Scott Boras may have made every Baltimore Orioles’ fan succomb to sickness as the clock approached midnight on Monday night – you can certainly count me in that group — even though I, as well as every other Orioles fan, was told that Miami-area prep shortstop Manny Machado would agree to terms right at the deadline.
In the end, Machado did indeed agree to terms with the Orioles, an outcome that has been expected since the moment he was drafted. Machado and Boras, his adviser, agreed to a $5.25 million bonus with the team, which is the second-highest draft bonus in franchise history behind current catcher Matt Wieters’ $6 million bonus that he received in 2007. Wieters was also advised by Boras.
(EDIT: I forgot to mention at the time I first published this post that Machado’s agreement was completed three minutes before the midnight deadline and that his contract is not a big league deal.)
Machado tweeted the following in the wee hours of Tuesday morning: “Finally an Oriole!!!! Excited love the fan base. Can’t wait to meet everyone.”
If you’re on Twitter, you can follow Machado — @MannyMachado3.
First of all, I would like to point out that Jim Callis of Baseball America was right on the money (no pun intended) regarding the Orioles’ draft. I asked him 10 days ago on Twitter what kind of bonus Machado was in line for, and he responded that he thought Machado would get between five and six million dollars. Bingo.
He also estimated that first overall pick, Bryce Harper, would receive between 10 and 12 million dollars — he was just barely off on that one, as the Washington Nationals and Harper/Boras agreed to $9.9 million in guaranteed money as a part of a major league contract. Harper’s signing bonus was $6.25 million, which was a little less than second overall pick Jameson Taillon’s $6.5 million bonus from the Pittsburgh Pirates. But Harper will get more guaranteed money in the long run from these draft deals.
Anyway, the bottom line for the Orioles in regards to the Machado agreement — well, my assusmption – is that he immediately becomes the Orioles’ second-best prospect behind stud left-handed starter Zach Britton, who is currently at Triple-A Norfolk and may get a look at the big league level in September. Machado is most definitely already the organization’s top prospect among position players – I can’t imagine that any hitter currently in the system is anywhere close to the kind of prospect that Machado is.
That Machado immediately becomes the organization’s top position player prospect — and, again, that’s just my assumption that he does indeed already have that title — tells one how relatively bleak the outlook on position players coming through the system was before Machado/Boras agreed to terms with the Orioles. We can debate all day about whether the lack of potential impact hitters in the system is a byproduct of the Orioles’ focusing their recent drafts primarily on pitching, or whether it’s because of poor development of hitters throughout the system. It’s probably both.
The Machado agreement also nails down the Orioles’ long-term future at shortstop, a position where the team has lacked a true future for quite some time. It’s probably useless to put an estimated major league arrival on Machado because so many things can happen between now and a possible big league arrival. Injuries, believe it or not, have been known to occur in sports. Or maybe Machado shows that he’s a very advanced hitter once he’s in pro ball and moves much faster than someone coming out of high school typically does. We just don’t know.
Useless or not, I will indeed be asking knowledgable people on Twitter about Machado’s estimated time of arrival. I can’t help myself.
Personally, I’m interested to know if the Orioles feel Machado is ready to compete in the Arizona Fall League this year. There are a substantial number of high-quality prospects who participate in that league every year (Wieters, Stephen Strasburg, Mike Stanton and Dominic Brown are recent names that have passed through.) It’s believed that Harper will participate in the AFL this year.
In other Orioles-related draft news, the team agreed to terms with seventh-round draft pick Matt Bywater, a left-handed pitcher out of Pepperdine University, and 19th-rounder Kenny Wise, a right-handed pitcher out of Sante Fe Community College in Florida.
I have to give Callis more props here. I asked Callis two days ago on Twitter whether he thought the Orioles’ would sign Dixon Anderson (the team’s sixth-rounder) or Bywater. Callis responded that he thought the Orioles would “sign at least one of them.” Later that day, it was reported as unlikely that the Orioles would be able to sign Bywater, and that the team definitely wouldn’t be able to sign Anderson. And what do you know? Bywater agrees to a $195,000 bonus on deadline day. Callis was right again.
If you’re a fan of a particular team and are following the team’s progress in signing its draft picks, don’t believe much of anything that’s reported leading up to the deadline. Everything can change on deadline day for any given draftee that hasn’t agreed to terms yet. In the case of Bywater, the report I linked above from The Baltimore Sun quotes Orioles’ scouting director Joe Jordan as not being very optomistic about signing Bywater. But these things tend to come together at the deadline.
Hell, for the upper-tier talents such as Harper and Machado, the real negotiations don’t even begin until after 11 p.m. on deadline day. If you hear that ”highly regarded first-rounder X may not sign” leading up to the deadline, just ignore it. It’s meaningless.