| By Jason A. Churchill |  | By 03-04-2011 |
Churchill on Ackley, Pineda and the service time considerations
The Mariners have officially announced the signing of James Paxton, so we can now talk about his future with the club and where he fits among the club's top prospects.After going back and forth and considering the time off and everything else involved, Paxton fits in as the No. 7 prospect in the organization for Prospect Insider. That's a spot behind shortstop Marcus Littlewood and just ahead of left-hander Mauricio Robles.
Paxton, at his best, sits in the 90-94 mph range with a sinking fastball with downward plane, thanks to his 6-foot-4 frame and despite a three-quarter arm slot.
His best breaking ball is a true slider that sweeps away from left-handers; it's shown good tilt and late bite at times, but was not consistent last spring, and he had trouble sustaining the good velocity -- something that is most likely due to all the time off.
He also throws a slurvy curveball, a pitch that is sometimes good enough to consider using as his exclusive breaking ball, and other times appears as a show-me offering.
His delivery is smooth and somewhat deliberate, but his arm path is long, particularly at the back end (as seen in the photo above), forcing a bit of a sling shot style arm action, though it's not at all like that of fellow left-hander Brian Fuentes, for comparison's sake.
His changeup is below average, perhaps a 40 on the 20-80 scouting scale, but he has the hand and finger size and strength to develop a good one, and has shown consistent arm speed for the pitch.
He's touched 97 in the past -- 2009 for Kentucky -- and the slider has been a true out pitch, but right now he simply has to get back on the mound and get through a season unscathed. He's not a great athlete but most scouts still point to arm strength being his lead tool.
Expecting Paxton, 22, to move quickly is probably asking too much at this stage, but after a year back in the saddle to build up arm strength -- and it really could take most of the year to get it back to where it needs to be -- there is no reason to think he'll remain in the minors for an extended period of time.
I imagine the Mariners would ultimately like Paxton to start, but his floor is as a left-handed setup type whose stuff could play up into closing games if he improves his command and overall control.
The upside sits somewhere in the neighborhood of a No. 2 starter, but a lot of good things would have to occur for that to come to fruition.
Jason A. Churchill is Executive Editor at Prospect Insider, founded in 2006, and has covered scouting and player development since 2003, writing for publications such as InsidethePark.com, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The News Tribune. You can follow Jason on Twitter @ProspectInsider, as well as @ESPN_MLBDraft, and contact him via email at Churchill@ProspectInsider.com.
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Comments
The following 51 comment(s) for this article are shown below:
| 1. By: Josh B on 03-04-2011 22:24:47 Any word yet on what his contract went for? |
| 2. By: Jason A. Churchill on 03-05-2011 11:51:18 No. I was told under a million, but haven't been able to find anyone else that has a clue yet. |
| 3. By: 11records on 03-05-2011 12:39:13 Is he in big league camp? |
| 4. By: maqman on 03-05-2011 13:19:53 He's going to be in the big league camp initially. He claims to have been throwing a lot at Boras' training camp, including bullpens and says he's good to go. We'll see about that. |
| 5. By: Jason A. Churchill on 03-05-2011 13:31:35 Yeah, they all throw -- Hochevar threw, Fields threw, Crow threw -- it's just not the same. The in-between prep is not there, the competition is not there... It's going to take some time. |
| 6. By: dawgncarolina on 03-05-2011 13:51:03 If that report is accurate Jason, major kudos to the M's. They signed three guys in the top 40-100 draft prospects range (depending on whose opinion you listen to) and paid in the neighborhood of $2.5 million for the trio. Very solid performance - got good talent for where they were drafting and still managed to sign it at reasonable costs. Wasn't Stanek looking for like $1.2 or something in that range? |
| 7. By: Jason A. Churchill on 03-05-2011 13:56:13 $1.4m I heard, but it could have been $1.2m. |
| 8. By: dawgncarolina on 03-05-2011 13:57:47 I'm sure your number is right, I was trying to go off memory from five months ago. I'm still torn on whether they should have spent it, but its hard to argue with their stance if they showed they could get Paxton for less than a mill. |
| 9. By: shemberry on 03-05-2011 14:17:45 I was disappointed that we didn't get Stanek signed, but we do get a comp pick in this draft and it could turn out to be an even better player with the depth in this class. |
| 10. By: FelixElRey on 03-05-2011 14:26:37 Has there ever been a situation where a team drafted a player in a weak draft, and didn't even try to sign them so they could get the comp pick the next draft with a more talented class? Pretty bush league, but you'd have to think it would have paid off at some point in history. |
| 11. By: Jason A. Churchill on 03-05-2011 15:14:13 yes. |
| 12. By: zackr on 03-05-2011 16:45:37 You gotta be able to sue for bad faith there. |
| 13. By: jazon_24 on 03-05-2011 18:37:23 What pitch is Paxton throwing in the picture on this thread? It looks like he has his index finger gripping the ball like a knuckler. I thought his repertoir was the standard fastball, slider, changeup. |
| 14. By: Slurve on 03-05-2011 18:46:27 @13 It's a variation on a curveball grip - in this case a knuckle curve. |
