Astros fail to sign #1 overall pick (Aiken) + 5th rounder (Nix)

[mabrowndog]

Perhaps a dope/mod will see fit to move related posts from the June MLB News thread (starting here).
 
Nick Faleris of Baseball Prospectus has a really great review of the disaster, how it unfolded, the failure by the Astros to have a backup plan, the leveraging job pulled on the Orioles by Kevin Gausman & his agent after the 2012 draft, and the enormous dice roll Aiken & Close might have made by passing up a guaranteed $5M payday (see: Whitson, Karsten).
 

 
As the clock struck seven on the evening of June 5th, the Houston Astros stared with wide eyes at a deep draft board. The organization held a handful of early picks and $13,362,200 in available spending, the most of any team, putting it in an position to load up its minor-league system with high-level draft talent. But 42 days and 22 hours after the Astros announced the first selection of the 2014 draft, the front office somehow found itself with one of the lightest pulls of the draft, a bruised reputation, and public scorn from both the MLB Players’ Association and one of the game’s most high profile agents.

 

 
Understanding BATNA; Where the Astros Lost Their Leverage
In any high-leverage negotiation—indeed in any “basics of negotiation” class—the first task of the negotiators is to identify their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or “BATNA.” Essentially, this is a party’s best case scenario if they are unable to come to terms with the person with whom they are negotiating.
 
At the top of the draft, leverage is fairly balanced, as a general matter. Teams are seldom, if ever, interested in risking the loss of their largest slot allotment and highest valued talent acquisition, while players are highly incentivized to grab the big payday that comes at the top of a draft, rather than risk injury or poor performance in subsequent years. Because both parties are highly incentivized to reach an accord, a great deal of resources are put into vetting potential draftees to make sure their bonus expectations and the drafting team’s spending expectations align.

 

 
The Astros seem to have done a solid job of identifying their targets, and the aggregate expense of those targets. The selection of Aiken and Nix, as well as the relatively quick announcement that agreements were reached in principle, indicate that all parties were on the same page. However, Houston’s comfort with its plan was also its undoing.
 
Because the Astros were so comfortable with the demands of their draftees and the amount of money the organization had to spend, the front office failed to build in an adequate failsafe for a complication that should be foreseeable, especially when selecting a pitcher: What if something unexpected comes back in the medicals?
 
There is currently no formal mechanism for teams to get access to pre-draft medicals (something that will likely be remedied in future CBAs), so organizations are left to review whatever the player decides to make available. Anything a player elects to be made available to one team must be made available to all teams. Because of this huge unknown hanging over these draft picks—particularly pitchers—it is incumbent on a front office to cover its bases and account for the possibility that the goods they plan to buy might have some unseen defects. To say this game planning is of paramount import when dealing with the no. 1 selection in an entire draft class would be a massive understatement.
 
As noted above, the Astros had essentially one fallback option in their draft class, and that was Mac Marshall. His demands seemed to match up with those of Nix, making him a fine fit to check the box on that front, but the team had no plan whatsoever to account for the scenario they were actually presented with. What if there was something non-catastrophic in Aiken’s medicals that added to the risk profile?

 

 
All medical concerns are not created equal, and while the industry has found some level of consensus that, say, a frayed tendon is a significant concern, there is a large gray area. Multiple medical experts could disagree on the level of risk that should be assigned. That is where Aiken’s “structural issue” falls. The result is additional leverage on the team’s side, but that leverage is limited because the player's side might not agree on the level of risk—and, therefore, might not agree on how much leverage was lost. So long as there is relative uncertainty there, parties have to be reasonable as to the extent to which leverage in the negotiations has shifted.
 
The final piece here is the idea that simply saving money on the pick has limited utility. We will flesh this out below, but the best case scenario when additional risk surfaces with respect to a drafted player is that player is willing to take a discount such that you can now sign other players you have drafted, giving you a shot at bringing in and developing another asset that could save your organization millions down the line.
 
