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Logic in Phillies passing on Yoan Moncada, right or wrong

The signing of Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada likely made more sense for Boston than it would have for the Phillies.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - I am going to double back on something I wrote yesterday, and because there are still 37 days left in spring training, I'm not going to feel bad about it.

Words will be written on other topics. For now, though, let's look at an issue that several people raised via Twitter and email yesterday with regard to the Red Sox' signing of Cuban infield prospect Yoan Moncada. As I mentioned in the column, one of the mitigating factors that clubs had to consider before signing Moncada was the accompanying forfeiture of the right to sign any international players for more than $300,000 for 2 years.

That's the penalty for any club that exceeds its allotted international bonus pool, which any Moncada deal obviously would have required (the Phillies had the seventh-highest allotment at $3.1 million). This is in addition to paying a 100 percent tax on the overage. The Red Sox gave Moncada a $31.5 million bonus that, with the penalty, increased their total commitment to $63 million.

One can argue that I did not spend enough time detailing the impact of the 2-year signing ban. One can also argue that, given the lunacy of the international market and the space limitations of a finite substance like newsprint, such a detailed explanation would have required its own column. In any event, this is that column.

First, just to reiterate, I never argued that the Phillies' valuation of Moncada at a number less than that of the Red Sox represented an error in judgment. I argued that it represented a difference in judgment, and that the success or failure of their rebuilding process could very well be determined by the accuracy of such judgments, and that a fanbase that has suffered through three straight losing seasons can't be faulted if it assumes that the Red Sox' value judgment will prove to be more prescient than the Phillies' value judgment.

Maybe the Red Sox made the right move. Maybe the Phillies made the right (non) move. Maybe they both made the right move for their respective situations. None of what you are about to read should be read as existing within an argument that Ruben Amaro Jr. and Co. should have signed Moncada.

All that being said, the Phillies certainly factored the 2-year signing ban into their valuation. The introduction of the international bonus pool and MLB's hard line against violators - the 2-year ban used to be a 1-year ban - has led to the proliferation of gentlemen's agreements with prospects as teams attempt to land discount rates by locking up players early (a bird in hand, etc., at least from the prospect's perspective). So a team like the Phillies might have been dissuaded from signing Moncada because it would prevent them from signing prospects they had already targeted in future signing periods.

One can argue that a team like the Phillies should be prioritizing quantity as it attempts to rebuild its farm system, and that a decision to put all of their eggs in Moncada's basket would dramatically hamper their ability to do so. The Red Sox can afford to take a bigger risk on a single player because of the amount of talent they have in their system. Or so the argument goes.

The counterargument, though, is as follows: Dollars are dollars, and 63 million of them are 63 million of them, regardless of how many players they end up signing. Whether you purchase one share of Google at $400 or two shares of Tesla at $200, you still have $400 invested in the stock market, and the wisdom of your investment will be determined by how accurately you project the future value of each individual asset.

In our scenario, the Google share is Moncada, and the Tesla shares are the multiple prospects the Phillies sign instead of Moncada. If you forecast Google's value to increase by 10 percent over a certain time period, and you forecast Tesla's value to increase by 3 percent over the same time period, then the smart play is to purchase one share of Google instead of two shares of Tesla. If the probability of Moncada developing into a certain kind of player exceeds the combined probabilities of the two lesser prospects, then quantity shouldn't matter.

That's a drastically oversimplified version. Maybe the next column will be dedicated entirely to the notion of Expected Value. Point is, the Phillies' rebuilding effort will depend on their accuracy in assigning these types of values. And that holds true even if you point out that a better analogy might be a $200 share of Tesla and a $200 share of Lockheed Martin vs. a $400 share of Google, because the former is a more diverse profile. In your estimation, the higher risk of the latter might make the former a better value, but we're still talking about your estimation. We're still talking about the number you use to quantify risk, and how you arrived at it, and how that process compares to the processes employed by other teams. In our baseball example, the Phillies have already factored risk into whatever equation resulted in their valuing the combination of Prospect X and Prospect Y over the value of Prospect Z.

None of these examples is perfect, but they hopefully illustrate the point I was trying to make with regard to Moncada. We're not talking about a zero-sum game between the Red Sox and the Phillies. We're talking about a zero-sum game between the Phillies' actual valuation of Moncada and the totality of all of the higher valuations they could have assigned to him.

One of them will be right. One of them will be wrong. And the rate of rightness or wrongness of all of the actual player valuations that the Phillies' front office will make over the course of the rebuilding process will determine the level of its success or the level of its failure.