Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 182: How Much Will Mark Appel Make?/Is Mike Scioscia’s Job Safe?

Episode Date: April 16, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss how big a signing bonus Mark Appel will get in the amateur draft, then assess Mike Scioscia’s job security.

Good morning and welcome to episode 182 of Effectively Wild, the podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? Very well. I was looking at box scores and I noticed that our, I think it was both of our least favorite offseason acquisitions or one of the least favorite signings that we discussed, Kevin Correa, is now 3-0, 21 in the third innings, 2.95 ERA, eight strikeouts in those 21 in the third innings, but also three walks. Yeah, you know, I mean, goodness gracious, a moth just attacked me.

I think that, you know, I think that by the end of the year we'll feel fine about the Correa bashing, but it does occur to me that neither one of us picked Joe Blanton, and the only thing Joe Blanton has going for him is his strike-out-to-walk ratio. And we both know that there's more to pitching than that, and that Joe Blanton does not have that more to pitching that you need and i'm surprised neither one of us said him because he lost today to kevin correa and now he's oh and three with a 8.59 era uh 2.05 whip and uh basically the same number of strikeouts and walks as Kevin Correa. So yeah, he's not very good. No.

That's the end of that sentence. I thought there was going to be more. It did seem like it. Okay. All right. Did you have something to talk about today? Yeah. I thought we could talk about Mark Appel,

who is maybe going to be the top pick in this year's draft, and what a team will pay him. Okay. And I wanted to talk about Mike Socha's job security. Okay. Why don't you start? Okay. I don't know if you know this. I am not an expert on the amateur draft. Well, thankfully, you've come to me. Does it shock you?

When I do a chat at Baseball Perspectives... I know. Every single question. I mean, we get tons of prospect questions, and I understand that. And you and I both, I guess, kind of do our best, but defer to the people who actually watch prospects all the time and know how to scout and follow prospects all day because we have a lot of those people on staff and it seems like a shame not to ask them when you could ask someone. But we get questions about people who ask me who will be drafted in the fourth round.

Give me some fifth round sleepers in this year's draft. And it's incredible to me that they know who these people are and that they are that interested in who's going to be drafted. Because, I mean, we write about baseball. It is our job sort of to know about baseball. And we spend a lot of time learning things about baseball. And I don't know about you, but I don't know a whole lot about the draft. I kind of read as it comes up. I read maybe some mock drafts and I kind of know who the very top guys available are.

But, and I'll, I'm interested in it if there's kind of a situation that people talk about from a strategy perspective. If there's, I don't know, a team having to decide what to do and there's some game theory aspect to it or something that I'm interested in. I want to know about it. But as far as the actual players go, I feel like, I mean, I'd love to know about the process of scouting amateur players, but the players themselves, I feel like I can learn about them on the off chance that they become actual prospects, which in most cases for people who are in high school will be several years down the road. And I feel like I will learn about them then.

I don't know. Is that how you feel about draft prospects or high school baseball players? Yeah, it basically is. I think it's partly because I have only so much brain power. Hey, there are so many baseball players who are already professional baseball players. I don't know everything about them. There's so much more I can know about the ones who have already made it or even are already in the major leagues.

So it's incredible to me that people have the bandwidth. I mean, it's great, but... They're smart. Smart people. Smarter than us. Yeah. Anyway, so Appel is one of the names that I do know because he entered last year's draft as kind of the consensus top pick, but he did not end up being the top pick. He fell to eighth overall

in the first round. He was picked by the Pirates. The Pirates offered him $3.8 million, I believe, which was the maximum that they could offer him in that slot. They offered him every penny they could, and he turned it down because he was expecting to be a top pick and make six or seven million dollars. And he had another year of college left and he is advised by Scott Boris. And so he went back to school and a lot of people said he was crazy or stupid and he shouldn't have turned down the money and he should have just started his career and it's a lot of money anyway. And Kevin Goldstein wrote an article for BP at the time about how basically it was just a calculated risk and that there was nothing wrong with the decision, that for most players the draft bonus is the big payday.

