks of that original $32M Yankees deal as being a huge bust. Players who don't return big excess value seem to get the "bust" label. (Adjusted for inflation, Contreras obviously underperformed a little, but not so much that the deal was horrendous.)
Anyway, I'm not sure I see the upside here for Oakland. If Cespedes needs half a year or a year in the minors, which seems likely, the deal turns into 3/$36M. Meanwhile, if Cespedes is a great player, he walks after 2015, unless Oakland moves and starts spending like Miami. It also seems hard to believe that a team that's been so passive internationally has a better feel for Cespedes than the other 29 teams.
Pure speculation, but it seems like the market for Cespedes was far weaker than the media had us believe. It seems highly unlikely that Cespedes had offers of $40M to $60M for more years but turned them down so he could reenter FA earlier. (And $36M in high-tax California is probably less than $32M in Florida or Texas.)
Or they elect to trade him beforehand.
Sure, but he'd have to be really good really early, or else the acquiring team won't have much control.
Given the state of the A's, this seems like Beane believes he's buying low, but the recent Cuban market has been the opposite of Moneyball. Chapman, Iglesias, Hechavarria, Arguelles, Viciedo, et al., haven't come close to matching the price tags, hype, or ML ETAs. Cespedes is a lot more advanced than them and had a much better Cuban career, but at his age, the margin for error is also much slimmer.
Nevertheless, how else could Beane have added someone with power not named Manny Ramirez to his lineup at a lower price ($ and/or talent)?
Contreras went on to be a very valuable member of the Chicago White Sox and one of the heroes of their 2005 World Series team. Contreras is not seen as a bust by White Sox fans.
Overall, surely Contreras was not a "bust", and the fans of the club for whom Contreras provided his value don't view him as such. What I think you're mistaking for an overall tendency to judge Cuban signings in a certain way is the peculiar arrangement of Contreras' career, wherein the team that signed him actually got almost no value from him.
I also have issues with how people use marginal w/$ estimates, which I'll save for a later post or thread... In short, people are generating overly high salary estimates, because they judge v replacement level v available options.
Lastly, there's a solid chance that some of this time will spent on the farm - increasing his "effective salary". (as joe noted)
I'm not disagreeing with the idea that OAK has trouble attracting free agents, but until a few hours ago, it didn't seem like OAK was worrying much about 2012. I see Cespedes as more of a sure thing than Soler, but I would have expected OAK to push harder for Soler (both because of OAK's 2012 roster and because guys like Soler will, as of July 2, be subject to the spending caps, while older guys like Cespedes will not). Perhaps the Cubs beat OAK to Soler and OAK reacted accordingly.
I have to say, though, isn't the history of Cuban defectors not counting pitchers pretty poor?
Alexi Rameriz seems like the best of the lot -- lot of Brayan Penas, Barbaro Garbeys, etc.
It means that his best years are most likely to be 2012 and 2013..
player__ a16 a17 a18 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29iglesias --- 107 203 --- | 215 186
hechavar --- --- 173 176 173 | 190 210
viciedo_ 167 258 230 244 | 230 248 264
cespedes --- --- 246 261 289 267 225 260 264 267 |
ramirez_ --- --- --- --- 262 256 247 277 260 295 | 260 250 255 258
player__ a16 a17 a18 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29
iglesias --- 107 203 --- | 215 186
hechavar --- --- 173 176 173 | 190 210
viciedo_ 167 258 230 244 | 230 248 264
cespedes --- --- 246 261 289 267 225 260 264 267 |
ramirez_ --- --- --- --- 262 256 247 277 260 295 | 260 250 255 258
player__ a16 a17 a18 a19 a20 a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26 a27 a28 a29 a30
morales_ --- --- --- 264 317 279 | 254 238 252 247 297 287 ---
miranda_ --- --- 251 276 268 267 --- --- | 249 278 286 276 238
canizare --- --- --- --- 278 257 290 --- --- | 261 284 245 257 284 290
l.martin --- --- --- --- --- 207 217 290 276 269 | 227
yuniesky --- --- --- 201 227 251 --- | 239 246 251 245 216 243 236
Unrelated, rumor is the A's will move Crisp to left and play Cespedes in center. If he is a league average hitter (and his winter league performance was growing pains / cultural adjustment / badluck) and can show average d in center (which looks possible) - well, that is just over a 2 win player.
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