| 15. By: slamcactus on 03-06-2011 12:02:25 "You gotta be able to sue for bad faith there." Nope. Minor leaguers and draftees aren't part of the collective bargaining agreement, so MLB teams don't owe them any duties whatsoever. Because of MLB's monopoly exemption they get to claim the exclusive rights to negotiate with a player for a year for free and do whatever they want with those rights. It's kind of messed up, and something I'd very much like to see change. |
| 16. By: slamcactus on 03-06-2011 12:04:38 But it won't. If anything amateur players stand to lose even more in the upcoming round of collective bargaining negotiations, with teams pushing hard slotting and with Selig pushing the international draft. |
| 17. By: Timberwolf on 03-06-2011 17:07:36 Not a good reading of labor law slamcactus. For fresh draftees and generic minor leaguers you are correct. Guys talented enough to be on 25 man rosters who are being deprived of their right to qualify for status under the agreement are in a different category. It has a detrimental effect on the other players for guys to be manipulated out of major league status. The owners would be negotiating the year limits for free agency and arbitration under false pretenses and impacting lots of players besides the individuals who got sent down. Teams still have the right to make baseball decisions, but not if it is strictly a financial call. If you have legitimate issues of Ackley's defense and Pineda's breaking ball, it's not a black and white case, but if a team establishes a pattern of treating all their young players that way, they create a basis for a future case of collusion. |
| 18. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-06-2011 17:11:50 FWIW - Bob Elliot of the Toronto Sun tweeted that Paxton's bonus was "under $1 million somewhere in the in the $900,000 range. Jays slot offer in '09 was around $873,900". |
| 19. By: rocketdawg31 on 03-07-2011 03:31:05 I for one am thrilled that Paxton is finally in the fold. I don't think Edman is 100% wrong, but neither do I share quite the pessimism. The guy turns 23 next November. By that time, he's got a full year in pro ball (barring injury) and we can start to figure where he might play into the scheme of things. He was a candidate to be fast-tracked through the minors before he held up his own career. It could still happen, although I certainly wouldn't bet the house on it. The thing is, we got a guy in Paxton who is lauded by some as having talent worthy of first-round-of-the-draft consideration. Every org needs to sign as many guys like that as they possibly can, particularly when all the signing leverage belongs to the organization. And any and every guy with hype that we'll ever sign is going to be a question mark with a smile attached until they prove their mettle as players. Guys like Ackley and Pineda, with spark-alay futures imminent now? They could've bombed. Plenty of guys with talent do, for whatever and any number of reasons. But, if we've rolled eleven in signing Paxton and he comes on as a starter? Legit number 2-3 lefty starters are wonderful to have on a major league staff. We have the right to hope for the best now, it needn't be in accordance with expecting the worst. It's wait and see, same game as ever. But it is never detrimental to add dudes who have serious talent to your org. I'm infinitely preferring the state of the farm system now as opposed to 2-3 years ago...hell, even a year ago. |
| 20. By: Edman on 03-07-2011 03:48:05 #10, I don't think it's bush league at all. I think it's brilliant strategy. If you can sign him at a reasonable cost, good for you. If not, you have a chance to get a better player the following year, if it's a deep draft. And, it also keeps a rival from drafting him, paying him what he wants and deepening another team's system. It would be one thing if the M's drafted him and offered him $10K, but that didn't happen. Kudos to Jack, if that at least played in his reasoning for drafting Stanek. Good GMs are good chess players. |
| 21. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 11:10:30 @ 15 and 17 - I don't know the process well enough. Do prospective draftees become part of MLB before the actual contract negotiations? If they don't, then MLB's exemption from providing the duty of fair dealing in contract negotiations would wouldn't apply. If it is okay for a player to be hung out to dry like that, then draftees should be able to be drafted multiple times and negotiate multiple contracts - and accept the most favorable offer. |
| 22. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 12:07:54 Oops, sorry guys. There's not a duty of fair dealing in negotiations - that kicks in when the contract is signed. Although in the convoluted world of draftees, there should be if the draftee can't avail himself for multiple offers. I'm still baffled at how sports can get away with such strange employment practices. The law just ceases to exist in their world. |
| 23. By: Timberwolf on 03-07-2011 14:16:16 The contract is between MLB and the union. The parties are required to bargain in good faith by the National Labor Relations Act which is enforced by the NLRB. Fresh draftees are not going to arguably impact the union, but blossoming major leaguers like Ackley and Pineda would. Inhibiting who gets to become a member of the union is an issue to the union. |
| 24. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 14:49:11 ... and I take it the contract between MLB and the union requires exclusivity between the parties when it comes to on-field talent. Do all players (even A-ball guys) sign to the union - or is it only req'd after a player gets to a certain level? Thanks for the info T... |
