Yanks: Next Cuban On The Block?
posted by Kalel9 @ 10:30 AM
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Wednesday, August 27, 2014
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25 Comments:
Why does it seem in that picture that he looks like Nuno?
Anyway, do you have info on him? What he throws, and his velo? Not much out there on the 'net.
Thanks.
Actually, there is some info, but it's from Heyman, so I'm not too sure of the reliability.
92, breaking stuff and split. As a rule, Cubans throw everything including the kitchen sink.
Bill James wrote pretty extensively about the Cuban grouping of pitchers in his second historical abstract.
Of course, they will be in on pitchers.
All I want is one or two young dynamic offensive players.
It is a bore to watch most games without that.
We are now in a very dull, late `60's-`70s pitchers era.
Which is why players with the potential to be dynamic offensively are so high-priced, and Castillo may have been worth the risk.
This is a team that set money on fire last year for Wells, Youk, Hafner, Ichiro, Soriano.
They have the money to take risks. They just spend foolishly.
That's why they will always be in luxury tax hell, which they will use as an excuse to continue their same failed path. So more money for aging and declining vets because that's seen as less risky, when it really is quite risky.
But no one cares because $200m buys a regular season floor most seasons.
I'm more concerned with reaching a higher ceiling.
I agree, but even if we can add some electric bats, it's gonna be dull baseball for awhile.
Everything I've ready about Castillo makes me think what the Sox ultimately gave him was a huge overpay. But for them, their CF options haven't exactly lived up to their billing, so it was probably a risk worth taking in their case.
No doubt the likes of Aroldis Chapman (who should be starting IMO), Yu Darvish, Yasiel Puig and Jorge Soler should be Yankees, though. Ownership's unwillingness to spend big on international talent has come at a heavy price for the future of the franchise.
I think of it like venture capitalism. People invest a lot of money knowing they will lose many of their bets in the hope that a few will pay off in a big way.
What is more likely to pay off big, aging junk like Wells, Youk, or a 37 year old Beltran, or a catcher who has had injury issues like McCann, OR physical freaks (I mean that in a good way) like Castillo or Puig or Cespedes who are in their 20s?
It's so damn frustrating.
The problem is everything costs us more until we are under the tax threshold. It never makes sense to pay double after certain price.
For example, it's fine in IFA, but it will hurt you at the major league level with few exceptions. Was Castillo an exception? They say he's no Puig, but it looks like he got more. So, to even overvalue a guy a little can be disastrous.
But they are over the tax threshold because they keep overpaying often declining and/or aging veterans.
Speaking of which, they signed Chris Young to a minor league deal. Who's he going to block come September?
and at some point it's time to start deconstructing this salary structure of their's and it won't happen by overpaying anyone. And Castillo got overpaid.
Young has a minor league deal, so it's the same question about adding to the 40 man roster as has blocked so many others.
Sure he got overpaid, but everyone gets overpaid. But so is virtually every veteran on their roster, but with so much less boom potential.
They find 40 man spots for old players.
They're gonna DFA a bunch of the crap on the 40, Jeter's gonna retire, ARod may disappear and who knows what will happen with CC and some of the other injury prone oldies. They have a bunch of guys they have to protect in the rule 5, so an addition of any long term contract now, has to be measured against that, then.
I don't think LINJ understands risk or the process.
For Puig, he held ONE workout and told teams to make an offer. This is after a year without playing baseball and most industry sources said he was extremely out of shape. Teams were going off one look at a workout held in MEXICO of all places.
Did he turn out amazing? Yes but crying over spilled milk when you have NO idea what the process was to evaluate the player is absurd in my opinion.
You idea of throwing a blank check at all IFA's because they are "physical freaks" as opposed to veterans who have proven track records is just too risky.
BTW, venture capitalits don't make investments knowing they will lose a lot but hit on some. They perform due diligence and risk assessment before anything. With Castillo, he is too risky to invest all of that money in, especially considering his age, time off and culture change.
He understands fine. But he'd prefer that the Yanks still try to collect under-30 high end talent, especially that doesn't cost picks, whenever we can. Even while we're pairing down.
We're talking about what we don't know, which are the Yankee margins of what's acceptable.
On the issue of overpaying — well, the Yankees wouldn't have had to overpay if they had jumped into the market to start with, considering the deals that the likes of Darvish, Puig and Chapman got. Soler's salary isn't taxed, right? The only reason folks will overpay now is because those guys have had success.
