Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 609: Kiley McDaniel on Yoan Moncada, Cuba, and Prospect Bias

Episode Date: February 6, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to FanGraphs Lead Prospect Analyst Kiley McDaniel about Yoan Moncada, Cuban talent, and teams manipulating prospect rankings.

But this day by the lake went too fast And if you want me, you better speak up I won't wait, so you better move fast Good morning and welcome to episode 609 of Effectively Wild, Mooncast! We have a guest today. Our guest has written approximately 27 articles about Cuban prospect, Johan Moncada, including one article about his articles about Johan Moncada. You might even say he's created a Mon cottage industry. Oh no.

Oh, wow. Just going to insert a few seconds of silence for laughter here. Please tell me you didn't write that beforehand. That didn't sound spontaneous to you? He is the lead prospect analyst for Fangraphs, Kylie McDaniel. Hi, Kylie. Hello, thank you.

Am I going to get some of that sweet baseball reference money? How does that work? Don't ruin the illusion of the internet for me. Everyone's getting rich off this we can get you a discount a sweet discount on the play index we will give you a coupon code that you can use i'm listening so have you written about yoan moncada lately uh i tweeted about him today or i guess indirectly about him. There was a slight tweak. The MLB, the last article you're referring to, I wrote about a meta article saying,

here's three sentences of news, and if you're wondering who this is, here's all the context, and I linked everything I'd written before. The big news was MLB changed the rules so that all the Cuban players had to do was something they had already done and then sign a paper that said, basically, I'm adhering to the rules. And the problem was MLB sent the paper yesterday to the agents of these players to sign. And the language on the paper was like three sentences. And it didn't match the language in the government's rules as it was supposed to. It basically held the players to a higher standard where they both had to agree that they didn't plan to go back to Cuba and that

they weren't going to be welcome there, which I talked to one of the agents involved and they said, well, what if Castro says later that day they're welcome back? And that makes them a liar. I don't want to sign that. And the government policy said either one or the other. Either you weren't planning to go back or you wouldn't be welcome. And then today MLB sent out a revised statement that had that sort of and turned into an or essentially. And so now everyone seems okay with everything. So that was today's news. It's a never-ending flow of news about this whole topic. It is.

And so far we have chosen to deal with that flow by ignoring it completely. It's been a really defensible stance. It's been an off-season long saga of when he would be eligible to sign and where he would sign and many steps and setbacks along the way. So let's just start at the beginning. Tell us who this guy is and why he is of such interest. A 19-year-old Cuban. He's a switch hitter. Can play in the big leagues, probably second or third or center. I would guess he'll probably start in the minors playing shortstop, but most scouts don't think he'll be able to play there in the big league so it differs team to team where they'll put them part of the reason that there's a difference is because most of the high level scouts that are making decisions on this kind of elite player have only seen him once in an open

workout in december in guatemala and then once and if their team had a private workout and that's it and like the international directors international scouts saw him play for Cuba in like the under 18 tournaments when he was really good and was hitting like four and five hundred at these tournaments and like you know all the tools were showing up on the field uh but you don't have like VPs and AGMs and people necessarily going to all those events or paying close enough attention to that guy specifically. So most of this is buzz is based off of those one open and then I guess one closed workout if your team had it. And he the sort of shorthand I've been using is he is a switch hitting Yasiel Puig who can play in the infield. He's a 70 runner like Puig.

He can play a premium position, which I guess Puig could technically play center, but he doesn't. And he's got plus bat speed, plus power. He's a switch hitter. He's 19. He'll probably be in the big leagues at age 20 at some point in 2016, if sort of the broad belief. And he's that sort of like linebacker, Cespedes Puig type body, like six foot 210,

something like that. And it's just sort of packed full with quick twitch. Like he, if he grew up in Florida, he'd probably be a linebacker in the sec or running back or something. It's that, that kind of guy, but it happens to be all baseball skills and all of these skills show up on

the field so far. And the performance seems to match the tool. So it's kind of everything you're looking for and since he's 19 and there's some track record and he's cuban as opposed to say 16 and dominican every team is in on him at some level whereas when you're talking about 16 year olds sometimes there's 10 teams that just don't really deal with the three million dollar 16 year old when you get 19 year old cuban with some track record everybody's in on him. So that's why he gets a lot of attention. Okay, so the description that you just gave

sounds like a guy who would be the number one prospect in all of baseball. The consensus seems to be that he would be somewhere around fifth or tenth when he signs. What is sort of the knock on him if there is one? Yeah, I actually just sort of did the math on mine. I would probably have an eighth right now on my list. So yeah, it seems like everyone's got him right in that area.

