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After weeks of rumors linking him to the Phillies, Braves, Padres, and Giants, Yasmany Tomas has reportedly signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks, according to MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez. The deal guarantees Tomas $68.5 million over six years, but critically, it apparently contains an opt-out after the fourth year; a concession which may have allowed the D’Backs to sign Tomas for less than the reported asking price.

Kiley McDaniel wrote up Tomas back in September. I’ll quote liberally from that piece here:

The consensus is that as a prospect Tomas ranks behind White Sox 1B Jose Abreu, who got six years and $68 million before the season, as Tomas is a riskier bat with less of a track record and a little less raw power. Many scouts prefer (Rusney) Castillo, who got seven years and $72.5 million last month, as Castillo is a plus-plus runner that can play an up-the-middle position and is a little better bet to hit for some scouts, as well.

That said, Abreu and Castillo were both signed for their age-27 seasons while Tomas will be 24 next year and should be big league ready at some point in 2015. Scouts on the low-end for Tomas mention Dayan Viciedo as a comparable while more scouts think Yoenis Cespedes is a better offensive comparison, though Cespedes is quicker-twitch athlete with more speed and defense value.

While Kiley was attempting to compare and contrast the recent Cuban free agents for market valuation reasons, his projected peak line is almost a dead ringer for what Justin Upton has done in the big leagues, as I noted last week. Kiley’s guess of a .275/.350/.480 would equal out to about a 130 wRC+ in a neutral park, so even if he’s a minor defensive liability, that line would still make Tomas an above average player, probably in the +3 WAR range.

However, reports suggested that some teams felt that he profiled more as a DH, and if the defense is more Michael Morse than Brandon Moss, that could limit his overall value, especially in the National League. Whether this turns out for Arizona might depend entirely on how well he’s able to field his position; the D’Backs probably don’t need another Mark Trumbo, though Tomas will also expected to be a better hitter.

With just four team-controlled years, the D’Backs are buying Tomas’ age 24-27 seasons, and allowing him to potentially hit free agency again at perhaps the peak of his career. This seems like a near perfect fit for Tomas, as he gets $68 million in guaranteed money if he sucks, and yet he still gets a chance for a mega-contract if the power is as advertised. The opt-out could even give him the leverage to renegotiate into a much-larger deal with Arizona in a year or two if he follows the Cespedes/Puig/Abreu career path, as I’d imagine the White Sox would already be looking to tear up their deal with Abreu if he was only three years away from free agency.

By giving the fourth year opt-out, the D’Backs are limiting their own upside if Tomas hits, while still taking on all the risk associated with projecting performance from a guy who has never played in the U.S. before. However, a $68 million risk isn’t really that substantial of an investment anymore, and if he hits like scouts have been projecting, he should easily be worth the contract before he opts out. If Arizona backloaded enough of the money so that they can substantial value in the first four years of the deal, then the benefits could easily be worth the risk.

If Tomas is more of a DH than an outfielder, or if his raw power isn’t accompanied by a decent approach at the plate, the D’Backs could end up paying $68 million for a player who might fit better in the AL. That said, even if that does prove to be the case, he’d probably still have some appeal to teams in the junior circuit, and the price tag is low enough that he shouldn’t be too terribly hard to move if it comes to that; after all, we just saw Billy Butler get 3/$30M from the A’s, and Tomas has now signed for a similar annual average value.

Cuban free agents have proven to be remarkable bargains of late. The opt-out will serve to make this one less of a bargain, most likely, but it still seems like a reasonable risk for the Diamondbacks to take. $11 million per year for right-handed power might quickly look like a bargain if the rest of the skillset is even reasonably passable.

The Red Sox came into the winter with a clear need for starting pitching, and a lot of money to spend. Yesterday, they spent a big chunk of that money, adding $41 million in AAV to their payrolls for the next four or five years. And yet, today, they still have the same glaring need for starting pitching. Evaluating the wisdom of the Red Sox spending spree is an interesting challenge, because unlike most free agent signings, these feel like half of the transaction.

We can still evaluate the signings of Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez based on the production the Red Sox should expect going forward and the money that was surrendered to acquire that future production, but we don’t really know the whole picture here. The signings of two of the winter’s premier free agent hitters very likely mean that Yoenis Cespedes is getting traded, and I think Mike Napoli might be on his way out of town too. What the team gets back in trade, and how they choose to reallocate money that could be saved through those trades, will affect what else the Red Sox can choose to do this winter. They know they need pitching, and it seems essentially impossible that they won’t make further moves to address that need; moves that were made possible by these signings.

So without those pieces of information in place, I’m hesitant to draw any strong conclusions about the new contracts given to Sandoval or Ramirez. If the team trades Cespedes and Napoli for young arms, then spends the $25 million in savings on Max Scherzer, then these moves start to more clearly address the team’s need for a frontline starter. But we don’t know if they’re going to do that. We don’t know what they’re going to do, so we can’t be too strongly convicted about whether these signings were a wise use of resources.

