TwitterBrush Back
26 Dec 2008
Happy Holidays all. No matter what you celebrate, I think there is always room for various feats of strength, the airing of grievances and Festivus miracles.
Having had some time with family over the past few days, I figured it a good idea to talk about the Red Sox and what happened on Tuesday.
First off, here are some of the many possible feelings once might have felt, as a Red Sox fan, over the Mark Teixeira signing:
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Red Sox blew it. They could have had Teixeira had they just bumped up their offer. Also, they shouldn’t have placed a deadline on negotiations. They approached and handled things all wrong. |
Mark Teixeira never wanted to come to the Red Sox. He still remembers being drafted by the Red Sox and reports out of NY say he preferred the Yankees all along. The Red Sox were just being used as a means to increase his final contract. |
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The Red Sox could have matched or even exceeded the Yankees offer, but what makes you think the Yankees wouldn’t have countered? Just what was the Yankees limit after all? I say $180mm, you say $200mm… |
This was just a normal free agent negotiation. The player picked the team that offered the most money and/or presumably the most comfortable atmosphere, be it geography, money, pressure, uniform style, perks, etc. |
My guess is that most Red Sox fans felt the Red Sox either blew it, or Teixeira didn’t really like the idea of being a Red Sox and when the Yankees finally made an offer, he jumped. If you are in the group that thinks the latter, you are probably wondering just what could the Red Sox have done?
It really doesn’t matter what the reason, the Yankees just upgrade themselves at 1st base by offering yet another massive contract to a free agent. It is a double improvement b/c not only did they get him but the Red Sox did not.
Sean McAdam, now of the Herald (and ESPN), had some interesting facts on the Red Sox since Theo Epstein took over and how he believes the Red Sox will operate in the future regarding free agency. McAdam’s take is that the Red Sox will no longer explore top (read: Type A) free agents as they:
- Cost too much in draft compensation. Of course, not having to pay for a 1st and 2nd round pick can be a savings in a way, but I’d like to see a study, which I’m far too lazy to undertake, that shows the success rate of players drafted in each round of the draft and what they were paid.
- Have a history of being very, very bad ideas (Barry Zito, Carl Pavano, Matt Clement, Kevin Brown, etc. Of course they can be good on occasion, but is a 50% or even a 75% success rate really worth dropping $100+ million George Bucks?
When you think about it, if you sign an elite free agent, your BEST-case scenario is to get full value out of the deal. If a player is elite when you sign him, is he going to be elite and some? That’s tough to argue, so a free agent has to be "as advertised" otherwise the signing team "overspent."
- Cost too much in money. Growing and developing talent versus signing big names, provides some cost certainty. Of course high-draft picks demand top dollar, but if a MLB team scouts well enough, there are often solid values scattered throughout the draft. Examples on the Red Sox:
1.) Kevin Youkilis signed for $12,000 as an 8th round draft choice.
2.) Reigning AL MVP Dustin Pedroia signed for $575,000 as a 2nd round draft choice.
3.) Jonathan (can’t we just call you Jon) Papelbon signed for $264,500 as a 4th round pick.
It’ll be interesting to see what the Red Sox do going forward. My guess is that they have indeed grown tired of the elite free agent process. J.D. Drew has thus far hit a $28,000,000 grand slam, but otherwise shown himself to be injured a bunch and just not a player you can count on everyday (i.e. as advertised/feared) and he never was really considered elite.
One silver lining in all of this is that AA prospect Lars Anderson (not Larz, the auto enthusiast, although I heard he had a good stroke. In all seriousness, if you haven’t visited the Larz Anderson park and auto museum, you are really missing something) has a clearer path to Boston. It might just end up, after all, that sticking with Lars as the future was the far cheaper/better route.
The Red Sox still need someone to catch the ball when the pitchers throw it (that’s important, right?) and could use a utility OF and IF as well as perhaps a starter. Obviously they could put Michael Bowden or Clay Buchholz in the rotation, but my bet is they try and trade for a more certain option or even go after John Smoltz.