While we can’t be certain that Aiken and the Astros would have reached an agreement at $6 million or $5.5 million, having one or two other backup options willing to sign for various bonus amounts would have given the Astros something else worth pursuing—options that split the difference between the full agreed-upon $6.5 million and a 20 percent slash.
 
The Astros painted themselves into a corner by not taking the simple step of spending even one additional pick in the top 20 or so rounds on a college bound player whose profile they found interesting and who could potentially be signed for somewhere between maybe $500,000 and $1 million. Instead, they put themselves in a position where only an indisputably significant condition uncovered in Aiken’s medicals would free up enough money for the team to hedge its bets with additional acquisitions. When the Astros neglected to adequately plan for unknown medical complications they ceded any opportunity to leverage the results of those medicals.

 

[mabrowndog]

For those who missed the latest Sports Illustrated cover jinx:
 

 

[Jnai]

For those of you with longer-ish commutes that enjoy Podcasts, Ben & Sam on Effectively Wild also discuss this article.
(http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=24224)

 

[smastroyin]

Wouldn't this kind of thing be easier solved if you just let the team keep their draft slot $ and not give them a compensation pick the following year?  Tony Clark can blame the Astros all he wants, but the MLBPA negotiated these rules as much as the owners did.
 
(I'm talking about the fallout to Nix, as opposed to what is happening with Aiken) 

 

[finnVT]

That's a really interesting story from a lot of sides.  Having read that, without following the story previously, I don't think either the Astros or Aiken really seem to have acted unreasonably.  Certainly teams should have the ability to decline to sign a player because of medical concerns, and players should feel free to tell them to screw if the deal doesn't match their demands.  IMO, the two parties that end up looking bad are:
 
(1) MLB/MLBPA for coming up with such stupid draft rules that one player's (Nix) negotiations depend on what another player (Aiken) decides to do.  There is no compelling reason to me that these should be linked.  It seems like every time they try to fix the draft process, they make things worse (see: FA QO compensation, which they got exactly backwards when they removed the bonus for losing a player, while keeping the penalty for signing one).  The "draft allotment pool" is stupid.  Why not just have a slot for each player and assess penalties on a per-pick basis, rather than on the overall pool?
 
(2) The NCAA, if they give Aiken/Nix a hard time trying to play based on their interactions with Close (I don't think they've done this yet, so I'll be happy to admit this is premature if all goes well for them).  Why on earth the NCAA should be forcing kids into these sorts of negotiations without qualified help looking out for their best interests is beyond me.
 
edit: the more I think about (1), the stupider it gets.  What they've done is create a situation where draftees are negotiating *against each other*, rather than with the team.  The team has essentially just become a middle man in figuring out how to allocate the fixed amount of money, with all the kids fighting for a larger piece of the pie.  Said another way, if one kid gets a larger bonus, it's coming directly out of the pockets of another, rather than at the team's added expense.  It's unseemly at best.

 

[moly99]

(1) MLB/MLBPA for coming up with such stupid draft rules that one player's (Nix) negotiations depend on what another player (Aiken) decides to do.  There is no compelling reason to me that these should be linked.  It seems like every time they try to fix the draft process, they make things worse (see: FA QO compensation, which they got exactly backwards when they removed the bonus for losing a player, while keeping the penalty for signing one).  The "draft allotment pool" is stupid.  Why not just have a slot for each player and assess penalties on a per-pick basis, rather than on the overall pool?

 
That's the rational thing to do, but with so many parties involved following their own agendas, the policy chosen is going to be based on bargaining rather than what would be optimal.

 

[Omar's Wacky Neighbor]

 
edit: the more I think about (1), the stupider it gets.  What they've done is create a situation where draftees are negotiating *against each other*, rather than with the team.  The team has essentially just become a middle man in figuring out how to allocate the fixed amount of money, with all the kids fighting for a larger piece of the pie.  Said another way, if one kid gets a larger bonus, it's coming directly out of the pockets of another, rather than at the team's added expense.  It's unseemly at best.

Isnt that kind of much how Sears/Kmart is being run at the corporate level?
 
