Billy Beane is one of the more polarizing figures in major league baseball, which may or may not be his fault. On the one hand, he has a dwindling crowd of worshipful followers who think he is the smartest GM in baseball, who continues to battle the odds with virtually no money to work with, and who almost never makes a bad decision. On the other hand, there is a growing cadre of skeptics who see his dogmas as being increasingly discredited and his decisions increasingly erratic. While the truth probably lies somewhere in between, I have to say I lean heavily to the latter view.
Yeonis Cespedes embodies virtually everything Billy Beane should stay away from if you subscribe to any notion of him having a coherent philosophy of how to build a team. I can almost see Billy sparring with his scouts in the movie Moneyball:
Scout: He's a five tool player. Billy: Can he hit?
Scout: Look at this scouting video! Billy: He's not actually playing any games in it!
Scout: He's the best looking player I've ever seen. Billy: We're not selling jeans here!
Billy Beane just spent the better part of this offseason dumping players who could help the A's win over the next few years for prospects who will likely be not up to full speed as major leaguers much sooner than 4 years from now. He seemed to be looking ahead to yet another "window" when he could create a perfect storm of talent that might have a chance to win it all before being dismantled for the next "window" another 4 or 5 years into the future. Then he goes out at signs a guy who is the antithesis of everything Moneyball is purported to be about....to a 4 year contract no less!
Look, Cespedes may turn out to be a great player. After all, he does have the tools for it. The problem is, even if he does, Billy Beane just got through decimating his team in exchange for a chance to win AFTER Cespedes contract runs it's course! The probability, based on everything I've read and the experience of other Cubans who have come to MLB, is that Cespedes is way overhyped and overvalued. I mean, there is just no way that Cuban defectors have been an undervalued commodity over the years and Cespedes certainly does not look like a guy who is going to break the pattern.
If someone has an explanation of how this is Billy Beane thinking on a higher level than the rest of us mere mortals, I'd love to hear it. Bring it on!
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the a's feel as though they will never get a superb bat and they are have trouble developing them so they are trying to get a middle orderish bat for reasonable price. They are essential buying out his prime years from 26-30. Most of the pitching prospects should be on the way or in the majors by then. I think he sees a window at the last 2 years of this deal with the top prospects coming up. Is it risky? Ya but they have to take risks to be able to compete. Worst case he is a plus defender with good speed which is still worth something and a little overpaid. Best case he is 5 tool player who can give you a middle order bat with speed on the base paths without sacrificing defense for the pitching staff.
ReplyDeleteI was laughing too hard at your inspired Moneyball scene to focus on Beane.
ReplyDeleteDrb, I agree its puzzling to see the A's spend $$ on Cepedes after Beane decimates the team over the winter. Tim Kurkjin of ESPN said this morning Cepedes could be a 20hr + .270 hitter in the majors right now which isn't bad.. Its hard to envision the A's competing against the Rangers and Halos in the foreseeable future. If Cepedes turns out to be a good player, maybe Beane should trade him too for a nice package of prospects at the trade deadline. If he flops, then the A's have a problem.
ReplyDeleteLG
In the A's home park, he could be a 12 HR, .250 hitter, his frist year.
DeleteNot since Kenny Powers put together his scouting video have I seen such a baseball talent doing non baseball things. I am partial to Cubans mostly because my wife is Cuban which means my 2 sons are half Cuban which means I should break out the camcorder and get some video of my oldest smoking whiffle balls in the living room and send it to Billy. There is a level of intrigue when it comes to Cuban talent and although most of them have flopped, there are a few more now days that are at least middle of the pack major league talent. Kendrys Morales, Alexei Ramirez, and Aroldis Chapman have had the most success in recent years but at some point I expect a full blown superstar to come out of Cuba much like what the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela have been able to produce.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at it from that perspective, it makes a lot of sense that eventually someone will come out of Cuba and dominate. Although they don't have the baseball schools that the other Caribbean countries have to develop talent, they do have a good enough infrastucture to eventually break through with a star at some point given that physically they are already great athletes (Palmeiro and Canseco were pretty good).
