Red Sox/MLB Buffalo Blue Jays - Mookie Betts agrees to sign 12-year, $365 million contract extension with LA

[McGarnagle]

We've got another offer from the MLB. 76 games at 75% pro-rated pay, but the breakdown is 50% of prorated salary for the regular season, and then if the playoffs are played, they'd get another 25%, taking them to 75% total. I think, even though this isn't actually a better offer than what they've offered before, it does get closer to the parameters that I'd expect to see if a deal is agreed upon.

Players get a % of their pro-rated salary and part of it is held in case there are no playoffs. If the players want a deal, then I'd come back with 100% of pro-rated salaries with maybe 10% held in case there are no playoffs (so they'd get 90% pro-rated if no playoffs). Then, meeting in the middle would be something like 85% of salaries with 15% held for the playoffs (which would mean getting 70% pro-rated if no playoffs). Stick with playing about half the season (76-82 games).

It's not great, but it's getting there. At least an offer that the MLBPA can counter-offer in good faith so they can meet in the middle. Starting to believe that the season may be salvageable now.

 

[Alicat]

Angel Hernandez just needs to accept the fact that he sucks and no one likes him.

 

[BruinsFanSince94]

I really miss baseball. Ugh.

 

[Smitty93]

Angel Hernandez just needs to accept the fact that he sucks and no one likes him.

Exactly.

Sometimes, not everyone is out to get you or has ulterior motives. Sometimes, you're just an asshole.

 

[Centrum Hockey]

Exactly.

Sometimes, not everyone is out to get you or has ulterior motives. Sometimes, you're just an asshole.

I was at that game everybody in the trop seemed annoyed and its usually rated one of the most casual crowds in the league.

 

[CDJ]

Angel is the WOAT

 

[Gator Mike]

Chaim Bloom using some interesting strategy with the 17th pick in tonight's draft.

Red Sox ended up taking SS/2B Nick Yorke, a High School Senior from San Jose, California with the team's only pick in the 1st round. They don't pick again until the 3rd round, 89th overall.

I didn't find a single draft ranking that had Yorke listed among the Top 100 prospects available in the draft. So, what gives?

You have to remember that the MLB draft is different in that teams are given a pool of bonus money they can use to sign their picks. Teams with higher picks have a larger pool of bonus money. Due to the limited five-round draft this year, the Red Sox have a bonus pool of about $5 million to divide up between four players. If they had taken the proverbial "Best Player Available", they'd have probably had to spend $3 million of their pool on that one guy. Instead, they'll probably sign Yorke for $1.5 to $2.0 million, leaving lots of bonus money left for their 3rd, 4th, and 5th round picks.

The hope from Bloom is clearly that some players with large bonus demands will drop, and they'll be in a position to take them later in the draft. In a year when teams have less information on players than usual, it makes some sense - kind of a "don't put all your eggs into one basket" strategy.

 

[Gator Mike]

Then again, maybe the Red Sox just really like Nick Yorke.

 

[N o o d l e s]

 

[Gator Mike]

Chaim Bloom apparently moves fast...

 

[N o o d l e s]

 

[N o o d l e s]

Another key point: with this year only being five rounds, you’d think the amount of talent in the UDFA pool would be massive. Would be good to have money for this, as well.

 

[Smitty93]

Chaim Bloom using some interesting strategy with the 17th pick in tonight's draft.

Red Sox ended up taking SS/2B Nick Yorke, a High School Senior from San Jose, California with the team's only pick in the 1st round. They don't pick again until the 3rd round, 89th overall.

I didn't find a single draft ranking that had Yorke listed among the Top 100 prospects available in the draft. So, what gives?

You have to remember that the MLB draft is different in that teams are given a pool of bonus money they can use to sign their picks. Teams with higher picks have a larger pool of bonus money. Due to the limited five-round draft this year, the Red Sox have a bonus pool of about $5 million to divide up between four players. If they had taken the proverbial "Best Player Available", they'd have probably had to spend $3 million of their pool on that one guy. Instead, they'll probably sign Yorke for $1.5 to $2.0 million, leaving lots of bonus money left for their 3rd, 4th, and 5th round picks.