He's right in the same area with Addison Russell and Corey Seager and Carlos Correa and all those guys, J.P. Crawford, Blake Swihart, all of those sort of consensus sort of top 15 prospects. And it did wait in a game uh in like a year and no one has seen him against live pitching uh unless maybe in a one of these private showcases for a team there was some live pitching but then only one team saw it and it was obviously probably limited um so while he has performed and the tools appear to play and so everything he's capable of doing there's not a ton of doubt that he'll be able to do it you just haven't seen it and so like i was saying some of these high level scouts have

only seen sort of in the last six months he hasn't played any games then so it's hard for them to be able to say give this guy 100 million dollars he's you know better than every cuban you've ever seen it's sort of the subject of a little bit of you know sort of math and strategy and whatnot for how you want to pay him, what kind of player do we want, how will this affect our July 2 spending going forward, how does he fit into what we're doing, how much money do we have. It's more of that as far as dialing in exactly what you would pay him and what you think he's worth. But it seems like I know a couple of years ago when Jerks and Profar was sort of the

top prospect in baseball, it seemed to be sort of widely accepted he was worth anywhere from like $60 million to $70 million, maybe even $80 million and you would think that value has only gone up in recent years. So depending on how you want to calculate it, it seems like those sort of top 10 prospects in baseball would be somewhere in that that anywhere from 60 to 100, depending on how you want to calculate it. And he's kind of squarely in the middle of that. And if you if, for instance, you knew he would go to high or double A and like rake for half a season, there's a legitimate case to be made that he's number one. Although I actually I

didn't mention this, but I guess the one negative you hear about Moncada pretty often is he's not quite as good from the right side. Some people think he might give up switch hitting. Is there any concern about his lost development time because he's been in this sort of limbo? I mean, I know that he's more questionable because people haven't seen him in the last year or whatever. But is there any worry that he missed an important year of his life? Yeah, I mean, yes. But I don't think it's, I mean, like if you want to use like a comparable, if you want to use like an elite high school player that signs out of high school and then for his age 19 year, he tears his ACL. Uh, this guy's

got about the same, if not maybe even a little more track record than that high school player would have. And he's not coming off of an injury. So while a guy could go in the top five in the draft, tear his ACL, miss a year, and come back, you wouldn't really knock him. You might move him down a prospect list from 15th to 30th and just kind of wait and see. But there's not even an injury thing to worry about here. It's just sort of a year that was not necessarily lost

because usually when you say lost year with a pitcher, it usually means arm injury. With a hitter, it's usually terrible performance or mental problem or physical problem or injury or something like that and he hasn't really had that and for i mean for all we know if he was in double a right now like puig was sent out to double a when he signed he would you know keep hitting like there's basically hasn't been a negative other than when he just hasn't been out there and while that is a sort of a key age uh there hasn't really been a performance question yet so it's really just a matter of sort of mystery as opposed to a negative

hanging over his head. Do you have any idea what he does every day? He works out. He's staying with his agent in St. Pete, and he's had all of his workouts in the Florida area. So even some of the teams like the Dodgers and Brewers and Padres that have had workouts that are based in Arizona, they've come to Florida and set up a workout.

So, yeah, I know there's a Cuban restaurant near where he lives and he goes there and he's, there's another, another Cuban that's with him. I believe his name is Carlos Mesa. That's a much lower profile guy. So he kind of has a buddy to sort of work out with and, you know, have some of the, the homey elements of you know, social activity and all that. But yeah, it's mostly and, you know, have some of the, the homey elements of, uh, you know, social activity and all that. Uh, but yeah, it's mostly just, you know, eat and work out and work out and eat and all that. I guess sleeping too. Just going to check his Kylie McDaniel, Moncada article, RSS feed. We've got a dedicated feed for that now to see what's going on. Um, yeah, he knows who I am,

so I don't know if that's a good thing but i guess he'll be able to find me now has he written anything about you uh not that i've seen but i couldn't count out some maybe some fan fiction yeah unpublished work yeah sure yeah who knows so the the interesting thing about him or the thing that maybe makes him more interesting than another prospect of his caliber would be although another prospect of his caliber would be, although any prospect of his caliber would be plenty interesting, is the financial stuff surrounding his situation.