| 25. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 16:40:26 Random amateur draft question, Jason: Andrew Susac's been on fire to start the college baseball season. Just a hot start, or has his performance (with numbers on par with Rendon's at this point) started affecting his draft stock? |
| 26. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 17:55:10 "17. By: Timberwolf on 03-06-2011 17:07:36 Not a good reading of labor law slamcactus. For fresh draftees and generic minor leaguers you are correct. Guys talented enough to be on 25 man rosters who are being deprived of their right to qualify for status under the agreement are in a different category. It has a detrimental effect on the other players for guys to be manipulated out of major league status. The owners would be negotiating the year limits for free agency and arbitration under false pretenses and impacting lots of players besides the individuals who got sent down." Um, I didn't say a single thing about the service time issue. The comment brought up the idea of suing for bad faith when a team drafts a player with no intention whatsoever to sign him in order to get a pick in a stronger draft the following year. In that case, the player has no rights at all. They should, but they don't. |
| 27. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 17:58:17 "I'm still baffled at how sports can get away with such strange employment practices. The law just ceases to exist in their world." Read the Supreme Court decision in the Curt Flood case. You are quite literally correct. The Court's reasoning essentially boils down to "but...it's baseball." Opinion available here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1568944639886480553&q=flood+v.+kuhn&hl=en&as_sdt=4,60 |
| 28. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 17:59:25 That is not exactly correct, Timberwolf. It is not that they dont "impact" the union. It is a CBA between MLB and the exclusive bargaining agents of the players. They are exempt from anti trust law. MiLB is not. That is why MLB can impose sanctions and requirements upon minor leaguers that they cannot simply do to major leaguers because they must collectively bargain these things. Also why Minor League salaries are so much lower. And... #24- to answer your question zackr only players with major league experience are part of the union. |
| 29. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 18:01:26 Yeah, well there is a Congressionally imposed exemption for baseball from Anti-Trust law slamcactus. The flood case was about the "reserve system" in baseball. That is something that can be collectively bargained around, but yeah the players cannot sue over things like that. |
| 30. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 18:02:09 "Oops, sorry guys. There's not a duty of fair dealing in negotiations - that kicks in when the contract is signed. Although in the convoluted world of draftees, there should be if the draftee can't avail himself for multiple offers. " Well, there's a duty of fair dealing in negotiations in that material misrepresentations during the course of negotiations is fraud, which can lead to both civil and criminal penalties. What's lacking in the amateur baseball player context, though, is a duty to negotiate in good faith in the first place. If a draftee's agent calls up a team to get the ball rolling and the team says "sorry, we'd really rather have next year's pick" and hangs up, there's no recourse. |
| 31. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 18:03:26 That is absolutely right |
| 32. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 18:04:13 I'm well aware, Adam. I was talking about the rhetoric of the case, which adopts a tone that pretty much assumes that professional sports are and forever should be above the law as it applies to normal employers. |
| 33. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 18:07:38 It really is only applicable to baseball though. The union in football could decertify and sue the NFL under antitrust law. |
| 34. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 18:11:07 Are you sure the antitrust exemption is statutory, Adam? I thought it was based on a SCOTUS case in the 20s. A 2-minute look around the internet seems to confirm this. |
| 35. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 18:18:48 I did not mean statutory, sorry. I meant that the Supreme Court held that unless and until changed by Congress, Major League Baseball would have a special exclusion from the Sherman Act and that would remain law. Phrased differently, Flood was a ruling not about whether the antitrust exemption should be terminated but about *who* should make that decision. The Court determined that the decision whether to terminate baseball's antitrust exemption should be made by COngress, not by the Court. That was explicitly the basis for Flood's holding. The Court's rationale remains every bit as valid today as it was when Flood was decided. The only other blip on the radar was the Piazza case, where a minority held that Flood was limited to "the business of baseball" and that certain things fell outside that designation. This is not the majority holding though, and Congress would still need to step in. In 1998 Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law, the Curt Flood Act of 1998 which clarified that Major League Baseball players are covered under the antitrust laws meaning that MLB players would have the same rights under the laws as do other professional athletes. So they gained some rights when it came to labor and employment, but it did not affect minor league level, or the draft or any reserve clause, or any team sales or relocation or anything. |