The hope from Bloom is clearly that some players with large bonus demands will drop, and they'll be in a position to take them later in the draft. In a year when teams have less information on players than usual, it makes some sense - kind of a "don't put all your eggs into one basket" strategy.

Definitely makes sense. For me, the moment Mick Abel went, I didn't really care who they took. I probably spent a grand total of 15 minutes researching the draft and he's the only player I really wanted.

Honestly, and it's kind of a shitty thing to do, but I would have considered punting on my 1st round pick. Intentionally take someone I wasn't going to sign, and offer the minimum so that the pick would move to next year, down one spot to #18. There was basically no scouting this year, so you're going off data from a year ago. Push it to next year when you, hopefully, are able to have a full spring baseball season to scout. None of the players signed this year are going to play anyway, so it's not like you're really missing out on development time.

Unless someone highly ranked fell, and they were signable, I'd just go with "We're on to the 2021 Draft" as my 1st round strategy. The MLB Draft is more of a crapshoot than any other league, so imagine what happens when you limit it to 5 rounds with basically no scouting. Hard pass.

 

[CDJ]

Honestly it’s similar to the approach they take in the IFA market in recent years

Amateur baseball is such a crapshoot- this year it’s even more of a crapshoot given the lack of a season to scout. Giving yourself 1 2 mill guy and 3 1 mill guys is a really solid way to try and find that sweet spot between volume and quality. In the IFA market they typically throw a lot of 6 figure contracts at guys while not gearing up to throw the majority of a bonus pool at one player like many teams do. You want as many bites at the apple as possible

 

[BostonBob]

Honestly, and it's kind of a shitty thing to do, but I would have considered punting on my 1st round pick. Intentionally take someone I wasn't going to sign, and offer the minimum so that the pick would move to next year, down one spot to #18. There was basically no scouting this year, so you're going off data from a year ago. Push it to next year when you, hopefully, are able to have a full spring baseball season to scout. None of the players signed this year are going to play anyway, so it's not like you're really missing out on development time.

It's not that far fetched - CBS Sports discussed that very scenario.


from cbssports.com:

So far as draft-night intrigue goes, the real potential lies later in the top 10. That's because multiple front-office sources have confirmed to CBS Sports that one team with a top-10 pick is at least considering punting this year's draft.

What that would entail is, among other things, taking a player in the first round whom the team does not intend to sign. Rather, the team would offer the minimum amount required to be awarded a compensatory pick in next year's draft (40 percent of the slot value). In return, the team would pick in the same spot, plus one, in 2021. For example: the Houston Astros received the No. 2 selection in the 2015 draft after failing to sign Brady Aiken, the No. 1 pick in 2014. Teams can receive compensatory picks for selections made through round three.

The scarcity of truly unsignable players in this year's class means the team in question would likely draft underslot (read: cheaper) players in rounds two through five.

The difference between this draft and most is that a team that intentionally bypasses this year's class won't be saving much money. Draftees will receive just $100,000 of their signing bonus this year. The rest will be paid over the ensuing two years. Nonetheless, other teams throughout the first round have been identified to CBS Sports as seeking underslot agreements.

Full story: 2020 MLB draft rumors: Why one team with a top-10 pick might intentionally use it on an unsignable player

 

[cheg1349]

Another key point: with this year only being five rounds, you’d think the amount of talent in the UDFA pool would be massive. Would be good to have money for this, as well.

Their signing bonus pool cant be applied to undrafted players. I believe undrafted players are only allowed to be offered bonuses up to $20,000 so any talented high schoolers or underclassmen that go undrafted will just go to school unless theres extenuating circumstances

 

[JRull86]

Angel Hernandez just needs to accept the fact that he sucks and no one likes him.

Really wish they could just fire this clown, but somehow it'd be a race issue.

 

[BostonBob]

More on the Yorke pick from CBS Sports:

Hands down, the biggest surprise of the first round was the Red Sox taking California high school infielder Nick Yorke with the No. 17 pick. Baseball America ranked Yorke as the 96th-best prospect in the draft class. MLB.com ranked him 139th. Not a first-round ranking, certainly.