Can you kind of lay out what you've written about that? There's game theory elements that you've described very well. There are penalties involved that teams have to consider when they're deciding how much they want to spend. So how does all of that work? Yeah. So since he's under 23, he is subject to international bonus pulls the same as the July 2 kids. And so if you've followed that market at all, you know the Yankees spent

$30 million on bonuses and penalties to blow everyone out of the water, spend double what anyone else has ever spent before in an effort to help their minor league system, which they have. A handful of other teams, either through July 2 spending or through signing Cubans, have also gone over the Red Sox, the Rays, the Angels, and the Diamondbacks, those last two both from signing recent Cuban players that were eight and eight and a quarter million. So they are incentivized to try to sign Moncada more than usual because starting this coming up July 2nd, they will be suspended from signing any players over 300,000 for the next two years in a row. So basically any notable 16-year-old is off the table for two straight seasons. So to justify doing that, you know,

the short end would be you have to sign three years worth of players. And obviously the Yankees did that. These other teams did not, they all got sort of, you know, the Rays got one big player and a couple of smaller ones and the angels and diamondbacks both got one big player and not, didn't really get like sort of a second tier player. So you would think if to sort of justify that penalty, they would want, you know, they'd be incentivized to go after him. And then you also have the Cubs and Rangers who when the penalty was only one year last season, they went over.

And so they can't sign him until July 2nd. They can't go over 300,000. And it appears that Moncada's camp wants to sign soon. And they are incentivized to sign soon one to get paid, but also because if they wait on a non-binding promise from the Cubs or the Rangers who are both very interested in trying to convince him to wait, they'd be taking the Yankees and Red Sox off the table completely, which obviously you don't want to do while also waiting until the middle of the season to sign and skipping, you know, spring training and all that sort of stuff and further delaying the whole process. So those two teams are eliminated. And so then you have, say, 28 teams that would like to have him, but maybe 10 that are reasonably willing to pay something close to what he's worth. And so the number that's been quoted most widely is 30 to 40 million. most widely is 30 to 40 million. And the way the spending works with this whole July 2 market,

like I said, the Yankees, they spent about 15 and then they had to pay a $15 million penalty. It's basically a dollar for dollar penalty once you go over your pool and all the pools are anywhere from two to 5 million. So if you hadn't spent any money yet, you spend 40 on him, it's going to be anywhere from 35 to $38 million penalty. So if you're going to spend $30 to $40 million, split the difference, say it's $35, you're talking anywhere from $65 to $70 million. And that number has sort of risen in the last few weeks because while the Yankees and Red Sox, for obvious reasons, were thought of as the leaders because of their revenues and also because of the sort of timing that they have sort of a ticking clock on them to get some value out of this penalty they're about to undergo. The Dodgers, who haven't done any sort of spending to put them in any sort of penalty,

have also entered the Derby. And I wrote about some of this today, but their new executives, Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi, came from small market teams who saw this as a sort of, I don't want to say market inefficiency, but as a place that was a good value to spend money. And so Farhan, when he was with the A's, was instrumental in them getting Cespedes for $36 million before Cuban hitters had a good track record. And the Braves under Friedman went over their July 2 bonus thing

every year they were able to do it. So it appears they know the worth of this. They have so much money, like probably more than any other team, to just spend. It won't cost them a draft pick. It won't cost luxury tax. And they haven't done a lot of spending this offseason. So the sort of broad belief is that they're the leaders right now. But if you look at the Yankees uh they probably have the most need for a player

like this because their sort of core uh top players are sort of aging out they're starting some players that aren't stars and their upper minors don't have very many elite players whereas the red sox and dodgers do and the red sox have obviously spent some money made some moves and almost have too full of a roster so they're're sort of seen as the third team in this. And there's a handful of other teams that have had workouts. And the Tigers and A's have been mentioned as teams that either have a track record or have the money to possibly go after them. But the belief now is rather than that 30 to 40 expectation, I had been reporting all along I thought it would be 40, if not a little more. And now it seems like everyone thinks it'll start with a four, which would be 80 million altogether, if not more, because you're basically having a bidding war

between one guy on the market, one time, a ticking clock, multiple big market teams, and a player everybody agrees on, which seems like sort of a perfect storm of situation and circumstances and all that to have someone maybe overpay a little bit. And just to be clear, this is not signing a guy for $80 million and getting him for the next six years. It's signing him for $80 million and then having to pay him just like you would have to pay any other rookie that you brought up. So three years from now, he's going to be expensive in a different kind of way, right? Yeah, it's the same contract parameters as one of the draft contracts, which is to say you cannot do a big league deal.