| 36. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 18:40:17 hmmmm - get back to where the rubber meets the road here on my question... If milb is not under union control, then how do teams keep the draft system working so cleanly, when it is at such a detriment to the player's livelihoods? I'm sure Harper's signing bonus would look a little different if every team in baseball had a shot at him. Why would he not just jump down to latin america for a year and sign as an international free agent (or try something else as creative)? What holds the current system so firmly in place? |
| 37. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 18:48:46 Professional sports are allowed wide discretion to operate how they see fit under the Sherman Act - which is the act that defines what our anti-trust laws are. What you are talking about is the restraint on labor the draft has in place. The Rule 4 draft is secured in place by the "Player Development Contract" which is a key feature of the Professional Baseball Agreement between Major League Baseball and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minor leagues) and the Union. Absent baseball's antitrust exemption, this broad-ranging Professional Baseball Agreement would certainly face judicial scrutiny in antitrust litigation. But since baseball is exempt they are allowed to do this. There are also rules in place that prevent a player from doing that sort of thing you suggested Harper may do. |
| 38. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 18:49:28 In other words it is part of the rules between baseball and its subsidiaries and it cannot be challenged, only baseball can change these rules if the owners of the teams want to change them. |
| 39. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 18:51:57 "There are also rules in place that prevent a player from doing that sort of thing you suggested Harper may do. " Well, the one restriction is immigration. Harper would have to emigrate to another country to do the kind of thing you just mentioned. That process takes time. That said, some players with connections to Latin American countries actually do go this route. Engel Beltre, a farmhand with the Rangers, was born in the Dominican Republic, went to high school in the states, and then returned to the D.R. to sign an amateur contract as a 16 y/o. |
| 40. By: slamcactus on 03-07-2011 18:53:16 There may also be CBA-specific rules that prohibit emigration to hit the free market. About that, I have no idea. |
| 41. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 19:00:06 He was 16. If he had stayed here through High School he would have been subject to the draft. He also had that option because he was a foreign-born non-resident though. But it would not matter for Harper because he would be eligible for the draft regardless of this attempt. He is a resident of the United States who has not previously signed a minor- or major-league contract. He can be drafted under the eligibility rules of the Rule 4 draft, he would not be a free agent. If you are a citizen of the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico or any other U.S. territory and have never signed a contract you are eligible. |
| 42. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 19:03:24 http://bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=647&Itemid=75 bizofbaseball.com is a treasure trove of useful information if you guys are more interested in the way the business side of baseball works. |
| 43. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 19:08:12 Thanks A - I'll check out the link. |
| 44. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 19:11:24 The legal stuff I learned from a Sports Law class in law school though, not sure how much the site go into the rationale behind the labor restraints and such. |
| 45. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 19:27:13 I figured you took a specific class. My law studies never went that deeply into sports. |
| 46. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 19:29:50 Ah, cool, where did ya go to school? |
| 47. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 19:42:17 I went through the WAST rule 6 clerkship program. I read for the law and passed the bar. No law school. Brutal program - 4 years nonstop (not even 1 week off) with requirement of 30 hours/week work at a firm and 25 hours study. I just about lost my mind - but I definitely knew my area of law when I finished the program. Hit the ground running in plaintiff's PI (ambulance chaser). |
| 48. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 19:52:51 Oh, nicely done. That definitely sounds grueling, but you made it. I am a 2L at UCLA Law, so I am not finished yet. |
| 49. By: zackr on 03-07-2011 20:07:24 It sounds as though you're handling it quite well. You definitely schooled me! |
| 50. By: Adam P. Boyd on 03-07-2011 23:45:29 Jim Callis tweets that Paxton's bonus is for $942,500 |
| 51. By: rocketdawg31 on 03-08-2011 15:00:57 It never ceases to amaze me, the myriad backgrounds of the people here at PI. I didn't know we had people this well-versed in the vagaries of antitrust/sports business law. We've got self-employed millionaires, business managers, export people, screenplay writers, bloggers, physical fitness therapists, lawyers, schoolteachers...quite a group. Thanks, Adam and Slam. I think I learned way more than one useful thing just watching you guys' talk. |
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