Friday’s News & Notes

27 Commments

1. Big game for Vaquero, who is now slashing .307/.415/.453 in the still-admittedly-small sample size of 22 games. His plate discipline has been outstanding across both seasons, but he’s still only managed to get one ball out of the ballpark in 77 pro games.

   Also a nice game for Nathaniel Ochoa Leyva, who is up to .314/.397/.412. Weirdly, even though they drafted him as an infielder, he was in left field yesterday. He is pretty large to play on the dirt, but they’re overloaded with outfielders.

2. Actually, picks #6-10 are already signed, and they all signed for exactly $20,000. Saving a lot of money for the first 3-4 picks.

   1. Not doubting you, Mark, just curious where you saw the signing bonuses reported?

      1. BA reporter: https://twitter.com/CarlosACollazo/status/1679564399240163328?s=20

         1. Luke a light write up in the morning
            Weather your friend tonight

            1. Only my friend when it shortens games to five or six innings — rainouts mean kicking the can down the road. I can remember some 10-game mornings in the early days of the website. That were to happen now on a weekday it’d just be bullets. I don’t have nearly as much as time as I used to.

      2. Longtime, I saw it posted by the Post reporter on Twitter.

   2. Nats drafted a bunch of older players with no leverage to free up additional money to appease Boras and sign Crews. As the #2 pick, Crews has a $9 million bonus slot; Boras has been barking about how Crew must get $10 million to sign, which probably contributed to the Pirates decision to draft Skenes.

      Ironically, one of the Nats draftees to sign for a way under slot amount is Crews’ LSY teammate, Gavin Dugas. As the 6th round pick, Dugas was slotted for a $350K bonus, and instead, he signed for $20K; with the $330K difference earmarked for Crews to bump his bonus closer to the $10M threshold which Boras demanded pre-draft. Rich get richer. Crews should buy Dugas a car or something.

      Realize Crews is a great talent, but sucks that the Nats essentially punted 5 picks (#6 through #10); so, Boras can jock himself about being the world’s greatest agent. Then again, given how poorly the Nats have drafted after the first round, maybe it does not matter.

      1. Pilchard, I agree with you 100%. In the past, Boras had Ted Lerner fitted with a nose ring so he could lead him around.

         The big question is how Mark Lerner will act. I mean, is Crews going to go back to college? Hardly.

      2. I don’t begrudge Crews, Sykora, or anyone else from getting what they can, considering that this is really their last chance to get paid for the next eight-plus years. On the flipside, it sucks that there’s no minimum and that guys up to round 10 can be paid something like $20K even in a slot worth exponentially more. It’s too bad that the standard for rounds 11-20, where the first $150K for each pick doesn’t count against pool money, can’t be applied across the draft.

         As a college senior, though, you pretty much know what you’re going to get: almost nothing. The Nats’ 5th rounder probably won’t get much either. I have more hope that Dugas will hit as a pro than Brown.

         I like the strategy of taking guys like Dugas, Stehly, and Frizzell in rounds 6-10, all of whom had big seasons with big programs. There’s more of a chance that they’ll hit as a pro than there is for guys who didn’t do much in college. The Alu’s of the world who become better hitters as pros are very rare.

         1. The thing about Dugas is he can’t play in the field. LSU
            “hid” Dugas at second and would flip/flop Dugas to the opposite side of the infield if a pull happy left-handed bat came up. Think about that, LSU didn’t trust Dugas to play second base against lefties. Alu is a plus fielder. Dugas is a minus minus fielder. He does have a solid bat, but it’s not to the level that he could DH at the MLB level. Wasted pick.

      3. The Nats punted most of their 4-10 to be able to pay Travis Sykora in the 3rd who was a first round talent and a consensus top 4 HS pitcher in the draft…

         Not to simply appease Boras. It’s a great strategy. This draft basically produced the best player in the draft and three first round caliber picks.

      4. A) Saving the bonus pool money is as much about Sykora and Morales as it is about Crews. Both were rated higher than they were drafted and will b
         B) The players should always get as much money as they can, especially when they are starting out and are a play away from having it all go away.

         C) It is the agents’ job to do B. Would you rather the money go to the Lerner, Angelos and Steinbrenner children?

         D) The bonus pool system is one that was mutually agreed upon by the players and the owners. The owners could certainly afford to pay more or not have a bonus pool system at all or not penalize teams for exceeding it. But this is the system that THEY implemented, and it forces clubs to make tough decisions about who gets paid.

         None of this is bad. The Nats needed to save on 5-10 because they got so lucky on 1-3. I’d much rather have to pay a first round level talent taken in the 2nd and 3rd rounds than pay 7th round talent 7th round money. This draft is top heavy but it’s top heavy talent that tends to win playoff games.

         1. Every team has to be spend its bonus pool money; so, there is no savings to the Lerners by drafting non-prospects for 5 consecutive rounds. Morales wasn’t going back to Miami for his senior year; agree that the money saved will go to both Crews and Sykora. Crews will get paid over-slot.