So Cuban guys like Jorge Soler got signed just before the new rules. He signed a big league deal. Garrett, or not Garrett Cola, Pedro Alvarez, some of the other draft guys signed big league deals out of the draft where you can structure opt-outs and have their arbitration salaries set out and basically have control of how much you pay for all six of their controlled years. Now draft players and Monkata have the same setup where you pay one upfront bonus. There are some ways that you can spread that over a couple of years so that you can spread

out the expense. But you're basically just purchasing those six control years with three of them obviously with the sort of arbitration where it's not free but the first three would be free. And yeah, the idea is you're basically getting seven years. You're getting one year of the minors, and then you're getting six in the big leagues. And those last three may be into the tens of millions. So it's pretty easy to see if you're paying 40, paying another 40 in the penalty, and then he's getting into the tens of millions at the end of arbitration, it would easily

be $100 million for those sort of six big league years, which seems like a lot of money. Well, also, it like a lot of money. Well, also it is a lot of money. Where do the proceeds of that penalty money go? The penalty money goes to MLB. And I wrote something about this when people kept asking me a couple months ago when his name was sort of getting hot. And it turns out if you look at the CBA, it says the money goes into a general fund for international purposes, which if you read between the lines is sort of code for we're going to spend it on whatever our number one

international priority is, which as everyone knows is an international draft. And as I think most people know, almost no one in baseball wants this to happen. And everyone thinks it's a bad idea for various reasons and to various degrees. But the people that want it to happen are the owners and MLB central office who are the people in charge of making it happen. So the broad belief is at the end of the CBA that ends after next season, there will be a worldwide draft to some degree. Part of the reason people think it's a bad idea is you're having to deal with Cuban and

Japanese and Venezuelan and Mexican governments and baseball federations and like it's just not an easy thing to do. And so this fund that was probably expected to never have more than maybe 10 or 15 million dollars in it, now already has like 30 or so and now it's about to more than double. So this fund that was supposed to just sort of be a slush fund for sort of helping out with some stuff is now going to become like a legitimate, you know, piece of financial power that can be used to further a thing that almost no one wants to happen, but it's sort of inevitable. And the specter of that international draft is making teams more eager to spend while they can in these areas that they won't be able to spend. And so you wrote something in December about how many more teams are planning

to outspend their bonus pool over the next year or two. What, can you give us an update on, on how many it is now or, and how many even can in a single year? I mean, if, if every team outspends its bonus pool,

then there are not enough players to spend on, are there? Yeah, that's another interesting game theory aspect of this, that if the belief is you're going to have this year and next year as sort of times where you can continue to do this before there's a new CBA and a draft, then you're not, if you're the Yankees, you're not worried about the penalties because the penalties will cover the next two years, which you can do whatever you want, but you'll be limited by the penalties. And then when you're able to do it again in year three, there won't be any more sort of open signings. It'll be a draft.

And so then it'll be sort of hard capped and all that sort of thing. So the teams that are not in that group of five or six teams I named, they all have one more opportunity to spend a lot of money. And the thing I was writing about is if you sort of pull teams, there's anywhere from 10 to 15 teams that are seriously considering or have already committed verbally to going over their pool this year, which then makes it sound like, well, then that means there's going to be a lot of inflation with salaries. If there's just going to be an extra $50 million around, then that means everyone's getting

paid more, especially at the upper level. And then that also means in the last year or two of the current CBA, you're going to have like 20 out of 30 teams that can't spend over $300,000. And then those teams will just be able to sign whoever they want. And so then there's some thought if it looks like 10 teams have already committed and you're team 11 and you're trying to decide if you want to commit this year. You then may see an opportunity to wait one more year and do it in the last year of the current CBA. And the funny thing is, if you ask around, nobody thinks that the last couple of years of July 2 or this year that there is a generational franchise guy like a Miguel Sano.

Next year, there is a generational franchise guy like a Miguel Sano. Next year, there is. There is a kid that is 14 in Venezuela that is already being compared to Miguel Cabrera. And the two teams that have been tied to him most are both expected to bust past their pools this year and not have a chance to sign him. So there. But then also, do you want to forego Moncada or maybe even forego spending a bunch of money this year for a guy that for all we know a year from now, maybe will has lost his luster or maybe, you know, he'll be Miguel Cabrera. Who knows? But, you know, both things are possible. So I'm heading down there on Sunday.