They never get a giant free agent contract. So you want to maximize what you get there. And then he would make a lot more if he went back and had a healthy, successful senior year. And he has now. I guess his draft stock now is at least as high as it was last year. He is kind of entering as one of the top pitchers available, maybe the top pitcher available. He is a righty from Stanford, 21 years old. And so now I was just reading at Baseball America, there was kind of a Q&A with Jim Callis. And someone asked basically what a team should offer him because he is the top draft prospect or one of them. And so he would be due quite a bit of money, but he is also a college senior. And college seniors typically don't have a lot of leverage in the draft because they want to start their careers and they can't

go back to school and keep playing. So they either kind of just have to sit out a year while they negotiate or play in an independent league or something. They can't go back to school. So last year, the Astros had the top pick, and they took Carlos Correa, and it worked out very well because he didn't expect to be a top pick. He expected to go lower, and so the Astros kind of lowballed him, at least for that slot value, and he signed for a lower amount, not the $7.2 million, which was their slot for that pick. And so they were able to spend more lower in the draft, which worked out very well. So the question now is, what do you offer Appel if you sign him? The Astros, again, have the number one pick. Their pick value is $7.8 million, roughly. The Cubs are at number two, and theirs is 6.7. The Rockies, number three, at 5.6. So the question is, what do you offer Appel,

knowing that he can't go back to school and would just kind of have to sit there? Do you just offer him a Correa-like lowball deal and hope that he takes it? Because if you're the Astros and you have almost $8 million to spend, but you offer a Pell, say, $5 million, maybe he takes that just because he doesn't have the leverage of going back to school and it's a lot of money. And if you, I mean, so it's kind of an interesting question because at the same time, if you believe in this prospect's talent and you think he is the best player available, you don't want to risk losing him and you don't want to risk alienating him. And you don't want to risk alienating him.

And if you wait, he can take it down to the last second before the signing deadline on July 13th. And then you can't risk really spending the money that you save on him without knowing that he's going to sign for that lower amount. So he can kind of hold you hostage like that, but you can also kind of hold him hostage because you are the major league team and presumably he wants to play for one of those. So it's kind of an interesting question. Jim Callis' opinion was he doesn't really think that he'll get a low ball.

He says if the Astros like a Pel more than any other 2013 draft prospect, I think they'll take him and give him a bonus of $6 million or more. But the Astros have done some unusual, inventive, creative things. So it would be certainly possible that they would try to get the best player for less money. So that is my topic. I don't know if you have thoughts. I'm proud of how well you spelled all that out. I hope I did. Someone's going to email and say that I got something wrong. So just two quick things.

One, that we don't know the answers to. So just two quick things. One, that we don't know the answers to. One, I wonder how much the Astros knew they were going to be in this situation when they passed on him last year. It seemed that we heard – I remember following the draft a little that day, and it seemed like the chatter was that once he dropped certainly down to eight but even probably past the Astros, it was unlikely that anybody would have the money necessarily to get him away from college.

So I wonder if that was somewhat calculated where the Astros thought, why get him this year? Based on what they were hearing from him, I'm sure they had spoken to him, they knew what his demands were going to be, they knew roughly what other teams were going to be able to put up for him. I wonder if they sensed that he was going to be back here. Again, we don't know. Somebody out there knows, but it's not us.

The other thing is a bit more abstract and larger, but I wonder how much it slows a player's development to be in college for your senior year instead of in some team's minor league system. Obviously, he is going to be a year older and somewhat closer to pitching in the majors when he graduates this year, but I wonder if it's a year closer, in which case there's no real loss for his development schedule, or if it's like eight months closer or four months closer or two months closer or what. Because I think if he gave up a year of earning potential as a major leaguer, then it looks like a very odd gamble to take on yourself,

knowing that you're basically going to have one less year in the majors to make whatever million dollars he's making as a post-free agent player. But if it's pretty much negligible and he expects to reach the majors at the same basic pace that he would have if he'd been drafted last year, then that's not a factor. So I wonder, do you know if anybody has ever looked at that, college seniors versus college juniors and their development paths? No. Uh, I remember on up and in Kevin and Jason always used to talk about how it had to be better, uh, for a pitcher to get

into a professional organization and have all the coaching available to him and maybe the better healthcare and, uh, and the higher level of competition and all that but no i don't know um i don't know what the effect is give me a guess give me a guess he waits one year to join uh the professional ranks uh how much does it slow his path to the majors from zero days to 365 days? I guess I would say somewhere in the middle of that range. Yeah, like four to eight months. I'd say probably no less than four months and probably not much closer to a year than eight months.

months and probably not much closer to a year than eight months. Yeah. Actually, the signing deadline doesn't even apply to him, so he can just kind of wait forever while other players' signing deadlines come and go. So that's another thing that would... Why doesn't it apply to him? Because he's a college senior or for some other reason? Yeah, I think that's why. Uh-huh. So that's another thing.