But when you look at it, it does seem to be counter to what we might expect or what we are used to seeing:   that they failed to sign Nix, not because they signed another player, but because they did NOT sign that other player.

 

[singaporesoxfan]

At the same time, you could ask what the Astros are doing - yes, they obviously have a lot more leverage and take on much less risk than Aiken by not coming to terms but the $1.5m difference between the initial $6.5m offer and the $5m they offered near the end is peanuts for an MLB team.

 

[OCD SS]

I'm rooting for the Armageddon scenario: Nix files a grievance or takes his case to court and the Astros are forced to honor his deal for $1.5M, but the in being forced to make that payment go so far over their pool number that they actually lose their first round picks for next year's draft. Yes, I know the actual chances of this happening are nil, at least in part because it requires the MLBPA to care about a draftee/ non-union member, but I'm also rooting for the Sox to make a run this season...
 
As broken as the draft is, I think we at least have to admit that the new system has done a good job of making sure that players are picked in order of their talent, rather than forcing  a fall to teams with big pockets. Now MLB just needs to find a way to incentivise teams to not tank...

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

As broken as the draft is, I think we at least have to admit that the new system has done a good job of making sure that players are picked in order of their talent, rather than forcing  a fall to teams with big pockets. Now MLB just needs to find a way to incentivise teams to not tank...

 
Is it possible to do one without the other, though?  I mean, setting up the draft so that players are picked in order of talent is an incentive to tank when you aren't a playoff team anyway. I guess they could draft in reverse order from best non-playoff record down to worst record in the league instead of worst record to best straight through, but that isn't going to be good for parity in general, and that's not good for the league.
 
I don't see a realistic scenario in which they can address both concerns.  At least this way there is a decent amount of turnover at the top of the draft over the long haul.

 

[smastroyin]

At the same time, you could ask what the Astros are doing - yes, they obviously have a lot more leverage and take on much less risk than Aiken by not coming to terms but the $1.5m difference between the initial $6.5m offer and the $5m they offered near the end is peanuts for an MLB team.

 
The key is that the $1.5 million difference was going to allow them to make other signs, that's the whole point of the BP article, that they failed to identify hard-sign players they could have signed if they got "only" a $500K or $1 million discount on Aiken.  The amount of the discount wasn't just happenstance.

 

[finnVT]

At the same time, you could ask what the Astros are doing - yes, they obviously have a lot more leverage and take on much less risk than Aiken by not coming to terms but the $1.5m difference between the initial $6.5m offer and the $5m they offered near the end is peanuts for an MLB team.

There's a difference, though, which is that the Astros have to negotiate with other draftees for the future, so there's value in setting (or not setting) precedents that would hurt them in the future.
 
That's not true for Aiken (although it is true for his agent/advisor, which is another potential ugly side of this).

 

[MakMan44]

https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/492445947499413504
 
Does the MLBPA have a case? It's not hard to argue for Nix, but as pointed out above, they negotiated these rules. It's incredibly likely that this was going to happen at some point. 
 
I also saw it mentioned in a Fangraphs chat that the MLBPA might not even have the standing to file a grievance since neither player is a member of the MLBPA. Not sure I buy that, but I'd like to hear if anyone disagrees. 

 

[singaporesoxfan]

 
The key is that the $1.5 million difference was going to allow them to make other signs, that's the whole point of the BP article, that they failed to identify hard-sign players they could have signed if they got "only" a $500K or $1 million discount on Aiken.  The amount of the discount wasn't just happenstance.

Yes, I get that Mac Marshall could only have been signed with the extra $1.5m discount. But the article suggests that the $1.5m for Nix was already accounted for by the difference between the $7.9m slot money and the $6.5m that Aiken was willing to take (plus presumably the money already slotted for Nix's draft position). Did Houston absolutely need to get 3 players (honest question - I don't know draft rules that well)? Even if they failed to identify hard-sign players, could they have settled for Aiken and Nix for $7.9m total and just chalked it up to an overpay?