The Red Sox forfeited their second round pick as punishment for the sign-stealing scandal and there was speculation they were punting their first-round pick to save money (Yorke is committed to Arizona). The team shot that down immediately.



This is simply a case of a team liking a player more than the public rankings. "This was an unusual spring ... We love this kid's bat. We think he has a chance to be a special bat. We feel if the spring had gotten a chance to play out the public perception of him would be a lot different," chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said on a conference call following the pick.

 

[McGarnagle]

More on the Yorke pick from CBS Sports:

Hands down, the biggest surprise of the first round was the Red Sox taking California high school infielder Nick Yorke with the No. 17 pick. Baseball America ranked Yorke as the 96th-best prospect in the draft class. MLB.com ranked him 139th. Not a first-round ranking, certainly.

The Red Sox forfeited their second round pick as punishment for the sign-stealing scandal and there was speculation they were punting their first-round pick to save money (Yorke is committed to Arizona). The team shot that down immediately.



This is simply a case of a team liking a player more than the public rankings. "This was an unusual spring ... We love this kid's bat. We think he has a chance to be a special bat. We feel if the spring had gotten a chance to play out the public perception of him would be a lot different," chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said on a conference call following the pick.

Classic Red Sox PR spin. They cheaped out, plain and simple. That said, he does seem to have a promising bat. If he's a projected 3rd round talent, hey, that's still a player with as much chance to make it as anyone else. the MLB draft is a total crapshoot anyway.

 

[CDJ]

They didn’t “cheap out”, that’s not how any of this works

They went under slot there so they can have more money to play with on guys who are tough signs that fall to rounds 3-5. That makes sense with a draft like this where there wasn’t much of a season to scout.

they’re going to spend the same amount of money overall as they would have if they drafted any of the more known names

 

[Smitty93]

They didn’t “cheap out”, that’s not how any of this works

They went under slot there so they can have more money to play with on guys who are tough signs that fall to rounds 3-5. That makes sense with a draft like this where there wasn’t much of a season to scout.

they’re going to spend the same amount of money overall as they would have if they drafted any of the more known names

Exactly. We'll see if it was the smart decision tonight. They're hoping some guys fall due to sign-ability that they can sign with their "excess". If those types of players don't fall, then they're going to look pretty dumb. Personally, in a short draft like this one, I'd probably have gone with the highest upside player I could sign, but the MLB draft is such a crapshoot that it doesn't really matter what you do. It's a lot more luck than anything else.

 

[CDJ]

Exactly. We'll see if it was the smart decision tonight. They're hoping some guys fall due to sign-ability that they can sign with their "excess". If those types of players don't fall, then they're going to look pretty dumb. Personally, in a short draft like this one, I'd probably have gone with the highest upside player I could sign, but the MLB draft is such a crapshoot that it doesn't really matter what you do. It's a lot more luck than anything else.

Pretty much

we’ve seen them change their philosophy in this regard when it comes to IFA since the death of Daniel Flores. Obviously that was a once-in-a-generation kind of tragedy but it kind of speaks to the volatility of signing 16 year olds for such large amounts of money. They’re so far off that anything can happen. Many of them don’t get out of A ball. So what they’ve now done the last couple of years is avoid targeting the elite of the elite of IFA’s and instead signing a bunch of quality 6 figure IFA’s. It’s obviously been too short of a time for this to payoff at the big league level but they’re seeing a lot of quality prospects emerge out of the short season DSL the last couple of years and a large part of that is because they’ve been giving themselves a lot of bites at the apple instead of gambling and giving the majority of the bonus pool to one guy

 

[BigGoalBrad]

Classic Red Sox PR spin. They cheaped out, plain and simple. That said, he does seem to have a promising bat. If he's a projected 3rd round talent, hey, that's still a player with as much chance to make it as anyone else. the MLB draft is a total crapshoot anyway.

It’s so weird to see the baseball draft all of a sudden being treated like NBA. For decades teams took low rated prospects early to save money and BPAs could be had into the 5th and 6th rounds with college factoring into it.

I like the pick last 2B from CA who could hit was pretty good.

 

[Gator Mike]

 

[Gator Mike]