{"id":14151,"date":"2012-07-16T18:34:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T17:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=14151"},"modified":"2012-07-16T18:34:42","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T17:34:42","slug":"has-appel-shot-himself-in-the-foot-with-bonus-demands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=14151","title":{"rendered":"Has Appel shot himself in the foot with bonus demands?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With new rules in place for the 2012 MLB amateur player draft, limiting teams to how much they can spend on signing players, just one first-round pick failed to sign a deal: Mark Appel, who was negotiating with the Pirates. The recommended draft slot was $2.9m and the Pirates apparently offered $3.8m but Appel said no.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but think Appel may live to regret not\u00c2\u00a0coming to an agreement here.<\/p>\n

It is not that unusual to see draft selections fail to reach a deal. Players are not duty bound to sign. Sometimes high school players may opt to get a college education before pursuing a professional sports career, which is understandable. They may see value in not only getting a degree but also they may feel their stock will rise with a few years of college baseball under their belts, meaning they are selected earlier in the draft and therefore pocket a larger signing bonus.<\/p>\n

This scenario may be more common towards the end of the draft, where late-round picks may pass on a signing bonus in the thousands in a bid to do much better in a few years’ time. Others may choose to pursue a career in another sport, such as the NFL or NBA.<\/p>\n

But seeing first round selections fail to sign saddens me, especially when it is clear it is all about the money.<\/p>\n

Two examples in fairly recent years which spring to mind are J.D. Drew and Luke Hochevar, who turned down multi-million dollar offers from Philadelphia in 1997 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005 respectively. Both players wanted big bucks, made clear in Drew’s case by hiring Scott Boras as his agent, while Hochevar’s negotiations with the Dodgers were a mess on his part, with last-ditch changes of heart and agent changes adding to the chaos.<\/p>\n

Drew was drafted by St. Louis the next year and went on to have a decent, if injury-prone career, but one which could have been one year longer had he signed with the Phillies. After spurning the Dodgers, Hochevar was picked by Kansas City the following year, and has been in the Royals’ rotation for the past few years with fairly mediocre results.<\/p>\n

So why is Appel not signing such a big deal, you may wonder. Drew and Hochevar still made it to the Major Leagues, so why can’t Appel? Well, if anyone wants to read about the nightmare of holding out for more money and watching your career go from bad to worse,\u00c2\u00a0head over to\u00c2\u00a0Matt Harrington’s Wikipedia page<\/a>, read it and wince.<\/p>\n

Appel should expect to be drafted next year. If he has another great year at Stanford he could go higher than the 8th overall pick he was this year. But the fact he fell to 8th was due to “signability issues” – a polite way of saying he wants big bucks.<\/p>\n

With the new financial rules in place for MLB teams this year, players can no longer expect teams to buckle to their requests as easily as before. Pittsburgh could have given Appel the huge bonus he wanted, but if they had exceeded their draft budget they would have forfeited their first-round pick in 2013, a risk which they cannot afford to take. Appel may be good, but he’s not as good as two first-round picks combined.<\/p>\n

The only way Appel can improve on this year’s offer is to hope he gets drafted in the first few picks next year, wait for that team to sign other players for less than the recommended draft pick value and get extra money from these savings so the team avoids any penalties. Is this really going to happen?<\/p>\n

There’s also the possibility Appel could be overtaken by other pitching prospects next year.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, Appel’s quest for the big bucks has actually cost him, as a player recognised as a top two or three pick scared away teams early in the draft. If he had shown more of a willingness to sign before the draft, he could and would have been picked earlier and potentially been offered a much higher signing bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark George offers some thoughts on 2012 first-round pick Mark Appel’s decision to turn down the Pittsburgh Pirates’ $3.8m draft bonus proposal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553,124],"class_list":["post-14151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2","tag-pittsburgh-pirates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14151"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14155,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14151\/revisions\/14155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}