So that will be interesting. So this is the sort of thing that I am most interested in the draft for. I wonder who, I wonder who that benefits having no, no deadline for him. I wonder if that benefits him or the team. Uh, I would think him cause, I don't know, everyone else has a deadline

and the team has to know how much it has to spend available. Yeah, if they don't have to sign him until June, it could be that, I mean, in an extreme case, they could, well, I guess they would want to get him in their system if they're going to have him in their system and you don't want to screw know screw with the guy but you could theoretically wait and say keep on pitching go find a team we'll keep watching we'll we'll talk to you the day before the draft or whenever their true deadline is but i don't think that that's

probably in anybody's interest so never mind forget i said it all right amateur draft now let's talk about something that we're far more qualified to talk about, which is the role of a manager. That was sarcasm, Ben. Step on that, please. So the Angels are now, goodness gracious, like four and seven, three and eight, something like that. They're doing terribly. They lost to the Twins tonight.

And Kevin Correa. And Kevin Correa. And so that has reignited conversations that were happening among kind of Angels fans, but not in serious society, last offseason about Mike Socha's job security. And it's gotten to the point now that Ken Rosenthal wrote a column on Monday wondering who would pay for Artie Moreno's anger and mentioning Socha as one possibility.

And on, I believe, Sunday, sometime over the weekend, John Heyman wrote about managers on the hot seat, and he included Mike Socia. He wrote, he's one of the best managers over the last half century, but at some point someone might start to wonder whether it might be better for all involved if he had a fresh start elsewhere. Even great managers have expiration dates, and Socia, the longest tenured manager in the big big leagues is in his 14th in anaheim so um i uh

oh and there's one more thing actually the reason i wanted to talk about this is that trevor bell a former player under mike socia who pitched for the angels as kind of like a swingman slash AAA depth guy, and who I believe was let go sometime last year, tweeted late last week that he felt bad for the guys on the team that were struggling, but it's not their fault. It's the fault of the big Catorce. And Catorce is Spanish for 14, and Mike Socha wears the number 14 and is notably big. So it was a not-so-veiled reference to Mike Socha blaming him. And so the question that I had coming out of that is, if you hear something like that, does it have any special significance to you? Do you think that Trevor Bell, as a former employee of Mike Socha, is more qualified to tell you how good a manager he is? Or do you hear it and just think disgruntled ex-employee?

Or that there's 25 guys on a team and obviously one is going to have something against the manager probably at any given time he didn't specify why it was his fault or how he didn't no he didn't yeah i i don't know i i guess i wouldn't give it that much more weight i mean he's he's not there uh any more than we are really at this point um and i guess I would be kind of inclined to think, I mean, lots of players have axes to grind with former managers whom they didn't think played them enough or didn't think gave them a prominent enough role. And maybe that's the sort of thing that comes out later when you are an ex-player and that manager's team is struggling. I don't know. I mean, if he didn't cite a reason why it was his

fault, then I guess I don't give it that much weight, really. Yeah, but he's a young guy. He's from Southern California. The angels have a lot of players on their team who are both young and from southern california i can't swear to the you know the the social circles in that clubhouse uh but i know that this pardon me no pun intended social uh socia socia i say social so i should delete that uh so i can't um i i don't know if this is true but like i know that for the most part this southern the young southern california guys are fairly close to each other and it wouldn't surprise me if uh if bell also has some relationship with them still,

that he is in some way reflecting the clubhouse mood. And Socha has never been one to tolerate a lot of insubordination in his clubhouse. He famously pulled Jose Guillen off the field in September of a pennant race, back when Jose Guillen was really good, and actually pulled him off the, I believe pulled him from first base and suspended him for the rest of the season, like right there on the spot. And, you know, kept him off the playoff roster and everything over some insubordination.

