davell

Boras is not unethical, that we know of. And since he's been around as long as he has been, that probably means he's not. But this is unchartered territory and who's to say it's not the teams that would bring this up, as an alternative? Again, I have no idea whether any of this is or ever will be going on. But I think anything's possible, in a situation like this.

Technically, you're right obviously. You don't lose your top pick over a relatively small amount. For all we know, Boras MAY just be trying to get him all of slot. No idea. But, if he's looking at getting 4.5 or something like that? Let him walk. Plus, don't you now get an extra year out of the lost pick? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought you got a second year now, to where if we lost 6, we'd get 7 next year and also the year after, if we didn't sign them that year either. But taking a hard line stance over a couple of hundred grand, I still think it's likely Almora would cave, in the end.

Acosta and Malave each went 0-4 with a K. Marcano was 0-2 with a walk. Junior Lake has a walk tonight, so that's good at least.

Again, the difference here is baseball does NOT have a salary cap, while both other sports do. They have much better slotting systems in place for their drafts, which players have to declare for, unless they're seniors. This is the first year baseball has capped teams on the draft, the most powerful agent around absolutely hates it, and it won't surprise me at all to see him make things hard as hell, so baseball has to relook at this part of the CBA.

Very easily could be, for the exact reasons I just listed. It's an example. I'm sure there are others. Hopefully the guys who may wind up in a position like this can come up with better ways. But the draft system sucks right now and teams are going to want to maximize as many guys as they can get. But no one can say what may or may not happen right now. Maybe, hopefully, it doesn't come to things like this. But to think it can NOT morph into it, with this type of system in place, is naive.

yes and it was as silly when you said it the first time as it is now. Why is it silly? Makes plenty of sense to me. Your not the only person to wonder whats to keep it from coming to that davell. so basically teams in every salary cap league in the world engage in rampant cheating. First off, neither basketball or football has an agent around as powerful as Boras. Secondly, their new CBA's gave much more cut and dry rookie slotting scales. Thirdly, baseball is the only one of the 3 that doesn't make you declare whether or not you're turning pro. These guys have leverage the other sports don't. Period. Eventually things may get easier, but with this being year one, thete's going to be some loopholes getting exploited bigtime.

Yeah, I don't see what's so hard to envision there at all. Boras isn't slimy either. He's just got too much power at this point. Most bigtime agents don't have as long of a run on top as he has had. More power to him. Because if you're a major market team, you HAVE to deal with him. No way around it. I don't blame us for taking Almora either. Top guy on our board. But I hope we're expecting to jump through hoops, because we're going to have to. And Boras has more than enough money to float his guys until he gets them what he sees fit. I've heard Badler mention things like this could happen, Chris Crawford thinks the same thing and I don't see why you think everything just magically falls into line. Concessions will need to be made and I doubt teams do it at the expense of the rest of their drafts, to appease a player or two. They'll get creative and still get their main pieces of the class in tow.

Sign Soler. Call Almora and say here's slot. Take it or leave it. If you want to take the risk that in 3 years, you're still a top 6 pick, more power to you.

Lucas Sims signed for 1.65 today. Which is 175k underslot actually. Be nice if Johnson or Blackburn gave us a little extra room.

Yeah, if we sign all of our picks, we've got 7,933,000 allotted to us. Add the 5% overage that we'd have to pay a 75% tax on, and we've got around 8,350,000ish to spend total. I'm assuming we'll take that penalty to maximize whatever we can sign anyway. If we sign all of our top 10 for the actual allotment, it'd leave us the overage to go sign an extra guy or 2 from 11-40, if one's worth it to us. Just don't see Wiseman signing for anywhere near that though. To me, the only shot we'd have at him, is if we somehow came in under the allotment by a bit and had a mill to offer Wiseman somehow. Then, he'd have to seriously consider it. But, he's a guy who committed to Vandy when he was 15, so who even knows at that point?

the senior signs from rounds 8-10 probably account for any overslot we're going to have to do with Underwood or Blackburn. We've got roughly 400,000k to play with, as far as the 5% goes. If we didn't sign Almora, that number drops below 250,000K. Yes, it could help get us a couple of minor overslots from later on in the draft, but it doesn't even come close to getting us Wiseman, in all likelihood. It also basically guarantees us, that if Almora is getting an overslot, it's not going to come with a 4 as the 1st number. I said it somewhere else here, but I think this can turn into a college recruiting type deal. Cars, houses, bags of cash, whatever. Anything under the table that doesn't get you caught basically. It's too important to get these guys signed and while things may fall in line at some point in the future, for now, I think there's too much of an unknown. Things could morph into this type of situation for a few years, in my mind.

But if signing him requires you to pay him over his slot, that would in turn take away from what you have at 2-10, correct? So, if you don't sign him, you aren't using his allotment, but you aren't also using the overslot that he would take up himself. True. but if he signs for 3.500, with his slot at 3.250 for instance, then you're basically losing the overage because you're losing his slot value. Washes out, in a scenario like that.

That would make sense in the offseason, but in the middle of the season, for as drawn out as this process has already becoming, I don't see them wanting to waste another month of work. The interested teams should be able to get to their numbers fairly quickly. Ahh, good point. If he wants to make much headway this season for a team, he'll get it done ASAP. That said, he still doesn't have his OFAC deal straight(the unblocking license) as far as I'm aware of. That took Cespedes a couple of weeks to get, after he was cleared. Badler was the guy who mentioned this still needed to be taken care of. Granted, I have no idea if he's actually eligible to sign a contract right now, just can't come to the US, or what. This process isn't the easiest thing in the world to get a true grasp on.