Look at what Darvish got. It's a very reasonable deal. Then when word got out that the Yankees were going balls to the wall for Tanaka, the league decided to change the rules so they'd have to pay Tanaka more. Had they blown bidders away for Darvish, they could have saved a fortune on taxable dollars.
It's the same with the IFA spending from this past July. It should've been done YEARS AGO. Hal and co. seemed to have been blinded to the importance of spending big on amateur talent, until they realized the farm was underperforming. I imagine Newman, Oppenheimer and co. were only too happy to point that out during those meetings last year.
Billy, I completely disagree with this statement: "You idea of throwing a blank check at all IFA's because they are "physical freaks" as opposed to veterans who have proven track records is just too risky."
While veterans have proven track records, you're essentially going to be paying big for what they did do versus what they'll do for you. Beltran is a perfect example: Signing him to three years when he was past his prime was so stupid.
That's also not getting into the fact that they've signed so many below replacement-level players over the years to round out their roster when that extra few millions could have been used on amateur talent, while minor leaguers could have filled those spots on the big-league team instead.
TLDR: The Yankees are penny-wise and pound-foolish, as Phil would say. :)
By the way,
Shane Greene. Can we please give Bryan Mitchell a chance now, too?
Part of the Cuban issue was also Hal's idiotic 189 plan when reigned them in until they saw how much they lost by missing the playoffs.
Mike,
I agree with LINJ and everyone else that they should have been bigger players for the previous players. Darvish only received that bargain deal because it was still under the old stupid posting system. Put him in the same format as Tanaka and he's definitely making 6 figures because he actually would have leverage.
With a lot of teams locking up young players and buying out their FA years, one of the alternative methods to obtaining young talent is through IFA. I am not denying this is the vehicle that the Yanks have missed out on in the past few years. I'm just not interested in pointing fingers and speculating why they didn't get them. For all we know, we could have been highest bidder and they chose elsewhere, which is common in IFA -- look at King Felix.
The yanks have been the highest spenders for amateur IFA for years and if they used the strategy this year in earlier stages, the league would have expedited rule changes a lot quicker. They Yanks used their financial muscle for years in this arena and did what they did this year because an IFA draft is around the corner.
As for my comment re: vets, I didn't mean players like Beltran. I think there is value with players like Ellsbury & McCann. I would rather spend 80mil on McCann that 72mil on Castillo any day of the week. He is a proven commodity and is adjusting to a new league while playing the most demanding position in the game. I feel some of you vastly underestimate how hard it is to switch leagues, learn a new pitching staff and get acclimated to your environment. The ceiling on a guy like Castillo may be a little higher but the floor is SIGNIFICANTLY lower. When they are making equal dollars, I'm taking the guy with the higher floor and slightly less ceiling 10/10.
"I don't think LINJ understands risk or the process.
For Puig, he held ONE workout and told teams to make an offer. This is after a year without playing baseball and most industry sources said he was extremely out of shape. Teams were going off one look at a workout held in MEXICO of all places."
__
Yet, a team with deep pockets, like the Yankees, took a risk and it paid off handsomely.
Does a team that burns $30m on washed up players like Wells, Youk, and Hafner, for example, understand risk?
Thanks though.
"BTW, venture capitalits don't make investments knowing they will lose a lot but hit on some."
Um, they don't know which ones will be losers, but they know they will not get a big ROI unless they are willing to withstand losses.
That was my point. Sorry you missed it.
Guys, I tried to head this off.
None of this baiting each other, please. Stay on topic, and the topic is never anyone here.
Btw, I think arbitragers are more likely than venture capitalists to try to spread risk over areas of acquisition.
Venture guys would have nothing left to venture if they missed a lot:)
OK, but one last point:
VCs aren’t any better or worse in past decade than VCs were in the distant past at avoiding losers: the dollar-weighted loss rate hasn’t changed much. Over both 10- and 30-year periods, share of dollars invested that go to losing deals has been roughly 55%.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucebooth/2012/11/07/data-insight-venture-capital-returns-and-loss-rates/
I really don't think my point was controversial, and certainly not inaccurate.
No worries. We won tonight and we did it with a homegrown pitcher, in fact, three of them, so we should all have good dreams of more of the same.
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