The biggest hurdle I see with Cuban players besides getting out of Cuba is that they have a tendancy to be lazy. That is my opinion at least based on what I saw when I visited Cuba and Cubans I have played ball with. The talent is undeniable but they don't always do the little things to stay focused and motivated (Canseco is another good example of this). If Cespedes stays motivated and his skills translate then I expect I will be going to a lot more A's games this year.
Pato! That was a dope post. And don't forget the most famous San Francisco Giant pitching prospect of them all, a Cuban who decided no on besball and decided to swim the Rio Grande and make the world difficult for Coca Cola, GM and United Fruit instead.
DeleteThat's actually a common thing with Communist countries. You have your job no matter what, you have no incentive to work harder or to improve once you reach the level you want. Playing in baseball is the height of the goals of probably most of the Cuban baseball players. They worked hard to get to that position of status, but after that, they feel privileged for anything else they get.
DeleteI would throw Livan under the bus on that one as well.
It will take someone who is ultra-competitive and internally motivated to break through and be the superstar people have been waiting for years for from Cuba.
Yes, good post. Who is this prospect, Shankbone? I only recall, is it Osvaldo Fernandez?
The Beard! The original one. Fidel.
DeleteDoh! I said SF Giant prospect. Its a grey area, but most likely he was a NY Giant prospect.
DeleteAccording to my brother in law, Fidel wasn't ever drafted because he wasn't very good. The stories of his baseball skills may have been embellished just a little bit. There is no doubt that Cuba produces great athletes but OGC you are right on the money about communist countries and how it doesn't exactly encourage people to work harder or even at all when they are basically getting the same life as the bum on the street. The best jobs in Cuba are at the resorts because they can make more money in tips in one day then a doctor makes in an entire month.
DeleteIt is a crazy world but one thing they do know is baseball. I have played with and against several Cuban players in amateur leagues and they were always the most talented but not always the best teammates. With the proper motivation like the WBC, Olympics, or 2,500 bored out of their mind fans at the O.co, who knows what Cespedes is capable of!
Kills it again! Thats good stuff on the Beard. I did get the "famous" part right, I wasn't going for skill. I'm still laughing about the proper motivation crack.
DeleteGee, shocker there, a communist leader embellishes his achievements to his people. There are all sorts of wacky stuff that North Koreas just recently passed leader claimed to have accomplished.
DeleteNice one on the original Beard, great stuff!
Somehow, I feel this move is directed more at the Giants than the Angels or the Rangers, but mostly, the money is spent so people don't forget he's still around...unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteThey also spent a lot of time and energy on Iwakuma, in the wake of the Giants World Series victory, to stay a little above complete irrelevance in the baseball world. If only they could make the same effort in drafting and developing their own players, using their OWN excellent draft positions of the last, um, what, 6 or 8 years, EVEN WITHOUT getting all the extra prospects from trading Mulder, Hudson, Blanton, Street, et al (we won't count those who were subsequently flipped since that would be double-counting, and thus unfair to Mr. Beane), and extra picks from losing Zito, Tejada, et. al, they'd be a power house today.
One way to camouflage that monumental failure, of course, would be to make a lot of trades so people simply lose track of what is happening.
This seems like the most logical reason for Beane to do this, that with his poor drafts despite all that losing, he picked himself up a Top 20-30 prospect for just $6-7M in 2012, and if Cespedes is even average, his contract is then reasonable, and thus he is tradeable for more prospects that should matriculate around the time the A's hope to open their new stadium. And if he is as good defensively as hyped, that alone could make him an average player.
DeleteOf course, the risk is great that if Cespedes is as bad as some think, and the rumor mill had the Giants kicking the tires and deciding it was not worth it, then Beane got himself a $36M albatross.
The positive of that, however, is that Beane could play Cespedes, even if he is bad, and most would not fault him much for playing him since he has a big contract, and his badness would translate into a better draft pick in the following year's draft, where if he can get a high enough pick, he could find that franchise changing player that it has lacked since the A's had all those low picks in the 90's and got Mulder, Zito, and Chavez.