 

[DavidTai]

In the long run, I'm trying to understand how rejecting $5M from the Astros will be a good move for Aiken. I mean, I get why he was pissed and didn't want to negotiate with them and / or be a part of their organization, but if he's truly healthy and productive, he'll make the lost money back pretty quickly. Getting his career started a year late isn't a very wise career move.

Shitty situation all around.

 
Considering the George Springer case where they tried to get him to sign an extension while holding him down in the minors to keep him under control longer, I'm pretty sure any agent who saw -that- would be wary, because the Astros have already made it clear they wouldn't be giving their prospects the chance to make their money back ''pretty quickly' - they'd just hold them down as long as they could.
 
See;  http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/22/mlbpa-and-george-springers-agent-considering-filing-grievance-over-service-time/
 
 

Yes, I get that Mac Marshall could only have been signed with the extra $1.5m discount. But the article suggests that the $1.5m for Nix was already accounted for by the difference between the $7.9m slot money and the $6.5m that Aiken was willing to take (plus presumably the money already slotted for Nix's draft position). Did Houston absolutely need to get 3 players (honest question - I don't know draft rules that well)? Even if they failed to identify hard-sign players, could they have settled for Aiken and Nix for $7.9m total and just chalked it up to an overpay?

 
I think you have that analyzed correctly - originally, the Nix signing was made possible by the difference between the slot money and the contract that Aiken originally agreed to. When Houston tried to cut it down to less post-exam, they took the extra money and offered -that- to Marshall, hoping Aiken would agree to 5 million.
 
Basically, they took it one step too far and lost all three, instead of losing Marshall if they stuck to the original agreement (since Marshall would not have gotten 1.5 million until Houston tried to re-negotiate Aiken's agreed-on contract.
 
If they'd just settled for Aiken and Nix at 7.9 million, they would still have lost Marshall, but at least they would have Nix and Aiken.

 

[cannonball 1729]

That's a really interesting story from a lot of sides.  Having read that, without following the story previously, I don't think either the Astros or Aiken really seem to have acted unreasonably.  Certainly teams should have the ability to decline to sign a player because of medical concerns, and players should feel free to tell them to screw if the deal doesn't match their demands.  IMO, the two parties that end up looking bad are:
 
(1) MLB/MLBPA for coming up with such stupid draft rules that one player's (Nix) negotiations depend on what another player (Aiken) decides to do.  There is no compelling reason to me that these should be linked.  It seems like every time they try to fix the draft process, they make things worse (see: FA QO compensation, which they got exactly backwards when they removed the bonus for losing a player, while keeping the penalty for signing one).  The "draft allotment pool" is stupid.  Why not just have a slot for each player and assess penalties on a per-pick basis, rather than on the overall pool?
 
 

 
Wait - you still get a bonus for losing a player.  You forfeit the bonus if you then sign a different QO player so that teams don't get rewarded for effectively swapping players, but the bonus is still there.
 
 

Why not just have a slot for each player and assess penalties on a per-pick basis, rather than on the overall pool?
 
 

 
One reason I can think of would be so that MLB can bring 2-sport stars over to MLB (i.e. to increase the talent level in baseball).  While there's no incentive for an MLB team to spend a top draft pick on someone who's committed to play football at a college or thinking of going pro in another sport, there's a benefit to the sport of baseball if someone like, say, Jeff Samardzija or Tom Glavine can be talked out of a career in the NFL or NHL.  Money is a good way to do that, and MLB wants teams to have the flexibility to throw seven figures at a "maybe" that they drafted in the 20th round.
 
 

Yes, I get that Mac Marshall could only have been signed with the extra $1.5m discount. But the article suggests that the $1.5m for Nix was already accounted for by the difference between the $7.9m slot money and the $6.5m that Aiken was willing to take (plus presumably the money already slotted for Nix's draft position). Did Houston absolutely need to get 3 players (honest question - I don't know draft rules that well)? Even if they failed to identify hard-sign players, could they have settled for Aiken and Nix for $7.9m total and just chalked it up to an overpay?

