At first glance, it seems crazy. A bad-body post-peak designated hitter that was under replacement last year… three years? $30 million? Billy Butler to the Athletics? A team that has never had three ten million dollar players on the roster at one time did so for the first time in order to sign a guy that might not play the field?

What if it wasn’t so crazy.

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Yoan Moncada was declared a free agent by MLB on Saturday morning. I wrote in depth about his situation from almost every angle last Thursday and also wrote about when news broke that he had left Cuba last month. I sent out a number of tweets on Saturday explaining Moncada’s current situation. He still needs to be cleared by OFAC (a U.S. government agency) before teams can offer him a deal or sign him and the timetable for that happening is unclear.

Often, OFAC clearance happens before MLB clears a player, so that indicates it could happen quickly (weeks), but Moncada’s situation is pretty unusual, which most guess will slow the process down (months).  The reason that OFAC clearance timetables vary so much relative to MLB’s clearances is that OFAC clearance is a product of the government (which can be backlogged at times, have political interests to protect, etc.) working with the paperwork that the agent submits.  Moncada should be free to sign within a few months, well ahead of the June/July timeframe when the 2014 international signing period turns over to the 2015 period and a number of factors change.

I said I covered this from almost every angle last week, because there are three things I didn’t mention in my first two articles about Moncada that have recently come to my attention.  The first is all the unsubstantiated chatter and rumors about how Moncada leaving Cuba played out.  I didn’t go into detail on this because I’m still working to get some things confirmed to help fill in these blanks, but the rumors are picking up.  I still have international scouts asking me for any information I have on this topic, specifically the stuff I haven’t written, because teams are getting heavy into their due diligence.  I don’t have anything else to report right now, but I can guarantee you that between now and when Moncada finishes his first pro season, this story will eventually become less confusing, as we learned with Yasiel Puig’s defection.

The second thing I didn’t note was pointed out Friday by Ben Badler.  As I’ve also noted in a recent article on the topic, while teams can’t technically negotiate with players before the July 2nd signing period opens, it’s now commonplace with MLB’s three-year-old rules for teams to have deals done with players 9-12 months before they’re eligible to sign.  This happened before the rule changes, but rarely; more often, early deals for high profile players were done about 3-6 months in advance.  This is a response to soft caps on spending being in place (which most team treat as hard caps); if you can only spend so much money, the best way to find bargains is to offer security to players via a verbal deal even earlier in the process.

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This morning, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Cincinnati Reds. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Cincinnati’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Reds system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Reds system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Kyle Waldrop, OF (Profile)

Waldrop began the 2014 season by repeating at High-A Bakersfield and reacted precisely the way a club would want him to — which is to say, by exhibiting greater control of the plate and also producing better contact (or, at least a markedly higher BABIP, which is the best statistical proxy). He retained those improvements following a mid-June promotion to Double-A Pensacola, as well — which, that’s encouraging for a 22-year-old. Given his positional limitations, his future major-league value would appear to depend on the degree to which he’s able to convert his above-average raw power to games. Steamer, for its part, projects him to hit only 13 home runs per 600 plate appearances.

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Boy is it ever easy to trade away other people’s stuff. From a distance, it’s easy to recognize when a guy has to go, as things are uncomplicated by memories and emotions. It sucks the Philadelphia Phillies just about have to trade Cole Hamels. He’s great, and he’s been there forever, through some really good times, and people have developed an attachment to him. Even the Phillies have officially recognized the era is over, but moving Hamels would be a painful kind of closure. The front office doesn’t want to deal Hamels for younger, unfamiliar talent. But it has to happen. As popular as Hamels is, from an objective standpoint, he’s not getting better. And he’d mean a lot more to a team with a prayer of winning something over the next couple years.

So the Phillies ought to be looking to cash in on Hamels. More seriously than they did around the deadline, I mean. The Phillies are poised to gut what there is to gut, and Hamels is a front-line starter who’d hit a market thirsty for front-line starters. Probably the most popular rumor so far: Hamels leaving the Phillies for the Boston Red Sox, in exchange for a package that involved young players. Clearly, nothing has yet been agreed to, but clearly, there will be some more negotiations. So what could we conceivably see as a trade? Let’s design a Red Sox move for Cole Hamels.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds & Phillies

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

If you asked me before I started making calls on the Reds what I expected from their system, I would’ve said average to a bit below.  I was surprised to find they have at least average depth and a surprising amount of high end talent; they have an above-average eight 50+ FV players and three more that could’ve been in that group.  While there isn’t a slam-dunk, top-20 overall prospect in the bunch, this is an impressive group, buoyed by aggressive international signings and an instinct to look for talent in unusual places in the draft.

One of those tendencies is going after athletic relievers with three pitches and making them into starters.  This approach failed nominally with Aroldis Chapman, but he’s obviously worked out pretty well.  Iglesias, Lorenzen and Howard were all signed in the last 12 months with little to no starting experience and all have the chance to turn into mid-rotation starters.  A fringe benefit of having two athletic, legitimate hitting prospects that are top pitching prospects in an NL organization is that they should be above average hitters (among pitchers) if they become big league starters.

After trades to acquire Mat Latos, Sean Marshall, Jonathan Broxton and Shin-Soo Choo depleted the system, Reds execs feel like the cupboard is full once again, with much of the top minor league talent in the upper levels.  Due to this and a big group of experienced 20-something big league contributors (Devin Mesoraco, Jay Bruce, Homer Bailey, Todd Frazier, Mike Leake, Chapman, Latos), the MLB growth assets list is shorter than most and includes an interesting case in Negron.