Kind of like how, while it was very negative that the Giants signed losers like Benitez and so forth during the losing years, including Zito, those poor performances pushed the Giants up the draft ladder, enabling them to select Lincecum, Bumgarner, and Posey consecutively.
And how embarrassing is it for the A's that they have had all these high picks PLUS all the players they picked up in trade and the Giants farm system have no high picks, and STILL the Giants have a higher prospect on BP's 101 Top Prospect list, with Gary Brown higher than ANY of the A's prospects on the list.
Signing expensive players who suck strategy. I'll have to think about that one for a bit. Personally I think Benitez was just a continuation of Sabean's ex-Florida Marlin plan. It worked for Brian Johnson, Nen, and Livan, why not Benitez? That ties in with my theory on "let's ignore everything that the Mets might be telling us with regards to THEIR ex-players" and sign Alfonso... and Benitez. Damn, old lunatic fringe tendencies pulling through. Must. Control.
DeleteIt was pretty grim for a bit. Those 2 clowns certainly contributed mightily.
Sorry OGC, my Irish troublemaker side is back in force. I know you where you were going with that one.
DeleteIt was frustrating though, me, the fan on the street in NY, I knew all about Alfonso's back at the time. He was a rock star - and he beat the hell out of us for sure - and then he hit the wall big time. It was well publicized. Then when the Mets were lowballing him, that should have set off alarm bells.
Backs are tough injuries. I'm of the opinion they are always suspect. I am expecting steep regression from Pato's favorite Hanley Ramirez. Wouldn't take the chance on that dude this year.
I really really really hope you are wrong about Hanley.
DeleteFor your sake I do as well. But I think some of that Cuban laziness rubbed off on him in the Carib waters.
DeleteHey guys, let's be careful about generalizations about people from countries or regions of the world. That's playing with fire!
DeleteJust ask Larry Krueger about generalizing regarding Caribbean players! It would be ok though if we were making fun of the French right?
DeleteSacre Bleu! Good call DrB. To clarify, I was continuing the commie line from above that OGC started. I have nothing but admiration for the Cuban people, and would love to go see 60 year old American iron tooling around the streets of Havana. The gov, that leaves a bit to be desired. And Hanley is a lazy guy. This whole post had me laughing enough I wasn't thinking about how that might get interpreted. The French would get offended Pato, but we'll buy them off with Garlic. I gotta guy in Gilroy, he'll get it at a price.
DeleteHey, np Shankbone.
DeleteTo be clear, I'm not defending the deals or Sabean for doing them, but trying to point out the ying and yang of many situations that people might not realize. Who knows, if Benitez and Alfonzo were actually good for us, maybe we would have won a couple of World Championships with Bonds instead of waiting until 2010.
Still, the point remains that some good did come out of their foul performances, probably more so out of Benitez than Alfonzo. Still, I don't see how a bad back could suddenly make his strike zone recognition go so badly, unless, I guess, maybe he can't reach for the outside corner anymore? I can see it sapping his power though, but really, I thought the OBP would have been a gimme minimum out of the deal, and he couldn't even do that, as I had saw all the talk about his bad back too, but just the season before, he had a .400-ish OBP, I figured if he dropped to .360-ish, it would still be OK.
First off, I do agree with Anonymous, that mostly Cespedes is a trade chip. (Of course the big if is whether he can play.)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Doc as well, that Beane is trying to hit a perfect storm talent window. It is possible, that if Cespedes is blue chip, that he might be around for that window in 3-4 years. Again, more likely, he'll be traded for pieces that fit into that window.
Also, the A's have almost no identity. Seems like Beane trades talent earlier and earlier in their career. Who is the star of the A's? I'm not saying they don't have talented players (though some would say that). I am saying that there is no player you'd go to an A's game to see. Cespedes has the potential to create a stir and be a draw. So, FWIW, there's that.
I think that is another angle with this signing, good point, the marketing aspect of it, come see our hot shot Cuban free agent (and forget that with all those picks and trades of good players, we still don't have one player in the Top 20 overall on BP's top prospect list).
DeleteFunny to see blogs, like this, in retrospect.
ReplyDelete