 
I think the plan was to get Aiken and Nix, and Marshall was the backup plan if Nix didn't work.   Unfortunately, when they lost Aiken, they lost the money for either Nix or Marshall.
 
Edit:
 
 

 
Considering the George Springer case where they tried to get him to sign an extension while holding him down in the minors to keep him under control longer, I'm pretty sure any agent who saw -that- would be wary, because the Astros have already made it clear they wouldn't be giving their prospects the chance to make their money back ''pretty quickly' - they'd just hold them down as long as they could.
 
See;  http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/22/mlbpa-and-george-springers-agent-considering-filing-grievance-over-service-time/
 

 
Excellent point.   It's possible that Aiken may make the money back more quickly if he goes to a different organization, and according to the CBA, the Astros can't draft him again unless he gives explicit permission (which seems highly unlikely).

 

[finnVT]

 
Wait - you still get a bonus for losing a player.  You forfeit the bonus if you then sign a different QO player so that teams don't get rewarded for effectively swapping players, but the bonus is still there.

You still get the supplemental pick, but the pick that the signing team forfeits now goes into the ether, rather than to the original team.  I should have said the bonus was greatly reduced, rather than eliminated entirely.

 

[singaporesoxfan]

 I think the plan was to get Aiken and Nix, and Marshall was the backup plan if Nix didn't work.   Unfortunately, when they lost Aiken, they lost the money for either Nix or Marshall.

But the article suggests that $7.9m would have gotten Houston Aiken and Nix _or_ Aiken and Marshall. What it could not do is get them all 3. The article says Houston's flaw was, after discovering the "problem" in Aiken's medical, not identifying a hard-sign that would be available if Aiken agreed to only a further $500k or $1m discount off the $6.5m (which itself was a discount off the $7.9m slot), rather than the $1.5m it would have taken to get Marshall.

Houston seems to have become wedded to the idea that after the medicals Aiken _had_ to give them a further discount that they could spend on Marshall, and the article seems to take the idea that there had to be a further discount for granted, and only challenged how Houston negotiated that further discount. I'm suggesting that there was another solution, which was that Houston suck it up and just give Aiken and Nix their original offers. The $1.5m is peanuts in the big scheme of things and Aiken's medical doesn't seem to have spooked Houston that much. They would have lost the negotiation with Close but come out better than where they've ended up.

 

[soxhop411]

Adam Berry ‏@adamdberry 11m11 minutes ago
Brady Aiken, last year's No. 1 Draft pick, left his first start for IMG Academy with a trainer after throwing 13 pitches.

https://twitter.com/adamdberry

 

[LogansDad]

Guess the Astros dodged that bullet.

 

[Leather]

Whoops!

 

[GRPhilipp]

Aiken had Tommy John surgery yesterday.  Link.
 
Edit: Link to better source, Aiken himself.  This Players Tribune thing is kinda cool.

 

[mt8thsw9th]

Do you think Matt Harrington could get him a job at Costco?

 

[Joshv02]

He will still be a very high pick.

 

[Yelling At Clouds]

Guess the Astros dodged that bullet.

 
This seems a bit overdramatic. He'd be an 18-year-old in almost definitely the lowest level of their minor league system. It'd be a year of lost development, but it's not like there'd be any reason to rush him or anything. We get freaked by TJ surgery as fans, but it sure seems like the players recover fairly well from it - Strasburg, Lackey, Liriano, and Tim Hudson all spring to mind as guys who have been varying degrees of good post-operation. Sure, there are still guys like Corey Luebke or Kris Medlen who have tough recoveries, but they seem increasingly more like the exceptions rather than the rule. In short, yeah, Aiken will probably be fine, and so would the Astros have been.

 

[LogansDad]

Yeah, my certain brand of sarcasm doesn't come off well over the internet.

 

[The_Powa_of_Seiji_Ozawa]

Wonder how much Aiken will fall from the top of the draft board...if he is there, do the Sox take him?

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Wonder how much Aiken will fall from the top of the draft board...if he is there, do the Sox take him?