Jeff Bailey, who was with the club during the year, might just stick as their primary pinch-hitter and back-up at 1st, DH and perhaps the corner outfield spots too. Bailey reminds me somewhat of a Brian Daubach type. Too old to be considered a prospect, but someone who raked AAA pitching (.301/.405/.562 in 2008) and can play a few positions. He is far from graceful, but has shown some sticktoitiveness and that might just count for something.
My guess is we’ll hear/read very little from now until the New Year, so Happy New Year all.
Dec 26, 2008 @ 20:35:19
Andy,
As a Sox fan I can’t help but read your post above and think that a lot of Sox fans and writers are trying to make the Tex signing in NY out to be ok…
I agree that the team is in fine shape and barring failure by a few players they should be right in the middle of it again this year.
However, if the interpretation goes this way- if the Sox had signed Tex, it would have kept the Yankees without him…meaning they would have been in dire straights to get some defense and hitting at 1B. That was the bigger outcome possibility to me, I always thought getting him would facilitate trading Lowell or waiting a while then trading Lowell etc. but either of those scenarios left a bad taste in my mouth. I have faith Lowell will be fine and Youk is Youk so only big question is Papi. If his hitting prowess was a result of Manny protection then we are in big trouble. If he is a good hitter and can produce .280 30-100 I think the Sox are looking great.
Smoltz or Buchy will be #5 starter early in the season- my guess. Still need a catcher as you pointed out. Perhaps they will continue to play hardball with Boras on Varitek, should be interesting.
Dec 26, 2008 @ 22:04:30
I did five minutes of research and found that of the 150 or so players drafted in the first round from 2000-2005, 15 of them have become All-Stars. (some more than once)
Dec 27, 2008 @ 00:04:43
blmeanie, I think you were reading Sean McAdam’s article and came away with that impression, not my post.
My only “positive” in this thing is that Lars Anderson has a clearer path. But he is in AA and I by NO MEANS suggested he is the next all-star 1st baseman of the Red Sox.
My take on all of this is that if indeed McAdams is right, then we, as Red Sox fans, better get used to the notion that upgrades will come via the minors and TRADES. I’m not sure why the idea of a trade is lost in all of this.
Remember that Schilling was a trade. Beckett was a trade. Trades are a major way of acquiring talent (or garbage).
We had better hope that Theo Epstein has a good plan. Player development and trades/various methods of acquiring talent (posting, international free agents, or whatever else I haven’t thought of yet) may just be the way of doing business on Yawkey Way from here on out.
Also, the Yankees did trade for Nick Swisher to play 1st and possibly an OF role. Given they have/had so many outfielders, I expected he’d be a 1b. While he had a terrible year last year, his defense would have been better than a Giambi and his OPS, well, couldn’t we have assumed a .750?
Dec 27, 2008 @ 00:17:24
Peter, I think that makes sense. Just how can you take a high schooler and project anything?
It is a crazy process. At the same time, so is the free agency game. The list of players that were TERRIBLE signings goes on.
The route of posting is also fraught with trouble (need I sight an example?).
Baseball involves humans and therefore is a game if fallibility.
Please devote the rest of 2008 and give us all a more thorough analysis.
Dec 27, 2008 @ 10:42:45
I think Swisher was definitely the starting 1b before they signed Teixeira.
I think GM’s fail a lot when you look at everything. Theo has made some great trades, but he keeps signing awful shortstops for $9 million a year. Cashman has had some hits and some terrible misses. Billy Beane is hailed as a genius, but when I looked at the A’s first rounders the past decade, there are a lot of misses.
I don’t know which is the bigger gamble. Signing a free agent to $100 million or shelling out somewhere over $10 million to a first round pick.
Dec 27, 2008 @ 11:52:44
Peter,
Signing a free agent to $100 million is, I think, a bigger gamble over the long run than signing someone for $10 million as a first round draft pick for a team with good scouting and player development. It would take 10 mistakes of the $10 million variety to equal one mistake of the $100 million variety. Statistically speaking, the odds are on your side with the second approach. Combine the Yankees’ financial resources with the Twins’ ability to scout and develop players and you’d have a dynamite combination for sustainable success.
Dec 27, 2008 @ 12:28:39
Greg
The thing is the “mistakes” are not equal in value. Kevin Brown is viewed as a disaster, but he had three very good seasons for the Dodgers where he made over 90 starts and had an ERA under 3. So, for part of the deal the Dodgers got a very, very good return, not enough to justify the deal as a whole, but worth something
First round picks who flame out return nothing. They get a huge signing bonus and big deal and sometimes take up a 40-man spot, but the return on the big league level is zero.
