Yoenis Cespedes *Signs with Oakland*

[Warner2BruceTD]

I'm not a scout, I don't know if he's going to be any good or not, but I always like when other teams get in the mix and make a splash like this, so good for Oakland, who I am always beating up on for not even trying. I'm glad they snuck in there and stole him from the Cubs and Marlins.

[FirstTimer]

I'm not a scout, I don't know if he's going to be any good or not, but I always like when other teams get in the mix and make a splash like this, so good for Oakland, who I am always beating up on for not even trying. I'm glad they snuck in there and stole him from the Cubs and Marlins.

Apparently it turned out the Cubs weren't real players. I guess they have been looking harder at Soler anyways.

[NAHSTE]

Apparently, 26-year olds with A-ball equivalent experience are the new market inefficiency.

[Woy]

After the success of Moneyball, Billy Beane is trying to recreate Major League for this season.

[Goober]

This is definitely out of left field. You could have given me 20 guesses, to try and guess where he signs, and I wouldn't have guessed Oakland.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

I'm not a scout, I don't know if he's going to be any good or not, but I always like when other teams get in the mix and make a splash like this, so good for Oakland, who I am always beating up on for not even trying. I'm glad they snuck in there and stole him from the Cubs and Marlins.

From what I hear, the Marlins scouts and personnel people were split on the guy. Some loved his potential, some thought he was a big time project.

We'll see. He got a nice chunk of change.

I forget who said it in this thread, but I like the comparison of his potential to that of BJ Upton right now. If you love BJ Upton, that's fine...but he's the type where you're like "damn, he's leaving a lot of potential on the table."

I guess for $36M, its not the worst deal in the world, despite it being the highest for a Cuban defector.

[Slateman]

A's have a lot of outfielders now.

Might they be willing to deal one?

[Guest]

I'm not a scout, I don't know if he's going to be any good or not, but I always like when other teams get in the mix and make a splash like this, so good for Oakland, who I am always beating up on for not even trying. I'm glad they snuck in there and stole him from the Cubs and Marlins.

Yet they wouldn't put money out there to keep Cahill and Gonzalez. Yeah, they are trying but for a small market team to blow that kind of money when they just let two pitchers get away is asinine. Billy Beane deserves to be fired after today.

[Guest]

"It stinks to be an American in this way:Annual salary paid out for Cespedes is almost at the level of 10-round draft cap under new MLB rules"

And this is another reason why MLB needs to look at some serious overhaul of international free agents. They need to institute some sort of draft, or combine the two. At least with Cespedes, the team signing him didn't have to give up a posting fee.

[NAHSTE]

Yet they wouldn't put money out there to keep Cahill and Gonzalez. Yeah, they are trying but for a small market team to blow that kind of money when they just let two pitchers get away is asinine. Billy Beane deserves to be fired after today.

Gonzalez isn't that good though and he got a good haul out of it.

Here's a reasonable take by KLaw. Kind of highlights the best case scenario but keeps things pretty tempered:

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/law_keith/id/7571374/oakland-need-yoenis-cespedes-produce-immediately

The Oakland Athletics surprised everyone by signing Yoenis Cespedes to a reported four-year, $36 million deal when they hadn't been publicly linked to the Cuban outfielder before the news leaked out Monday morning. For their investment, they're getting a tooled-up hitter in his prime years by age but whose inexperience has led to some questions about how soon he'll have an impact.

Just grading out Cespedes on tools, he looks like a monster. His chiseled body wouldn't look out of place in an NFL backfield, but he isn't so jacked up that he's unable to move well. He'll show plus-plus raw power, and on a straight track, he's about a 65 runner (on the 20-80 scouting scale), although it'll play below that when running the bases. He's probably too big for center but should have plus range in right and has plenty of arm for it. His bat path isn't great, but he does have tremendous bat speed with a pull-oriented approach that, when he squares something up, produces enormous power. It's not hard to see him hitting 30 homers in the majors if he can hit enough to get to that power.

Cespedes hasn't faced a lot of good pitching and has faced very little pitching of any sort since defecting, so he'll probably be best served spending a few weeks or even months in the upper minors to shake off the rust and get used to facing better-quality off-speed stuff. The pull-happy approach leaves him very vulnerable on the outer half, and that kind of effort makes it hard to stay on the ball unless you've got superb hand-eye coordination. He also showed in his brief stint in the Dominican Winter League that he struggled to pick up spin out of the pitcher's hand, so adjusting to breaking balls probably will be the biggest obstacle between him and major league impact.

The other question on Cespedes is his age. Even assuming he's actually 26 -- the ages of Cuban ballplayers are difficult to verify -- that puts him right in his peak years, and by the time this contract is up, he'll be 30 and entering a decline phase. Yet some of those peak years will be spent making up for lost development time, so the A's probably will have to get most of their return on this deal in the final two to three years. That fits their organizational philosophy of building toward 2014-15, but it also will increase the risk that they don't get sufficient bang for their buck.

[FUSE]

Yet they wouldn't put money out there to keep Cahill and Gonzalez. Yeah, they are trying but for a small market team to blow that kind of money when they just let two pitchers get away is asinine. Billy Beane deserves to be fired after today.

The thing that boggles me about trading those two away is they were still under contract for multiple years

[Guest]

The thing that boggles me about trading those two away is they were still under contract for multiple years

Yep, and through the time that Oakland wants to compete, and when Cespedes will finally be hitting his stride in the majors if they do a good job developing him.

[Goober]

"It stinks to be an American in this way:Annual salary paid out for Cespedes is almost at the level of 10-round draft cap under new MLB rules"

Yeah but Cespedes is 26. By the time the top talent Americans are that age, they'll be close to signing for a lot more.

[NAHSTE]

3 plate appearances today, 2-2 with a 1B, a HR and a BB.

Looked pretty damn good, worked counts well and seemed pretty comfortable.

[Bigpapa42]

I don't really wanna expect too much out of Cepedes this season. But he's one of the only interesting thing about the As this season, so its hard not to at least hope for something. Didn't pick a great season to get back into follow baseball closer, being an As fan...