Stacey King
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Rob Antony describes pre-draft dance with advisors
Rob Antony has been spending a lot of time on the phone in recent days, but it hasn’t necessarily been on conference calls to discuss which player the Twins should take with the No. 5 overall pick.
“It’s more individual phone calls,” said Antony, the Twins’ assistant general manager. “It’s that time of year when you get a lot of phone calls from people letting you know who they’re advising or helping out, who they’re friends with. That’s all before the draft.”
Under baseball’s wink-wink system, high school and college players can’t sign with an agent or risk losing their college eligibility (and, thus, their leverage). However, virtually all of the players projected for the first few rounds have oral agreements with experienced agents.
While the Houston Astros, who passed on Byron Buxton for a below-slot deal with shortstop Carlos Correa at the top of the 2012 draft, are reportedly considering that same approach in a draft that lacks a consensus No. 1 talent, the Twins aren’t inclined to reach at No. 5 just so they can stretch their $7.526 million draft allotment for the first 10 rounds.
“We’re going to take the best guy on the board,” Antony said, “but there might be somebody there that we like, and if we don’t take them they might fall. Sometimes it’s in the best interests of a player to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The Twins’ assigned slot value for their first-round pick is $3.851 million. That’s a significant drop from the $4.6 million the Chicago Cubs have to spend at No. 4, while the Astros ($7.92 million), Miami Marlins ($6.8 million) and Chicago White Sox ($5.7 million) all enjoy more flexibility in the top three.
Advisors are attempting to get a read on what’s real and what’s imagined in the final hours before Thursday night’s first round.
“That’s a lot of the calls I’m getting now,” Antony said.
He recreated the typical back and forth.
“Hey, is my guy …?”
“No.”
“Well, we’d be willing to do a deal.”
“OK, we’ll keep that in mind, but we’re not going to take a player that we have down on our board.”
The Twins have a $1,218,800 slot number for their second-round pick, No. 46 overall, so they don’t feel the need to go cheap at the top.
“Sometimes you can outsmart yourself,” Antony said. “Just take the best player.”
That’s what they did with Buxton at No. 2 overall in 2012, which cost them a $6 million signing bonus, slightly under slot.
Last year it was Houston-area high school right-hander Kohl Stewart, who signed for the slot number of $4.544 million and was considered worthy of that selection.
If the Astros pass on N.C.State left-hander Carlos Rodon, there is industry speculation Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria won’t let him slip past No. 2 in hopes of pairing him with fellow Cuban-American Jose Fernandez atop the rotation in future years.
The White Sox are reportedly enamored with Tyler Kolek, the Texas schoolboy flamethrower who has hit 102 mph on the radar gun. GM Rick Hahn also has given public indications the team would prefer to draft a pitcher after spending $68 million on Cuban slugger Jose Abreu this offseason.
The Cubs have stockpiled numerous high-end bats in their system, but GM Theo Epstein was spotted watching Georgia prep catcher Max Pentecost, who could be a value pick at No. 4 that would enable the Cubs to stretch their dollars on pitching later in the draft.
Where does that leave the Twins? Considering all of their options, which also are believed to include Orlando prep shortstop Nick Gordon, younger brother of Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Dee Gordon and son of former big-league pitcher Tom Gordon; as well as LSU right-hander Aaron Nola, Evansville left-hander Kyle Freeland and possibly Hartford lefty Sean Newcomb.
It’s also hard to imagine the Twins letting either left-hander Brady Aiken or catcher Alex Jackson, both prep standouts from San Diego, sliding past if either unexpectedly makes it beyond the top four.
“What you do is you just look at the scenario: ‘OK, if this guy is here, are we taking him?’ “ Antony said. “You’ve got to understand signability as well. When you’re picking that high, even though we’re picking five, you still deal with the disappointment.
“Some people read Baseball America for the last two months and expect to go first or second. All of a sudden, ‘Fifth? Wait a minute, what?’ That’s the agent’s job to prepare them. That’s what they should be doing, I would hope at this point, is letting them know, ‘Hey, we think you could go there. What happens if not and we have to make decisions and we have to give people answers? What do you want to do?’ ”
The Twins’ slot number, after all, is less than half of what the No. 2 pick is authorized to receive by Major League Baseball guidelines. The fall from 1-1 is even more precipitous.
“Even though you have the dollars and the stars in your eyes,” Antony said, “the reality is only one guy is going to go first and one guy is going to go second.”
The bonus schedule does flatten out immediately after the Twins, with teams picking between sixth and 10th all having between $3.576 million (Seattle Mariners) and $2.97 million (New York Mets) for their recommended slot.
That actually could work against the Twins’ ability to cut a pre-draft deal as some advisors might be more willing to roll the dice at that point than earlier in the process.
“It’s usually the team that picks first that’s got to be the linchpin,” Antony said. “No one is talking after that because they don’t want to let the people ahead of them know what they would do or the people behind them. It’s not like we can pick off any of the first four teams, but they’re still not saying who they’re taking. They’re not sure. It will depend.”
And while Antony said he doesn’t think “anything will break before Thursday,” he agreed the trust level between certain teams and certain agents could go a long way in determining how this year’s draft shakes out.
“It plays a role,” he said. “You have more trust and confidence in some people than others. Over time, we’ve all been in the business long enough that we’ve built relationships with different agents, so you’re more comfortable with some than others. You know if they say, ‘Hey, we’re signing at that’ or ‘This is what it would take,’ then OK, you can take that. You can take them at their word.”
Hard-driving agents such as Scott Boras, who is reportedly advising Rodon, Jackson and OregonState outfielder Michael Conforto, might have a different impact on the draft. The Twins, it should be pointed out, took a Boras client (LSU right-hander Ryan Eades) in the second round last year as well as California prep outfielder Chris Parmelee in the first round in 2006.
“Some people are just vague,” Antony said, speaking generally. “A lot of agents don’t lie. They just say, ‘Take him and we’ll get it done’ or ‘We’ll figure it out.’ “
In the Twins’ universe, that’s not good enough — not considering what’s at stake.
“It’s a simple thing,” Antony said. “We don’t say, ‘We’ll give you this, will you take it?’ We just say, ‘What are you looking for? We’re picking at five. You know what our slot number is. Is he signable?’ “
The Twins went well above slot for last year’s fourth-rounder, paying $700,000 for San Diego prep lefty Stephen Gonsalves, but he was a late first-round talent who slipped due to character concerns.
At No. 5 overall, the Twins intend to spend up to slot and “not above that,” Antony said.
“If some (agents) say, ‘You’d have to get creative’ or ‘It would take more than that’ or ‘Take somebody weak with your second pick and pay them half as much and then we’ll get something (done),’ that’s probably going to be out. We’re not interested in doing that.”
Bottom line, while picking in the top five of a balanced, pitching-laden draft, the Twins are confident things will work out to their satisfaction, regardless of how many twists and turns the process takes in the final 24 hours.
“We think we’re going to get a pretty good player at five,” Antony said. “We think there’s some depth. After the players that are taken with the four picks ahead of us, we’ll take the guy we want with the fifth.”
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