There's a big MLB showcase that's sort of the week before college baseball opens. So it's sort of all of the American based scouts that sort of oversee Latin America get to go down and see all the top players. They'll collect them from Venezuela and Dominican and Colombia and all these places. And I was told that there's going to be about 50 players there and over half of them already have verbal contracts. And you talked a little bit about the language stuff at the beginning, but can you summarize the back and forth between MLB and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, that took place earlier this year that kind of changed what Moncada had to do to become eligible? Yeah. At some point when Pui came over, MLB changed their rules very quietly from requiring a general license from OFAC, a government agency, to do an extra level of work for us, which basically has us in a better legal spot to where they've been cleared at a higher level.

So if say money goes back to Cuba or something goes wrong or he's accused of a crime, it's not on us for saying we cleared him. The government cleared him even more than we did. So that's sort of the idea behind it. And so what happened was Moncada and then a couple other guys that are – or I guess one other notable guy, Andy Ibanez that is a lower level guy that will probably get five to ten million. Both got residency in a Central American country.

Moncada is in Guatemala and Ibanez was in Nicaragua and then moved to another country. Ibanez is in the Dominican. Moncada is in Guatemala and Ibanez was in Nicaragua and then moved to another country, Ibanez is in the Dominican, Moncada is in Florida. To get the general license, all you have to do is establish residency in a third country, which they both did immediately back in October. Then once MLB clears you, which usually happens within weeks and happened in I think October, November for them, then the rules – the prior rules before Puig said that gives you a general license, that gives you cleared by MLB and you're all good to go. And so that process took weeks, maybe a month. But with the new specific license, that isn't a huge priority for OFAC because it is – their rules say that general license is fine but MLB said they need a specific license. And so OFAC is basically being asked to do something that they don't think is necessary and so it takes a long time.

And so they were – these players were ready to go in like October and then we're waiting six months later and still don't have the paperwork yet. work yet. And so what happened was once Obama announced that he was sort of changing those sanctions with Cuba and looking to sort of lift them if things go well with the negotiations, OFAC changed the rules and basically further said that the general license is good enough and the specific license is kind of getting phased out or is less important or less of a priority. And so then the agents went to MLB and said, can we change the rule? And MLB says, we're looking at it. And then while MLB is taking their jolly time looking at it, I wrote about it on a Monday. And then by Tuesday, a couple more articles came out about it from Yahoo and Baseball

America. By Wednesday, there was a comment from MLB saying, we're trying to figure this out, but they were clearly trying to buy time. And then OFAC came out on Friday and said, we will not give a specific license. We've done all we're supposed to do. MLB, get with the program and allow these kids to sign because they have all the clearance they need.

And then by this Monday, the next week, MLB said, okay, fine. The general license is fine. Apparently what was done in October was fine. We just made them wait for no reason. But to sort of do a cover your ass move, we'll get them to sign this sworn statement that says get this extra license. OFAC said we're not going to give it. And so MLB said, all right, well, as a proxy for that extra level of legal coverage, we're just going to write out this sheet of paper with like three sentences on it that sort of quotes OFAC's rules. And if you sign that, then that should be good enough.

And that was the thing I mentioned at the beginning, that they sent it out to the agents and to the teams, and it was actually worded incorrectly and was actually even more stringent than OFAC's rules and so the agent said all right make it actually mirror what OFAC said which was sort of a further I don't want to say bungling but like there have been some sort of missteps by MLB and this was yet another one and what are the long-term implications for baseball of softening the sanctions are we coming closer to teams being able to scout cuban players in cuba uh there was that was mentioned in the memo that went out on monday that teams are still told you cannot scout cuban players in cuba and that these new rules only apply to players that

are already out of cuba and a couple days later, some more players defected. So presumably MLB will now be forced because of this hurried timetable by players continuing to defect to say what the rules are going forward. Although it would appear they can't really, it would appear the rules that they announced for these three players will apply to the next players. They just haven't said that sort of to the teams yet. But yeah, it would appear the timetable going from sort of weeks to get some stuff done and then waiting months and months and months for the OFAC clearance will now go to, you know, probably a total of a month from start to finish once the player ends up in a third country, which two players defected from the

Cubans who are playing in Puerto Rico right now, which I believe would technically be considered America. So if they have a presidency, they have to go to another country and then get this whole sort of month-long process going. But the fact that it's two to four weeks as opposed to six months is obviously more helpful than the long, drawn-out, excruciating process that we had to watch. Why did Cuba let him leave? Yeah, so that's another element of this.

