TwistedLogic

Yes.

Blue Jays lineup today: Not Justin Smoak.

I thought there was a limit to the amount of funds you could acquire? If the Jays can get 2 mil from the Dodgers, then this could be a pretty good thing. Though I hate that they had to give up DeJong.

No, but maybe it'll reduce the penalty to the point where they're only locked for one year, instead of two. Not sure how viable that strategy is, considering the possibility of a potential IFA draft in the future, but I also don't know how soon that might come.

Which isn't necessarily a good thing. If Vladdy Little really signed for 3.9M, I don't think the Jays can do much to get out of the imposed limits. They'll just be trading assets to pinch pennies.

Blue Jays recognize value in international market http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/blue-jays-recognize-value-in-international-market/ “These guys are so young, I don’t know who the best 16 year old is going to be (next year),” he added. “We might have an idea but these guys change, it’s hard enough already to scout 18 year olds. If you have a player you really like and you’re trying to say, well, you forgo the opportunity to sign the best 16 year old two years from now or three years from now, well, you may not like that guy to begin with, and two, you may not even get him. We’re fine with taking the bird in the hand approach, but we better really feel good about the player if we were to do something like that.”

Any spending over the bonus pool allotment is taxed at 100%. A team that exceeds its bonus pool by more than 5% but less than 10% is prohibited from signing any international player the following year for more than $500,000. A team that exceeds its bonus pool by more than 10% but less than 15% percent is prohibited from signing any international player the following year for more than $300,000. A team that exceeds its bonus pool by more than 15% is prohibited from signing any international player for the following two years for more than $300,000.

If they blew their cap this year, they can't sign any international prospects for over 300K in either of the next two signing periods.

FanGraphs: A History of Josh Donaldson in Foul Territory http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-history-of-josh-donaldson-in-foul-territory/ Nice article, but I didn't post the entire thing because of all the annoying grammatical errors and questionable phrasing. "If you trust the metrics, Donaldson is great. Also, if you a person who watches him play, you probably think he’s great." Sounds like it was written by a teen.

Doesn't make as much sense to blow the limit this year, when they'll be up against the Dodgers.

Anthony Rizzo is magic. http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/63817564/v217700183/chcnym-rizzo-swipes-third-on-double-steal-in-9th/?query=anthony%2Brizzo http://giant.gfycat.com/UnsightlyRaggedCat.gif

The five hardest hit home runs in the MLB in 2015 4/23/15 | 120.5 MPH - Josh Donaldson (Video) 4/21/15 | 117.9 MPH - Edwin Encarnacion (Video) 4/27/15 | 117.5 MPH - Pablo Sandoval (Video) 6/23/15 | 117.3 MPH - Giancarlo Stanton (Video) 5/18/15 | 117.2 MPH - Jose Bautista (Video) http://www.hittrackeronline.com/index.php?sortm=sob&sort=desc

The Rays have such dirty *******s.

If this is accurate, the valuation of the Jays franchise has nearly tripled in the last four years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Blue_Jays#Popularity

I know that. I just mentioned him because his signing is what enabled the Brentz and Tellez signings. It had nothing to do with Bickford. My point stands. I'm not saying that there's no way that Maese is hurt, but the idea that Maese lost half his perceived value because of his physical and still signed the next day is just stupid. Something like that would almost positively create a delay in the signing, especially for someone who'd actually be able to leverage a good commitment. Just because the Jays signed him in the third round doesn't mean he had the value or stock of a third rounder (and clearly he didn't, based on his price tag). We have no way of knowing where he'd have gone if the Jays didn't take him. They do their due dilligence on every player they pick and they have a gauge on what it will take to get them ahead of time. If they knew they could sign him far below slot, there's no reason for them to not take him earlier and set up the rest of their board with that in mind.

Maybe because they like Pruitt at 500K more than they like Crouse at 600K. When the Jays missed on Bickford, they lost all of his slot dollars, so once again, it had no relevance on the signings of Brentz and Tellez. In fact, that case was actually a perfect comp to this one, because just like Maese, Hollon signed for well below what people assumed he'd sign for, and it freed up enough dollars to get the others. Are you not reading what you're writing? So you're Justin Maese and you've got a pretty decent Texas Tech scholarship, you get drafted in the third round, the team that drafted you tells you they found something in your physical that makes them hesitate, and you almost immediately sign for half your perceived value, because "f*** it"? When you're hitting 96 and you've got a "pretty decent" commitment, if a team comes to you trying to low-ball you because of your physical, why would you immediately settle for half the slot? The news that Maese was signing literally broke within a day of his draft selection. Sounds to me like the Jays talked to him before the draft like they talk to all the guys they're interested in, asked him if he'd sign for 300K if they made him a third rounder, and they got the go-ahead. Which would explain why there was no apparent pause for negotiations before Maese was going around telling people that he's signing. Rather than the idea that the team found something in his physical that very suddenly and very drastically altered his value, and yet, didn't result in any delay or hitch in the signing.

I did now. I was going to get dinner when I made my previous post. First off, I don't think that anyone should be all that surprised by how much Maese signed for. Nobody really had an accurate gauge on what his value was and where he should be ranked, and I think it was pretty widely understood that was very little chance that he wouldn't sign -- he was a pop-up guy who was extremely excited to go pro. Secondly, I don't even see how Maese is all that relevant to this discussion in the first place. metafour's statement of "make no mistake that this signing almost certainly doesn't happen if we don't save nearly $340K on Maese" is obviously flawed, since the Jays still have $435K in excess funds available after the Pruitt signing. Maese's 340K had no bearing on this signing. I think the biggest surprise here should be that Pruitt signed for just 500K. It was pretty accurately predicted by some that the Jays would have around 900K-1M in savings when the first batch of big signings were done, and I thought that if Pruitt were to sign, it would take most of that amount to do it. Of the three sites that are tracking the draft signings, between us, BBB and BJP, I was the only one not to put a label of "not signing" next to Pruitt's name. After seeing what happened with guys like Alford, Brentz and Tellez, the only thing we can know for certain when it comes to teenagers making million dollar decisions is that we don't actually know anything at all.

No, I wasn't talking about you, so I'm not going to read the rest of your post.

After going 100K over on Williams and 400K over on Pruitt, the Jays have just $165,000 of savings remaining. If they are willing to go the 5% over their limit, that would give them an additional $270,550, for a total of $435,550 that they can offer to somebody over their slot.

See, I knew they had a chance at signing Pruitt. Some dick on BBB kept insisting to me that I was wrong and they wouldn't get him. This same thing happened with Tellez and Brents a few years ago as well, and Pruitt's tweet about not signing happened before he was even drafted by the Jays. Good on the Jays for getting it done.

This inning should have been over on a Napoli strikeout. Retard umps.