The new collective bargaining agreement essentially puts an end to the kinds of bidding wars for young Cuban prospects that we’ve seen over the last few years, but those rules don’t go into effect for another month, so 20-year-old outfielder Jorge Soler was not bound by the new rules and was free to negotiate as large of a contract as he could get from big league clubs.

Today, the Chicago Cubs were announced as the winning bidders, and while the $30 million total price tag is not all that surprising considering what Yoenis Cespedes, Aroldis Chapman, and Leonys Martin received, the shocking part of the reported deal is the term – according to Jon Heyman, the Cubs locked up Soler for nine years.

Now, Soler is not a Major League ready player, and should probably be expected to spend most of the next couple of seasons in the minors. If he spends the first three years of the deal in the minors, this will end up just covering his six years of club control, and won’t end up buying out any free agent seasons, so perhaps the nine year term isn’t as surprising as it might sound. However, this contract structure sounds like it may motivate the Cubs to push Soler aggressively (as long as it isn’t harming his development, anyway), since they won’t have any kinds of concerns about service time leading to earlier free agency. In fact, if they can get Soler to the big leagues at some point in 2014, they may be able to squeeze out seven full years and some change from Soler before he becomes a free agent. He wouldn’t have to play all that well to justify a $30 million investment that carried him through all of his arbitration years and potentially even a year of free agency.

I’d imagine the contract probably covers this scenario to some degree, and we’ll probably see incentives that increase Soler’s pay based on when he gets to the big leagues, but this contract may make it unlikely that the Cubs ever have to go to arbitration with Soler, and that could end up being a significant cost savings down the line.

Because of the new rules that go into effect next month, this will be the last deal of its kind, but the Cubs decided to make the last one pretty interesting.

Update: It appears that the contract contains not incentives for arrival, but a total opt-out of the contract when Soler becomes arbitration eligible. So, essentially, the $30 million the Cubs paid Soler is more of a signing bonus than anything else, and makes this deal much more friendly for Soler.

Now that the draft is over, Major League teams can start reallocating their time to upgrading their Major League roster again, which is why mid-June is generally the beginning of the summer trading season. With two months of the season behind us, teams are beginning to get a better feel for the strengths and weaknesses of their clubs, and are formulating a plan for whether they’ll be upgrading for a playoff race or shedding veterans to shift value from the present to the future.

However, this year, the expanded playoff system adds a bit of a wrinkle to the buy/sell/hold decision making process. With a second wild card available, the barrier to entry for the “playoffs” (if we consider the one-game play-in a playoff game) has been significantly lowered, and now teams that think they’ll finish with ~88 or so wins (or a .543 winning percentage) can consider themselves to have a legitimate chance at playing postseason baseball. Right now, there are 12 teams playing at a clip that would see them win at least 88 games – Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati are all on pace to win exactly 88 games, actually – and another four teams that are within two games back of that point, so they’re just barely off the necessary pace.

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During Yu Darvish’s first eight starts, he faced eight different teams, making his first regular season start against each of them. His last four starts, however, have been repeat performances, as he’s faced the Mariners, Angels, Blue Jays, and Athletics for the second time. During those four starts, he’s been awful.

May 21st, @ SEA: 4 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 6 BB, 5 K
May 27th, vs TOR: 5 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 3 K
June 2nd, @LAA: 6.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 7 K
June 7th, @Oak: 5.1 IP, 6 H, 6 R, 6 BB, 4 K

You don’t need to know much about statistical analysis to know that 18 walks in 20 2/3 innings pitched is not good, and any pitcher issuing that many free passes probably isn’t going to be successful. But, is the recent failure to throw strikes related to opposing batters learning how to approach Darvish after getting an earlier look at him?

That appears to be a fairly popular theory at the moment, but let’s look and see whether the evidence supports the idea. Let’s start with the plate discipline stats, which seem like the most likely place where a change in batter approach would be the most noticeable.