Moncada was allowed to leave legally and is believed to be the first player to ever be allowed to leave the country. And I haven't had it confirmed, but every indication is that Ibanez, the other guy that is subject to pools and is now eligible to sign also, was also allowed to leave legally. It is still not clear how this happened. I have heard some theories. I have heard some, I would say educated guesses and from people in the know kind of how this

happened. But I, yeah, I don't know enough to say for sure, but it sounds like the government knew that there would be some indication that there was some, you know, some U S stuff was going to get undone or they were kind of moving down a road of being in a better place with the U.S. government. And so I think it may have been a show of good faith or a new policy.

But I can say from what I've been told, it was not a here's a document, hop on a plane and leave. It was still like a trying to pull teeth to actually get these players out of the country. And I was told that there were multiple sort of flights that both of them were sort of pulled off of in sort of like, oh, your papers aren't in order. And like, it was sort of a surprise when they were actually allowed to go. So it still wasn't a super easy process and it's not like a flyback whenever you want to open arms type deal. It was still a little, it clearly hadn't happened before. And so there was still a little bit of friction

in the process, but yeah, they both got out. And yeah, it's hard to say how that's going to go work out going forward because I think whatever the US works out with Cuba will have a lot to say about it because at this point, Americans can go into Cuba but it has to be with like sort of a specific visa and sort of a work reason. But if and when we get to the point where you and I can go down there and sit on a beach and drink rum and bring cigars back with us, then I think all of this sort of rules-based

political stuff kind of flies out the window because then people can just leave whenever they want to and presumably the floodgates will open, the process to become a free agent will go very quickly and then they'll have to be – I would imagine some sort of agreement between the Cuban government and MLB or something because if the players can just leave whenever they want to, then Cuba is going to want to get a piece of them and so they'll say they can leave whenever they want but we get 10% of whatever or something like that. That's sort of what we're moving toward, but we're moving very slowly. So to recap all of the intrigue that we've discussed here, we've got the first Cuban, whoever left legally.

We've got all this OFAC stuff and the rules changes there. OFAC stuff and the rules changes there. We've got all this attention to how absolutely ludicrous the international signing bonus restrictions are and how kind of unfeasible they are. We have essentially $40 million that is going to go to funding an international draft at some point. And we have the first prospect who's really ever going to sign a true market rate contract in a way that is probably going to be kind of a shock to the system, I would think, when you compare them to the draft picks that next year are going to get $6 million of similar quality ball player. So 25 years from now, do you think it's more likely that we remember this signing for what

it meant on the field? Or is this stuff that we're talking about does it have historical um significance is this going to be a a deal that people write books about 30 years from now or is it really kind of only interesting to us uh in the moment right now because we're waiting to see where he signs i'd like to say it will be the sort of curt flood of open market contracts for amateur players of all kinds. But given the traditional risk averse, change averse sort of way that baseball is run, and the fact that that probably isn't going to change anytime soon, just in general terms, I think we're always going to have some sort of controls on international players. And I think there will always be some sort of loophole, whether it be sort of the professional Japanese players and some sort of posting process or whatever, where they's because of political or baseball federations or whatever

that don't really want to play nice and just fit neatly into a draft process that MLB wants them to. I think there's always going to be some sort of loophole and Moncada happens to be sort of the perfect storm of the right player in the right time and the right rules and all that sort of thing. So yeah, I'd like to think it'll be the beginning of an open time where the top high school player in the country gets $70 million signing bonus as he deserves. But the union isn't going to stand for that. So even if for some reason through some crazy rule change that that is the way things work for one time, it is almost never – almost certainly never going to actually work that way.

almost certainly never going to actually work that way. So I think it'll be seen as a sort of the ending of the open signing time in international and the ending of the sort of big league contract, Bryce Harper, Steven Strasburg era of the draft and which was sort of came at the tail end of the steroid year. So maybe it'll be seen as just sort of the, the crazy wild West where anything goes. And then,

you know, suddenly baseball kind of wised up and said, money goes to the big leaguers. Money goes to the guys we can sell in the subway ads and both for the sandwiches and on ads in a subway. And then the amateur players get stiffed, whether it's third world country or America or junior colleges or Japan or Korea or whatever. I don't think that's going to fundamentally change. So when do you anticipate publishing your Moncada contract analysis? Is it going to be between now and spring training? Yeah, he's going to sign before spring training. There's no reason to wait that long.