            We will see if Sykora turns out better than the five players that the Nats could have drafted in the first 10 rounds.

            1. They drafted non prospects whod be cheap to be able to afford 3 first round talents in one draft.

               They aren’t pocketing the money…

               You wouldn’t rather have a 1st round talent and one of the 4-5 best HS arms in the country than standard 5-10 round picks? There’s nothing to complain about here unless they don’t sign

3. Zapata 5 IP in the complex could be considered a QS
   Sometimes guys just grab a glove and play anywhere just to get PT/ ABs.
   Put me in coach .. John Fogerty..

4. Most eager FRED games since Harper Strasburg came through the pipeline ?

   1. Let’s see how Morales “ light standard “ power translate in A league . Kline did use the same phrases with Frizzell. Right , Fred??

      1. Fans I use monikers on Luke’s site like Ethan Hawk uses masks to get the mission impossible complete !

5. Blue Rox lineup needs Lile .
   See if the ole adage Applies : get ‘em on
   Get ‘em over get em in
   Frizzell Fahrenheit hopefully increases in the lineup onward

6. Quick question regarding signing bonuses from a novice. If the Nats offered Crews his $9M slot but refused to go higher, then what exactly could he (and Boras) realistically do about it? Choose to go back to college for his senior year and hope to go one pick higher in 2024? That seems like a very high risk (injury, developmental disruption, etc) for a relatively small reward (maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars higher bonus in 12 months). I can see why the calculus might be different for a high school prospect or college-age lower pick but struggle to see the logic for a very high college-age pick. It feels like the Nats (or any team) have a lot of leverage as long as they are not offering below slot.

   1. Yes, a college junior’s only recourse is to threaten not to sign and go back in the draft a year later.

      In that case, he’s banking on the team not wanting to have seemingly waste the pick, though that is mitigated somewhat because a team whose pick doesn’t sign gets a similar pick in the following year’s draft. (That’s how the Nats got Drew Storen in 09 after Aaron Crow didn’t sign in 2008.)

      Crews will sign. It’ll likely be for slightly over slot but not so much higher that it precludes the Nats from signing other players. Sykora, and to a lesser extent Morales, are the bigger issues.

   2. Correct. Crews could go back to college, but then he would have no leverage next year. The Nats would get comped the pick in next year’s draft, but I don’t think it would be #2 (possibly #3?).

      There seems to be a fair amount of confidence on both sides of the table that he’ll sign, though.

7. I don’t know if folks will read down this far, but this news about the minor-league case is from The Athletic Windup, the Athletic’s daily baseball email newsletter:

   It took nearly a decade, but it’s finally done and dusted. The final appeal (which was made by four players) in the Senne case has been dropped, the class-action lawsuit over unpaid wages for minor leaguers — which went all the way to the Supreme Court back in 2020 — has been finalized, and the payout of $185 million can now proceed.

   That sounds like a big number, but consider: over 20,000 minor-league players were represented. After legal fees, the average payout is expected to be something in the range of $5,000 to $5,500 before taxes. As a friend put it in a text yesterday: “It’s more punitive than helpful.”

   But sometimes, punitive is helpful. As recently as last year, MLB was still arguing that minor-league players shouldn’t be paid during spring training, on account of all the valuable “life lessons” they were receiving — a line the league has been using for years.

   By July, a settlement was reached, and MLB eliminated a clause in the uniform player contract that forbade paying minor-league players outside the regular season.

   So no, the payout won’t make up for the years minor-league players made under $3,000 per year. But it helps set a good precedent moving forward (as should the recent formation of a union for minor-league players).

8. The Nats have made undrafted free agent signing, inking Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Brandon Pimentel. He’s, 23, 6-3, left-handed, and plays 1B/OF.

   He played for 3 schools in 5 seasons and much success at the small ones and minimal success at the big one so it’s tough to know if there’s any there there. I suppose that’s what the minors are for.

   He spent his freshman season, 2019, at a Texas JC and slashed 458/.515/.765 with 14 long balls.

   He transferred to Mississippi State in 2020 and in 2 seasons in Starkville only got 63 at-bats and didn’t hit his weight – .206/.315/.317, leaving the park twice.

   So he packed up for the border and at UTRGV he found his stroke. In 2 seasons there he slashed .389/.456/.662 with 31 homers in 450 at-bats.

   He’s obviously got some power but he also obviously struggles with good pitching. There’s no shame in not getting playing time at MSU, an SEC school that won it all in 2022, but not hitting there doesn’t scream prospect. Still, enough there to take a flier on, I suppose.

   1. Wasn’t there another Pimental
      In amateur baseball before ? A pitcher ?
      Valera and his hitting didn’t translate to east coast climate compared to west coast high altitude climates like old PCL

   2. Jimmy Gonzales scouting follow
      Is Pimental ?

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