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As Detroit’s director of player development, Dave Owen is in charge of a farm system seemingly short on sure-thing talent. The team’s top prospect (according Baseball America), Devon Travis, was traded to Toronto for Anthony Gose. The No. 2 prospect, Steven Moya, struck out 161 times in Double-A. No. 3, Buck Farmer, had an 11.57 ERA in a four-game cameo after being promoted to the big leagues. No. 4, Derek Hill, is 18 years old and hit .208 in rookie ball.

It would be a mistake to dismiss the potential of the Tigers’ system. Moya had 35 home runs this year and has light-tower power. Farmer’s failure followed eye-opening performances in the minors. Hill was the 23rd-overall pick in this year’s draft.

The trio doesn’t represent the only talent in the pipeline. Jonathon Crawford, the Tigers’ first-round pick on 2013, had a 2.85 ERA in low-A West Michigan. Kevin Ziomek, last year’s second-round pick, had a 2.27 ERA and an 11.1 K/9 on the same club. A number of other players possess potentially promising futures as well.

——

Owen on the organization’s approach with first-year players: “We let them play. We want to give the kids a chance to breathe. I don’t think it’s right to do much with them the first year. We don’t have all the answers. How can we start making adjustments the first time we see a kid play? That first year is such a whirlwind for them anyway, with the draft and everything going on. We want to see them and evaluate, and we”ll eventually work in a few tweaks here and there.”

On Derek Hill: “We got Derek this year in the draft, so I’ve just seen him a little bit. It’s a small sample size, but this guy is exciting. He’s fun to watch. He’s just a young kid – he’s just out of high school – but he can really run. He’s a glider who runs easy and can really cover some ground. He’s a true centerfielder. At the plate, it looks like he’s going to be able to use all fields. I can see him being a base stealer. This kid has the raw potential to be a really good major-league player.”

On Steven Moya: “He’s got a chance to be a special guy. He’s got great power and it’s not just pull. He’s got power all over the park. He can go out to left field and center field. It’s a nice package. He’s a big, young man – a big, strong kid. He’s got a great body.

“Sometimes he is (too aggressive). He’s still learning himself as far as strike-zone discipline and pitch recognition. Mo’s working on that. He’s learning how teams are going to attack him – how they’re pitching him — and he’s learning how to make adjustments to compensate for that.

“It’s important to be realistic and know you have weaknesses that you need to make better. Mo does. He has a tremendous idea of what he needs to do and he’s very diligent about working on them.”

On advancing players through the system: “Our role is to get these kids in spots to gain experience and have success. We want to give them an opportunity to grow as players. Movement, as far as promotions from one level to the next, is really… a lot of it depends on success. A lot of it depends on how they’re playing. You want to keep challenging these guys. Let’s say a player is in Grand Rapids, our (West Michigan) low-A ball club, and he’s tearing it up. If you don’t feel that league is challenging him anymore, you push him to the next level. You keep doing that and hopefully he ends up in Detroit.”

On aggressively promoting Buck Farmer: “Sometimes it just comes down to timing – specific needs our organization needs at a specific time – and at that time it was Buck Farmer. It very easily could have been Jonathon Crawford or Kevin Ziomek. There were quite a few guys on that Grand Rapids team that are good-looking prospects.

“As a group, we just felt like (Farmer) was a kid who had the weapons to compete. Not that the other guys don’t. This is definitely not any disrespect for any of of other players, it’s just that we felt it was the right time to give him a shot.”

On Jonathon Crawford: “Jonathon has tremendous ability. He’s a kid who was our top pick, so we expect really good things out of him. He’s kind of in the same mold of a lot of those guys – with Kevin (Ziomek), with Chad Green, with (Austin) Kubitza, with Buck. It’s about consistency with his pitches, consistency with his delivery, commanding his fastball and his secondary stuff. When he’s right, man, he can dominate. He has power stuff. It’s really exciting. And he’s a good athlete. He’ll find his place.”

On Kevin Ziomek: “Kevin has a great feel for pitching. I’m really looking forward to him continuing his growth. He’s got three average-to-plus pitches, and he’s got some deception in his delivery. He’s a good-looking kid. He’s got that first full season under his belt and he’s been through a spring training, so he knows what to expect next year. I know we expect a lot out of him.”

On Robbie Ray: It’s hard to go to the big leagues and stay. A lot of guys will go to the big leagues and then get send back down. They’ll use that to help them and Robbie is one of those guys. He understands now what it’s like, and that are adjustments to make. Baseball is a game of adjustments. You get there and see what it’s all about – you get in the mix – and find out ‘this wasn’t working as well as I thought it should be.’ You work on that and get it right. You make yourself better so you’re more prepared when you go back. Robbie has a tremendous arm. With him, I think it’s more location and repeating his delivery.”

On the Devon Travis deal: “Dave Dombrowski is very smart and he’s always going to ask for a lot of opinions, not only of me, but of other people in our organization. We all have our opinions of what a guy is going to do in the future, and how he fits. It’s ultimately Dave’s decision – he’s the boss – and he’s going to do his homework before he makes this kind of move.

“I talked to Devon after the trade was made and told him how much we appreciate what he did for the Tigers. He’s a young man who is very professional. We do everything we can to help all of our guys grow as players, and I wished Devon continued success.”

Ben and Sam banter about non-revelatory rumors and new details about the Giancarlo Stanton deal, then answer listener emails about front-office roles, offensive eras, and more.

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Episode 505
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses mostly the recent baseball deals involving Jason Heyward, Russell Martin, and (vitally) Tommy La Stella.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 37 min play time.)

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9:00	: Hi everyone and useful info for the off season.

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