I think you have to at least consider it. They have a deep enough system to roll the dice on a former #1 pick. Maybe sign him for under slot due to TJ and put that money towards a hard sign later on.

 

[burstnbloom]

Only 4 teams would have to pass given the Astros are at 2 and 5. I'm intrigued. They gave such a small draft pool though that he'd really have to sign under slot.

 

[GRPhilipp]

 
This seems a bit overdramatic. He'd be an 18-year-old in almost definitely the lowest level of their minor league system. It'd be a year of lost development, but it's not like there'd be any reason to rush him or anything. We get freaked by TJ surgery as fans, but it sure seems like the players recover fairly well from it - Strasburg, Lackey, Liriano, and Tim Hudson all spring to mind as guys who have been varying degrees of good post-operation. Sure, there are still guys like Corey Luebke or Kris Medlen who have tough recoveries, but they seem increasingly more like the exceptions rather than the rule. In short, yeah, Aiken will probably be fine, and so would the Astros have been.

 
The anecdotal examples you cite don't really tell us much.  Just this week, The Hardball Times published the results of a study looking deeper into the previously established finding that roughly 80% of major league pitchers who undergo TJS return to the majors.  The 80% figure by itself suggests that you are being a bit too dismissive of the risks, but things get worse from there.  
 
The THT study parses the data a number of different ways, but perhaps the most salient finding is this: "In the most recent complete decade (2000-2009), the median result for a major league pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery is appearing in about 60 games or logging about 100 innings pitched over the rest of his major league career."  In other words, plenty of guys make it back but aren't good enough to stick around for long.  Full recovery is certainly not assured.  If the Red Sox ever had the #1 overall pick, we would not be pleased if they used it on a pitcher who was known to need TJS.  
 
Separately, this development sure takes a lot of the force out of the argument (which I never really understood in the first place) that the Astros were being dishonest scoundrels when they tried to re-trade their interrelated deals with Aiken and Nix, citing concerns about Aiken's elbow.  It seems strange to me that almost no one is saying that, and the perception of the Astros as shady seems to have stuck.

 

[timlinin8th]

The anecdotal examples you cite don't really tell us much.  Just this week, The Hardball Times published the results of a study looking deeper into the previously established finding that roughly 80% of major league pitchers who undergo TJS return to the majors.  The 80% figure by itself suggests that you are being a bit too dismissive of the risks, but things get worse from there.  
 
The THT study parses the data a number of different ways, but perhaps the most salient finding is this: "In the most recent complete decade (2000-2009), the median result for a major league pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery is appearing in about 60 games or logging about 100 innings pitched over the rest of his major league career."  In other words, plenty of guys make it back but aren't good enough to stick around for long.  Full recovery is certainly not assured.  If the Red Sox ever had the #1 overall pick, we would not be pleased if they used it on a pitcher who was known to need TJS.  

I would be interested in seeing numbers on the likelihood of minor league players who need TJS still making it to the bigs, and at what level they required it. I would theorize that if a player undergoes TJS in the minors the odds of them making it to the bigs decline drastically - players who were already pros get a shot post TJS because they are a known quantity but a guy getting his development delayed by a year to a year and a half can be a career killer.

As others have said, Aiken potentially cost himself a ton of money. In the Player's Tribune piece he talks about how he wanted to be comfortable for a long career, which is putting the cart before the horse; get your foot in the door, then worry about comfort. Now he potentially may end up with neither, coming off TJS he won't control his own destiny.

 

[Pedroia's Itchy Nose]

 
The anecdotal examples you cite don't really tell us much.  Just this week, The Hardball Times published the results of a study looking deeper into the previously established finding that roughly 80% of major league pitchers who undergo TJS return to the majors.  The 80% figure by itself suggests that you are being a bit too dismissive of the risks, but things get worse from there.  
 