And there were some cracks in that, I think, showing a little bit. I know that the Mathis Napoli stuff was popular with some players and also not popular with some players, and so some players kind of gave off-the-record comments about it to reporters. So, I don't know, it's an interesting question. I mean, Chris Jaffe has, in his book on managers, talked about how even players' managers, that's a skill that doesn't necessarily stay with you forever.

As you get older and you get a bit more out of touch, and it's been longer since you were part of the game, it's not a guarantee that you can be a players' manager forever. And I don't know that Mike Cesar was never necessarily a players' manager, but it's not inconceivable that he has I mean look I'm not saying he has lost his clubhouse at all I'm just saying that it's not inconceivable he has and I wonder I wonder what Trevor Bell represents in that inquiry yeah that's always kind of the common refrain with not every long-tenured or older manager, but often that becomes the case at some point that they're perceived as not being able to connect with younger players anymore

or as well as they used to. I read some of the articles you referenced and I, I read some stuff, um, that seemed kind of mildly critical, uh, of him, of Socia for not disciplining Josh Hamilton somehow, uh, for forgetting how many outs there were the other day. Um, I mean, I don't know his, his statement about that was just kind of Josh Hamilton knows that he made a mistake and he's accountable for it and he's a veteran. And, and I guess Socia felt that it would have just been, I don't know, more, uh, an empty gesture or some sort of grandstanding more than anything to discipline a veteran player like that for a mistake that he already knows is a mistake. Um, so I don't know. I don't know whether that is something worth criticizing him about, but I did see some criticism of him for that. So I guess that kind of supports the idea

that there's some, I don't know, some wave of anti-Socia thinking going on or some questioning of Socha going on. How many years is he signed still? After this five, so just about six years and it's 555-666. So I think, yeah, so I think it's 28 million after this year. Man, that's a lot of money. 28 million after this year plus he's in the middle of a five. So yeah, I mean, I think that the thing about Socha is that he's going to have a job as long as he wants one. It might not be with the Angels, but he's going to have a job as long as he wants one. If he gets fired by the Angels, he'll find another team very quickly that'll hire him. I mean, he's held in extremely high regard. And the 10-year contract that the Angels signed him to, in a way,

I mean, I don't think that it necessarily guarantees him that he's going to be an Angel for 10 years if they miss the playoffs this year. Again, I don't have any particular insight into this, but if they miss the playoffs this year, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he were gone by the beginning of next. But being owed that much money for that long kind of guarantees that he gets to leave to some degree on his own terms and so i don't think that he's in any danger of being fired mid-season because i don't think that's that would be anywhere near his terms my guess is that

the only way you would see him leave now is if it were a negotiated settlement where he agrees to walk away. Maybe he has a job in mind before he even leaves. So I would not expect him, basically no matter what happens this season, I could be wrong about this, but I wouldn't expect to see him fired mid-season under almost any circumstance. It would be nice if there were some way that we could assess the, I mean, if we could come up with some kind of managerial aging curve. But I guess we can't even tell when a manager is good at any point. Right. So we can't do that. Figure out a way to do one year first. Right. Plus all the managers who last as long as Socia have been good managers or have at least avoided the perception of being bad managers, which is how they've lasted this long. But one of those articles you mentioned, I think, sort of described Moreno as kind of like a secret Steinbrenner or like a closet Steinbrenner as far as competitiveness goes. Like he's not in the press all the time,

grandstanding and criticizing his players, but his competitive spirit is the same, I think it contended. And he has spent an awful lot of money over the last few years and brought in a lot of expensive free agents. And it would be, I don't know, I guess it would be very unusual if a manager were not let go after a team fails to make the playoffs after spending a lot of money for a few years in a row. That would be unusual.

But then I guess long-term social contracts are also unusual. Yeah, they are. I don't know that any manager's ever had a 10-year contract before I would be surprised if he had. All right. All right. So that'll do it. We'll be back tomorrow with episode 183

and have two new topics. Actually, no, we won't. We'll have an email. Email show. Email Wednesday. So email us questions. Podcast at baseballperspectives.com. There you go.

See ya.