If BA were telling the full truth, they’d advise us to not stress the draft too much—-but that would be self-defeating.

It seems to me we did well just by signing a bunch of our picks. I don’t follow amateur baseball one bit, and so I don’t know who to believe in rating individual picks and draft hauls against another. My instincts tell me we did just fine considering our lack of a high pick, and that our total draft expenses were about where they ought to be.

serves nosco right — he’s been extremely negative for quite some time.

too bad thye didn’t answer my question about the indians and the players we signed outside of the states

Saw that earlier. I credit Nosco at least with constructing a question that doesn’t make him sound insane.

Callis confirms my thinking that the Indians probably paid a significant premium above slot-price relative to the talent they signed. I had assumed that it was perhaps a 20% premium, but based on Callis’ remarks, it’s possible that the premium is more like 40%.

In other words, if we signed a flier-pick well above slot for $700,000, then it’s likely that his talent is equivalent not to a $700,000 slot pick, but more like a $520,000 slot pick. That is, we’re paying him the 520K that he’s worth in equivalent slot money, plus a 180K premium to lure him away from whatever factor it was that made him slide down in the draft because of signability.

That factor could be sophomore status, a strong college commitment, unrealistic money expectations, makeup questions, or short-term talent questions that might be resolved by scouting a guy in a summer showcase league like Cape Cod.

Nosco’s default view is that a player is only worth the slot money that matches his pre-draft prospect ranking. There are about six logical fallacies with that view, but it overlooks the essential problem with slot money, i.e., that these quasi-signability guys are worth far more to the team than their slot money, simply due to the scarcity of quality picks. If you’re overpaying a guy at his slot just to get him signed, then you drafted the wrong guy.

But if you’re signing a guy based on a flier pick, well below his ranking, then it’s worth paying a significant premium. With a regular slot pick, you’re just paying to sign the guy. But with a tough-sign slide-down flier pick, you’re paying not just to sign the guy, but to get an extra early-round draft pick. Obviously, the Indians aren’t the only team to have figured this out.

I’m going to go ahead and say it. Guest article from Nosco and then a debate on how he views things in the comments section