Is there any thought that the Cubs will not sign this guy so they can have 2 early picks next year in the supposedly better draft, and use his allotment to overslot some guys this year? Or would overslotting guys take away the make up pick next year. You have to sign the guy to use that pick's portion of the allotment. So if you ignore Almora, then you forfeit the slot amount, I think it's around 3.25 million. Right, but doesn't it still leave a little more flexibility to overslot others if you aren't already overslotting Almora a bit? It gives you the pro-rated amount of whatever your draft budget becomes, times the 5% overage allowance. Losing the 3.250 out of our draft budget would take that down to 234,000ish or so. Not a lot to work with honestly. EDIT: Not counting the savings from your 8-10 round picks, which are certainly all coming in underslot.

My guess is this is an initial offer type of thing. The teams that show they're serious will then have time to provide more, as far as visits to their parks, whatever else Soler and his camp may want. My guess is he signs near the end of the month.

We can finish dead last this year. It gets us the top pick for the following season, plus the biggest IFA budget as well. If we trade Dempster AND Garza, we literally have 34 mill committed to the 2013 payroll. Yes, Castro will get 4-5 mill, Shark will get a nice raise, and Stewart and Russell will get some money too. So, we're at 50 mill at that point. I don't see us paying Soto, Volstad, or Wells. They'll be dealt or DFA'd. Rebuilding or not, there's no chance in hell we go into 2013 with a payroll this low. And signing a couple of vets to one year deals, doesn't do it either. We'll make some positive traction this upcoming offseason, whether it's Upton and Sanchez, or whoever. But, I can't see any actuality of our payroll dropping below the 90 area, and even then I think that's going to be on the lowest end. When we have the ability to carry 140ish or so.

Oh well, guess not.

Yesterday on Twitter, he brought up Rodon and 2013, I told him he was a 2014 guy, and he said "Yup. My mistake." Maybe he's done a little digging? I can't find Rodon's birthday on his profile page. If he's old enough, I guess he'd be eligible.

My guess at how our top guys play out. Almora- signs for 3.500, slot was 3.250 Johnson- signs for slot at 1.196 Blackburn signs for slot at 911,700 Underwood signs for 850,000, slot was 711,600 McNeil signs for slot at 471,900 Conway signs for 200,000, slot was 343,200 Prieto signs for 200,000, slot was 257,000 Lang signs for 150,000, slot was 192,500 Bruno signs for slot at 148,600 Heesch signs for 20,000, slot was 138,800 Krist signs for 20,000, slot was 129,600 Martin signs for 20,000, slot was 125,000 Basically, we come out about 44,500 ahead, without using overage. I would expect us to then use the overage to try and get one of the harder to sign guys or maybe a couple of 200K types out of our 11-40 rounds. In the end, i don't see Almora eating a ton of our extra cash, just a bit. Blackburn seemed very happy to have been taken a bit earlier than he was thinking, so I don't see him demanding more than slot. Underwood was drafted in the right area, but I could still see a guy with his upside needing a bit more. He's supposedly talking to his parents this weekend while on vacation. Don't see any shot of us getting Wiseman though. If he would have signed for 2nd or 3rd round money, he would have been drafted in that area.

Marlin said he's heard Tomscha and Bote should sign right away.

If we trade Garza, the hope is we get a guy that conceivably replaces him much cheaper AND then spend the money we lose off his salary on another TOR pitcher as well. TT said it correctly though, it'd have to include a guy already in the majors or at least very close, for us trading him to truly make sense. If the Yanks offered Hughes/Banuelos/Sanchez? Personally, I'm not a fan, but I can see where others could see this as being solid. If the Red Sox offered Barnes/Lavarnway/Doubront? I like Barnes a ton, enough to probably consider this, even though I don't think Doubront is more than a 4/5 longterm. Again, it comes down to what the Blue Jays would offer for me: If you could pry one of Hutchison or Drabek, along with one of Gose or Marisnick, and one of Syndergaard/Nicolino/Sanchez/Norris, then I think that's definitely a deal you do. The key here though, with both Dempster AND Garza is getting them on the market quickly(moreso in Demp's case) before McCarthy, possibly Greinke and Marcum, Liriano, Wandy, or possibly even Hamels shows up available. The more I've thought about Dempster, the more I want to maximize him in getting the single best prospect I can for him, not a package. A guy on PSD brought it up and it makes sense to me. The Mets got Wheeler for 3 months of Beltran. If we can actually swing a singular top 100 guy in a deal for Demp, that's what I'd do. Take the 4-5 guy package for Garza, which is likely to include at least 1, possibly 2, top 100ish guys, and more anyway.

Oh, and needless to say, but it's great to see Acosta and Malave showing some pop.

Yeah, they could have McNutt working on something specific. Looks like he threw 94 pitches tonight. Not good because he only got through 5.2, but vrry good considering that's the most he's thrown this year, to my knowledge anyway.

While true, Baez appears to have much more pop than Vitters did at the same stage.

I guess Campana's not exactly loving tonight, by the looks of the boxscore.