Add in the fact that when you sign a $100 million free agent that also takes away your first round pick which means you save $10 million or so on that selection. If you go by my very basic study. You have about a 10% chance to select an All-Star with that pick, so in a weird way losing the pick is a good thing most of the time.
So, I think the difference is a lot less than 10-to-1. I wish I could come up with a way to quantify it, maybe a project for 2009.
Dec 27, 2008 @ 13:57:47
Is it wrong to judge the 10% that made the all-star team as the only successful players in the bunch?
Surely the Yankees or Sox entire rosters did not make the all-star team in any year did it?
there is a second tier of players that don’t make all-star teams but are extremely necessary to be a good team.
If you spend $5-$10m on signing a kid that never makes it to all-star status but puts up 10-15 wins and 200+ innings or hits .280 and does other things well is it worth it?
That is where Beane I think gets his props, as you mention he might miss as much as anyone on 1st rounders but perhaps his skills are in finding diamonds in the rough that get coached up and in some cases traded off when they are peaking to acquire more picks or someone else’s diamonds.
Good discussion, tough to know best course of action until it becomes hindsight.
Dec 27, 2008 @ 13:59:00
Peter, are you saying a typical first round picks get a $10mm signing bonus? Looking at the Red Sox, the most I can see is around $2.5mm or so at Soxprospects.com
Dec 27, 2008 @ 21:51:40
Blmeanie,
Good points. 1st rounders are expensive and are far from locks.
The idea that gathering picks and also making sure your scouts and FO constantly challenge each other and look for new ideas is important.
There are many top players that were either A.) not top 3 round picks or B.) weren’t drafted at all (international players!!!).
Dec 27, 2008 @ 23:45:10
BL- Absolutely, but I am just talking about the first round. I would think if you scout well, the first rounders are the ones who should be great, yet only 10% are. Beane obviously does very well later in the draft.
Dec 28, 2008 @ 00:20:51
Peter,
I see your points. The more deeply you think about it, the more refined your model has to be to properly assess and compare the two approaches. I’ll grant that not all long-term contracts are bad for every single year they are in force, but I would argue that enough of them have been lousy for most/all years that teams ought to think long and hard before giving them out. Further, just as not all long-term big contracts can be simply modeled as either “yielding great returns very single year” or “yielding lousy returns every single year”, not all draft picks (high-priced or not) can be simply modeled as “reached his projected potential” vs. “completely washed out”.
Here’s my bottom line assessment:
1. Many (most) drafted players are going to disappoint because they simply fail to reach their projected potential.
2. Many free agents are going to disappoint because, again, they’ll fail to reach the desired performance. I’d argue that by the time most of these free agents are signed, their peak years are already behind them. They are being paid for what they’ve done, in the hopes that they’ll do it again. In most cases, they won’t do it again.
3. If we can agree on the premises above (this is perhaps a big “if’), we are in essence agreeing that either approach is, ultimately, a crap-shoot. Because a team can never be sure that a promising prospect will fulfill his expectations, or not suffer from a serious injury, just as a team can never be sure that a high-priced free agent will meet expectations or not suffer from a serious injury. This is especially true in places like Boston and New York where the media exposure and fan expectations can make things particularly tough on newbies and high-profile free agents alike. I’d argue that it is better to get as many draft picks as possible, and combined with superior scouting and player development, the organization will over time, have a higher probability of successful player development relative to other teams. The key, of course is the superior scouting and player development. Without that, you have . . . the Pirates, maybe?
Stated another way, this is an argument for diversification of risk (i.e., players). The idea is to increase the odds of success by playing a numbers game. Instead of putting $100 million in one player, spread it out amongst 10 players (assuming $10 million per player). But, again, the caveat is the superior scouting and player development, which helps to increase the odds that one or more of those 10 players will pan out.
Dec 28, 2008 @ 12:15:27
Greg?
Yes, I agree with your points and I think the ideal system would be great scouting and development that allowed a team to then use free agency to supplement where needed.