The THT study parses the data a number of different ways, but perhaps the most salient finding is this: "In the most recent complete decade (2000-2009), the median result for a major league pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery is appearing in about 60 games or logging about 100 innings pitched over the rest of his major league career."  In other words, plenty of guys make it back but aren't good enough to stick around for long.  Full recovery is certainly not assured.  If the Red Sox ever had the #1 overall pick, we would not be pleased if they used it on a pitcher who was known to need TJS.  
 
Separately, this development sure takes a lot of the force out of the argument (which I never really understood in the first place) that the Astros were being dishonest scoundrels when they tried to re-trade their interrelated deals with Aiken and Nix, citing concerns about Aiken's elbow.  It seems strange to me that almost no one is saying that, and the perception of the Astros as shady seems to have stuck.

 
A very interesting article, indeed. It's hard to know what to make of that data though without having something to compare it to. I'd love to see an analysis that takes each example of TJS and looks at appearances/IP post surgery compared to the mean appearances/IP for pitchers of the same age (age at date of return). That would give us a better sense of the degree to which TJS shortens or lengthens careers assuming there is a large enough sample size to get a meaningful result.
 
I'd also like to see whether age at time of surgery correlates to results. I could see a logical hypothesis going either way -- younger bodies heal faster and more completely and thus a younger age at time of surgery would predict better results post surgery OR younger players are still developing and lose more due to the lost development time than older players. Both of these are plausible to me, and I think it's quite possible that the effects aren't linear. There could easily be sweet spots along the age/development curve where TJS is particularly effective or particularly damaging to a player's future. 

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

If the Red Sox were drafting later in the round, I'd be all for rolling the dice on him. Like, around Matt Barnes territory (18-22). At 7, I don't think I'd be comfortable with it. They don't pick again until 81, so they really need to nail that 7th pick.

 

[Brianish]

If the Red Sox were drafting later in the round, I'd be all for rolling the dice on him. Like, around Matt Barnes territory (18-22). At 7, I don't think I'd be comfortable with it. They don't pick again until 81, so they really need to nail that 7th pick.

 
This is where I am. FWIW, the Hardball Times had an article recently arguing that the recovery rate from TJ surgery is not what it is generally perceived to be. They suggest that the vast majority of players return, but only about half of them last. 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/tommy-john-surgery-success-rates-in-the-majors/

The obvious objection is that they don't really attempt to distinguish between pitchers who had low potential to begin with. But all the same, particularly given the strong crop of college pitching this year, I'd rather they try to strike a balance between upside and odds. 

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

The anecdotal examples you cite don't really tell us much.  Just this week, The Hardball Times published the results of a study looking deeper into the previously established finding that roughly 80% of major league pitchers who undergo TJS return to the majors.  The 80% figure by itself suggests that you are being a bit too dismissive of the risks, but things get worse from there.  
 
The THT study parses the data a number of different ways, but perhaps the most salient finding is this: "In the most recent complete decade (2000-2009), the median result for a major league pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery is appearing in about 60 games or logging about 100 innings pitched over the rest of his major league career."  In other words, plenty of guys make it back but aren't good enough to stick around for long.  Full recovery is certainly not assured.  If the Red Sox ever had the #1 overall pick, we would not be pleasedif they used it on a pitcher who was known to need TJS.  
 
Separately, this development sure takes a lot of the force out of the argument (which I never really understood in the first place) that the Astros were being dishonest scoundrels when they tried to re-trade their interrelated deals with Aiken and Nix, citing concerns about Aiken's elbow.  It seems strange to me that almost no one is saying that, and the perception of the Astros as shady seems to have stuck.

 
 

This is where I am. FWIW, the Hardball Times had an article recently arguing that the recovery rate from TJ surgery is not what it is generally perceived to be. They suggest that the vast majority of players return, but only about half of them last. 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/tommy-john-surgery-success-rates-in-the-majors/

The obvious objection is that they don't really attempt to distinguish between pitchers who had low potential to begin with. But all the same, particularly given the strong crop of college pitching this year, I'd rather they try to strike a balance between upside and odds.

FYI.

 

[Brianish]

Reading is hard at 7 AM.