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A couple of years ago, I wrote about my experiences with MLB.tv and the PS3, giving a pretty glowing review to the ability to watch baseball on my TV using that system as the intermediary. Interestingly, that post remains one of the most widely read things ever published on FanGraphs, so there’s clearly a pretty decent segment of the population that is interested in this topic. So, today, I’m writing something of a follow-up, because while I still use the PS3 to watch MLB.tv, it’s no longer my preferred option.

About a month ago, we acquired a second television to go in our basement (commence jokes… now), and so I was looking for a low cost yet effective solution for getting MLB.tv onto that TV. I had looked at some TVs that came with a built-in MLB.tv app, but the cost difference between buying a “smart TV” that had internet connectivity seemed to far outweigh the alternative — buying a dumb TV and just hooking a Roku up to it, effectively making it a smart TV. Instead of dropping $1,000 on a TV with the internet built in, I paid half that for the TV and another $90 for a Roku 2 XS.

My only regret is that I didn’t get a Roku sooner.

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Last week, ESPN conducted their second annual Franchise Player Draft, where they recruited thirty of their contributors to select players to theoretically build a team around. When they did this last year, we thought it was a fun idea, so (with their permission), we did one ourselves. Obviously, our guys have a slightly different perspective than many of the ESPN guys, so while the idea is the same, the theories behind the picks are not. It won’t take very long for you to see where some of the ideological differences begin to display themselves.

The draftees were given fairly simple instructions — everyone is starting a franchise from scratch, so it’s up to you to decide how to value short term versus long term wins. You’re not currently in either rebuilding or win now mode, but what pick you make might determine which path you go down. You will control the player’s rights for 10 years, and the actual contract they are signed to in MLB does not come into play. This is solely based on expected future production, so there is no cost analysis that needs to be done. That’s the game — take the guy that you would most want to build around for the next 10 years.

So, without further ado, let’s get to the picks.

#1 — Mike Axisa: Matt Kemp, OF

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On Sunday, Daniel Bard faced thirteen Blue Jays — he got four outs, walked six, hit two more, and gave up a home run for good measure. Despite that being the only hit he allowed, he gave up five runs, putting a cap on the disaster that has been his experiment as a starting pitcher. Given that he’s either walked or beaned 18 percent of the batters he’s faced this year, it’s pretty easy to say that Bard’s primary issue has been command. That’s hard to argue with — after all, on May 29, he threw a pitch that “missed the center of the strike zone by more than a full Shaquille O’Neal.”

So, it’s fairly simple to say that Daniel Bard’s lack of command has betrayed him, and his inability to throw strikes with consistency has been his primary problem. Simple, but maybe not accurate. Instead, I wonder if perhaps Bard’s insanely high walk rates aren’t actually just a symptom of the real problem.

For your visual enjoyment, here is a plot of every pitcher whose average fastball velocity this year is lower than it was last year.

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In an age where most picks are revealed on Twitter by Jim Callis or Keith Law, the Astros managed to pull off a legitimate surprise and took shortstop Carlos Correa with the first overall pick in the 2012 draft. Correa offered the Astros premium potential and the likelihood of saving a little bit of money on the selection, which then gave them the opportunity to take Lance McCullers Jr. with their second selection — so the pick had multiple benefits for the team.

But it also created a chain reaction that caused presumed top selection Mark Appel to slide all the way to Pittsburgh at No. 8. And in turn, that is going to make the Pirates decisions today perhaps the most interesting in recent draft history.

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Unlike in the other sports, draft picks in Major League Baseball are not tradeable assets – teams are required to use the selections that are allocated to them, and they are not permitted to officially trade a player for the first 12 months after he signs a professional contract with them, though teams do occasionally use the PTBNL loophole to trade them in the 6-12 month window. So, in tonight’s draft, you won’t see any swapping of picks or deals being made. We know who is picking at what spot, and regardless of whether they’re happy with that position or not, it is set in stone and will not change.

However, the new rules governing team draft allocation pools may present the opportunity for teams to unofficially “trade down” in a way that has has been less practical in previous years.

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