The San Diego Padres have now signed seven of their top ten picks from the 2010 draft, as they announced the signing of third round pitcher Zach Cates yesterday:
The Padres have agreed to terms with Northeast Texas CC righthander Zach Cates for $765,000, the largest bonus paid out in the third round so far this year. It’s also more than double MLB’s recommendation of $380,700 for his No. 91 draft slot.
Cates spent most of his 2009 freshman season as a catcher and pitched just seven innings before blossoming on the mound as a sophomore. His fastball ranged from 90-93 to 95-97 mph, and he also showed a relatively advanced changeup. His curveball flashes some promise as well. He would have transferred to Oklahoma State had he not turned pro.
The Padres have also signed eighth round pick Jose Dore, an outfielder from Florida (and a Florida State commit) for $450,000, three times the recommended slot.
The deadline to sign draft picks is tomorrow at 11:59PM (EST) and the Padres still haven’t signed their first pick RHP Karsten Whitson, their sixth round pick RHP John Barbato, or their seventh round selection RHP A.J. Vanegas.
Whitson is a consensus premium talent and he’s expected to sign. Barbato and Vanegas have always had signability issues, as they both fell to the Padres due to their commitments to Florida and Stanford, respectively.
It has been nice to see the Padres (1) draft premium talent over the last couple of years and (2) sign most of those picks, going over slot to do so. Hopefully we will see the trend continue tomorrow with the Padres inking Whitson, Barbato, and Vanegas to deals.
Well, I heard we signed Barbato but lost Whitson. Oh well it is encouraging to see them drafting and signing more aggessively!
Wow, this is pretty shocking to me. Whitson was supposed to be an easy sign, at least for a top pick. Not to mention, Vanegas was the better option over Barbato (according to the scouts).
I’m sure we’ll have more on this later, but right now I’m really surprised.
Hoyer and DePo made things pretty clear today. They had a draft-day agreement for slot money, which the kid backed out of. They increased their offer to above-slot, but he demanded to be paid like a top 5 pick and the team wouldn’t do it.
Thanks for that, Zach.
I’ve been reading that he wanted like $2.7M, which is what a 4-5 pick would expect.
I just can’t believe that $500-600K gets in the way of bringing in a top prospect.
Yeah.
I’m thinking maybe they wanted to avoid setting a precedent for caving to demands like that. But I can’t help feeling that if they really felt he has as much potential as they’ve made it sound like, they should have just paid the extra half million and signed him.
There’s a fine line between doing what it takes to bring in talent and making a poor investment. It sounds like the Padres only decided to take Whitson after assuring themselves that the risk of a HS arm was balanced by a 1.9 million price tag. At some point, which the Padres felt was the 2.2 million mark, it crossed over to “poor investment.”
From what the front office has said and written, if Whitson hadn’t been clear about his intentions, they’d have popped somebody else. He was clear, and then he backtracked.
I’d say this argues more for discarding the farcical NCAA rule about agents. If the Padres had been dealing directly with SFX, instead of the family who then “consulted” with SFX, the confusion might have been avoided.
Tom, fair points, but there’s a ton of variability with a HS pitcher (or any draft pick, as we know). With that said I have a hard time believing $1.9M is a good investment here while $2.3M+ is not.
Sometimes it’s easier to step back from the decimal points, which tend to obfuscate just how much cash we’re talking about. Whitson reportedly wanted 2,700,000 as of late last night. That’s 800,000 more than he originally indicated he’d sign for, something like a 40% increase. That’s real money. It’s not only a sizable percentage, it’s an awful lot of real cash. A 10th round kid looking for 56,000 instead of 40,000, same %, but it’s the per-diem for a long road trip. $800,000 is two major leaguers making the minimum.
The principle of value works whether you’re buying a cheeseburger, a car, a house, a corporate share, or the rights to a baseball player.
Sure, I guess, but I think you have to invest money into system to expect much out of it. The Padres had a chance here to invest in guys like Whitson and Vanegas and improve the system. They didn’t.
They added some other talent, no doubt. But looking at the 2010 class without those two looks pretty mediocre.
It’s not a great draft, but investing isn’t the same as turning on the money spigot and letting it run. Would you pay 28K for a car with a list price of 20K, just because you needed something to drive?
You can ask if the Padres did enough research about Whitson’s willingness to sign. Was he really as committed to pro ball as they say, or did they hear what they wanted to? You can ask if the Padres pushed hard enough to know his final demand soon enough, so that they’d have more time to negotiate. You can ask if Moorad got his nose out of joint and missed a final chance to submit another offer, although it sounds like he got involved very late. But what’s not true is that a good buy at Figure A is necessarily still a good buy at Figure A + 40%.
Vanegas was always the longest shot. Not many kids turn their back of Stanford.
There’s another side to “investing,” too, and that’s the team’s ability to negotiate effectively in the future. It’s not brand management, but it’s something similar. You don’t want to get the reputation as someone who will roll over, although if a strict slot system comes into effect, that won’t matter so much.
I feel bad for Whitson. He picks up all the risk in this situation. His agent’s out 200 grand, but he has more clients. The Padres signed another pitcher with a first-round arm and they get the compensation pick. It’s not ideal, but it does ameliorate things a bit. Whitson’s chances to do better are very slim and his chances to do worse are high. I hope he stays healthy.
Tom,
I responded in the newer thread to make the discussion a little easier to follow.