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No, this is not the title of a new children’s book, or a remake of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. I’m dating myself with that one. After a relatively quiet weekend baseball-wise, it’s the big story of Thanksgiving week. The Boston Red Sox made a huge splash, diving hard into the position-player end of the free-agent pool, remaking a significant portion of their offense in the process. Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval are now set to move into the most distinctive offensive environment in the game, one defined by the presence of a large man-made structure in left field: the Green Monster. What does the Monster hold in store for the two newest members of the Red Sox? Read the rest of this entry »

If you focus on his age and overall production so far, the reported near-$100 million that the Red Sox are handing Pablo Sandoval for his next five years are reasonable. He’s a young man with an established bat at a scarce position. But if you focus instead on some of the aspects of his production, things look a little different. They look a little scarier.

First, read Dave Cameron on why even a sixth year wouldn’t have been crazy, given the right salary numbers. Basically, as the number of years go up, average annual value goes down. The sixth year might be the premium that gets the signature, but it’s not a sixth year at the same price as year one. Given that the salary pretty much exactly follows the breakdown that Cameron showed, this isn’t a terrible contract if you call Pablo Sandoval a 3.5-win 28-year-old third baseman. Even if it’s a little more than the median five-year $80 million contract the crowd wanted to give him.

But what if you call him other things?

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Justin Upton is probably going to get traded. If you believe Joel Sherman’s source, there’s no probably about it; Upton is the next Brave out of town. And it makes sense; the team is clearly retooling for the future, while Upton is entering the final year of his contract. If the Braves don’t think they’re going to sign him long-term, better to trade him now than settle a compensation pick next year.

The question will be the price. Sherman reports that the asking price for Upton is going to be higher than the return they got for Jason Heyward, and that was already a pretty solid package. As I noted this morning, teams are paying through the moon for right-handed power right now, and so Upton will be an attractive option for teams looking to balance out their line-ups.

But even with the advantage of his handedness, I’d like to suggest that the price for Upton should be less than what St. Louis gave up for Heyward. And I promise, this isn’t another discussion of Heyward’s defensive metrics. I can make the point without even needing to cite UZR or DRS, because the offensive gap just isn’t as large as people think. Here are their respective lines over the past three seasons.

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I’m sure I’ve said this before, but one of my favorite tools on our site would have to be the Depth Charts, which combine Steamer projections and human-curated depth charts to output expected WAR totals.

What I’ve done today — last night, really, which I’m clarifying only in the event of some huge late-night signing that would invalidate all of this — is to sort that by division and graph it out. When you do that, you get this:

A few things stand out there, things like “should we just give the NL East to Washington now or must we wait until next year” and “just think about what the Phillies are going to look like after they trade Cole Hamels, Marlon Byrd, and whomever else.” If the Mariners look too high, well, Jeff already delved into that. If the Yankees look too low, well, name their infield or a single reliably healthy starting pitcher.

Obviously, what we’re looking at is a snapshot of things they way they are right this second, and that’s not how they’ll look when the season kicks off. To use just one example: No, I don’t imagine we’ll be looking at the Dodgers and Rockies as being nearly equal teams in April, because at the moment, the Dodgers have almost literally no shortstop and just three-plus starting pitchers.

You get the idea, though. A lot’s going to change, but in order for teams to effectively make those decisions, they have to adequately understand where they are right now. That’s what might stand out the most about this chart, actually, at least to me — just look at the American League East. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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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In yesterday’s write-up of the Jason Heyward/Shelby Miller trade, I wrote this:

Because of how quickly he got to the big leagues, Heyward is in line to hit free agency after his age-25 season, and he’s going to have roughly +25 career WAR when he reaches the open market. Barring a disastrous 2015 season, he’s going to get paid, and you can be certain that his agents will be pointing to the 13 year, $325 million deal that Giancarlo Stanton has agreed to as the new precedent. Sure, Heyward isn’t going to get 13/$325M, given the massive differences in power, but it seems likely that he’ll demand a deal that starts at 10 years and goes north of $200 million.

Robinson Cano got $240 million as a similarly valuable player entering his age-31 season; Heyward might not have Cano’s offensive track record, but he’s going to be selling his prime years, and the deal won’t extend into the period of his career where you’d expect him to essentially be worthless. If the Cardinals want to lock up Heyward before he gets to free agency, it’s probably going to take something like the contract they refused to give Albert Pujols. Maybe they might be able get him to take a slight pre-free agent discount and get him for 9/$200M or something in that range, but let’s dispel the notion that the Cardinals are going to be able to sign Heyward for anything other than a mountain of cash.

Which generated a lot of responses like this.

Since I basically just made the claim without any evidence to support it, I figure it’s on me to actually back up my assertion. So, let’s go through and see if we can estimate what Jason Heyward’s market price would be as a free agent next winter.

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After a few days of heightened speculation, word finally came down on Monday that the Miami Marlins and Giancarlo Stanton had come to an agreement on a historic 13-year, $325M deal. Terms have not been fully disclosed, but it seems clear that Stanton will have the ability to opt out of the deal at some point, most likely after the 2019 season. This is massive news on many levels – it’s the largest dollar guarantee to a single player in the history of the sport, and a huge departure in operating procedure on the part of the club.

It furthers the ongoing industry trend toward diminished free agent pools, as teams continue to lock up their best and brightest in advance of the exhaustion of their six years of team control. Today, let’s take a quick and dirty look at the potential outcomes for player and club by examining Stanton’s foremost attribute – his peerless ball-striking ability. Read the rest of this entry »