I know he still has some workouts with teams, and I'm sure some of the teams that are most interested would like to get one more look at him or maybe get a team president in there, that sort of level of guy if they haven't already seen him. But the teams that matter, probably the Dodgers and Yankees are the two teams that are sort of in the mix. They probably already know what they're going to do, and there might just be sort of a due diligence, you know, week,

maybe two weeks. And the teams that are going to, you know, try to hang around 30 million and hope the price stays down there. I think they'll be eliminated pretty quickly. And the teams that are maybe thought to be in that area, but might go up to 40. I think they'll sort of throw in their high bid and try to see if they can work into it. But yeah, I would expect, let's see right now, it's February 6th. I don't see any way he isn't done by March 1. So I would guess sometime this month. When do you think he'll make his debut? He'll play in the big leagues. Oh, okay. I would guess that he would do I would guess that he would do a combination of A ball and double A this year. And I think because it's ticking clock on the service time, you wouldn't want to call him up this year.

And I'm not sure he'd be ready because he'd be playing at age 19. And then I think 2016, he would start at double A or triple A. And then it would be once he's ready, depending on the team. Some teams are more aggressive with that than others. But if you remember Puig, he signed in 2012, went to rookie ball and got like 100 at-bats. And then he went at age 22 to AA, got 167 plate appearances and was in the big leagues right after that because he basically never wasn't dominating. And so at age 20, Moncada is a AA A or triple A and has a position figured out and is hitting above league average and the team is one that is in a race or willing to call him up or sort of the service time stuff works out, I would guess it'll be by the middle of 2016.

And there could be a September 2015 thing. But I think given his specific parameters of paying so much for such a precious amount of time, there'd be no reason to sort of, you know, mess around with, you know, doing sort of a PR thing in September for a team that's not in the race. One non-Moncada question, if you still take those, do you still accept those? No. A couple of months ago, you wrote about bias in prospect reporting and prospect ranking. And this is something that Jason Parks used to talk about a lot, how he would always want to go to sources outside an organization to confirm things that an organization told him about a player just to make sure they weren't inflating their own guys.

And you wrote something a couple months ago about how maybe that seems to be less of a necessity now or that teams aren't trying to manipulate where their prospects appear on these lists quite as much as they once did. So I wonder whether after a couple more months of rankings, whether you still find that to be the case and if so, why? find that to be the case? And if so, why? Yeah, the funny thing was, after I wrote that about a couple weeks later, there was a team that had, I believe, three people all tell me varying versions of what I consider to be an erroneous scouting report on the positive side for a guy. And I was like, I don't even know that guy's name. Like, there shouldn't be a guy in the top 10 of a list that I've like literally never heard of. And then I kind of went and asked around some sort of pro scouting guys that, you know, have sort of all the reports for their team. And they're like, Oh no, he's not, he's not top 10.

He's like maybe 15, probably 20. And I'm thinking like, what's the, what's the gap? And so I kind of compare reports. They're like, yeah, it's just, they kind of juiced every rating. And you know, some teams will say the bat's better than it is, or the power's better than it is. They usually don't juice every tool one notch though. And then I tracked down a couple scouts that saw him because he's a low level guy. So he has been seen by a ton of scouts. And one of them said, I heard they're trying to trade him. I was like, oh, that makes a ton of sense now. And so I then called one more source with the team and sort of recounted this whole thing to them. And they're like, no, I think we're just I think we're just the high guys on it. We're not trying to trade him. I would say sort of no comment if I was trying to hide something. And I had heard that there was some makeup problems.

There was not any makeup problems. I think we just like him more than everybody else. But I was like, OK, so they like him. They'd like to push him as a guy they want to have high. And they maybe got a little aggressive with that because some basically the tools were kind of 55. Some guys said six and then some guys said 70. And I was like, all right, it's not 70. Like, that's impossible. And so, yeah. So basically, after I said no one's really lied to me yet, somebody lied to me like a week later. And I don't know if they read that first. But but I also say that the overarching sort of message is still true, that the teams know that I'm going to double check what they say.

And that if even I get careless and just write whatever they tell me, not every outlet is not going to do that. And so the truth will get out there in one way or another. And then by next year, I'm going to figure out that they lied to me. And then I'm not going to listen to them. And at some level, they would like the prospect rankings, however much you want to dispute their worth, to positively reflect their players. They'd like to be able to sort of get their message out, even if it's the truth, just be able to say this good thing is happening. I'd like for you to mention this good thing, which reflects well on them. And if, you know, if they think I'm, they're going to

get caught lying to me, then I'm not going to listen to them and I'll just go to other people. And there's some teams where I know like seven guys that I'll talk to all on the same team. And there's some where I talked to one or two. And I'm sure that's, you know, true for all the different, you know, publications and lists and all that. So I think it's sort of, as I was sort of saying in the article, there's a commodification of sort of the opinions that there's enough different places that the aggregate is going to be true. And so you can cash in some chips and lie to me and pay the price. But I don't think anyone sees that as a positive at this point because everyone's sort of got some version of the same answer anyway. Do you find that there's a pervasive

difference in team prospect rankings and internet prospect rankings having worked on some team ones during your time with teams? Because some people with teams will tell me that internet prospect rankers tend to inflate tools and people with teams care more about probability and how close you are and how likely you are to produce something do you find that that's the case that i mean obviously it varies by team but is there any systemic difference yeah i think it depends uh on what your task is so like on the internet if i uh like let's say there's a triple a guy that's like a low ceiling high probability guy and people have him 40th and i have a 90th and then he goes up to the big leagues and he's good it's like oh i had

him on my top 100 i knew he was good i just didn't think he'd be quite that good like that doesn't really cost me anything and if i take a guy in rookie ball and put him at 30 and he blows up the next year i look really smart like that is way more positive for me than slightly missing on the triple A guy who everybody knew his name is negative. And so I and the people on the internet are incentivized to try to get the toolsy guy that's about to have a statistical breakout and become like a super stud a year before everybody does, because that's what you're rewarded for. And if you work for a team, like you're trying to get the right answers. Like we need to have a good trade and get a player who will be good uh because we'll get hired or fired based off of this and so uh you know certain teams like different sorts of things obviously the ace

you know it seems like this offseason they kind of lean toward the higher probability big league uh everyday guy of sort of a lower end variety as opposed to, say, the low minors, high upside riskier type guy. So some teams prefer that. And I think in general, if you're going to trade for a guy, it's going to be like we're trading a good big leaguer for two minor leaguers. You generally don't want to trade for two super far off high risk guys because then it will be seen by your owner and your fans as we traded a good big leaguer for two guys that were nothing. Like you'd like to get something out of it or at least have a guy that can get to the upper levels and have some trade value and you can flip in for something else and sort of point to this is the thing that we got out of this player. And so I think there's a general risk aversion to taking a shot on low-level guys unless it's a very low-level trade to where there's –

the upside isn't high. So why don't we just sort of take a shot and see what we can get? So I think the differences come down to what the ranker is incentivized to do and sort of what their goal is. And I think in general, there's a risk aversion in front offices for this reason. And I think there's probably people running toward risk, especially sort of the lower level tools guy on the internet because that's where sort of the greatest reward can be. All right.

I think we've accomplished all we can accomplish here. Thank you for joining us again. That's quite an indictment of what I'm capable of. Listen carefully because this is your kickback for coming on today. You can use the coupon code BP to get a discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to our sponsor, the Baseball Reference Play Index. People can follow Kylie on Twitter at KylieMCD. You can find his writing at Fangraphs, where he occasionally covers non-Johan Moncada players.

And we are back to five a week, officially back to five shows a week. We are starting our team preview series on Monday. I can't see Sam, but I'm sure he's beaming ear to ear. Back to five. I won't give away what team we are starting with, but we are, again, going in reverse order of Pocota projected win totals. So you can probably figure out where we're starting. So that is something to look forward to next week. Please rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes.

Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Thank you, Kylie. Do you think people want to hear me talk more? Do you think they got enough? There are other avenues where they can hear you if they're that desperate. To be fair, I am super tired of listening to me talk. So I'm going to leave now. All right.

Everyone have a nice weekend. We will be back on Monday. With three people, there's always the risk that if I stop listening, I'll ask the question that's already been asked and answered. I've done that one before, yeah. Yeah, it's brutal. It's happened before when I'm doing it with Carson, where he'll get into a super long question that takes like five minutes,

and then he'll get to the end and I'll be like, you cut out for a second. He'll be like, oh, I'll ask it again in a shorter version. I'm like, oh, thank God. But now that I said that, you can't use that as a move because that's my move but over skype you always have that out if you kind of tuned up you're like uh you cut out you got a little scratchy there i missed the keyword you said do or do not wait a minute you guys told me that i cut out sorry i'm going through a tunnel sam i gotta go