Yoenis Céspedes Milanés is supposed to be a very solid baseball prospect from Cuba. He's done a lot of good work. Céspedes is most famous for his stats he put while he was in Cuba before his defection. DanHennessey31 of Athletics Nation had this reaction.
I'm no prospect maven and I know next to nothing about Cuban baseball, but Baseball Prospectus's Kevin Goldstein rated Cespedes as the 20th best "prospect" in baseball, if you can consider a 26-year old a prospect, which would give the A's 7 guys in his Top 101.
The signing of Céspedes also appears to be a deviation from current Moneyball strategies that had made the franchise so successful in the past. Instead of trying to spend the least amount of money possible on quality talent, the A's are instead trying to go for talent that isn't so good.
Monte Poole of the San Jose Mercury News gave his thoughts.
General manager Billy Beane might be the star on several levels, but not even he is yanking down an average of $9 mil a year in straight salary. To be sure, $36 million is a startling figure, downright stupefying, for the A's, a downtrodden franchise that seems to take perverse delight in constantly hiding beneath its motto: ``Sure, we can afford to compete — but why bother when we're being forced to survive in a dump?''
The A's have always been big on going Moneyball on the franchise.
Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle appears to believe this could be a first step toward some wild expenditures for the Athletics.
Cespedes, a right-handed hitter, will give the A's power the team lacks in the middle of the order, and the team could make even bigger news later this week by signing DH Manny Ramirez. Even with Cespedes' addition, Ramirez is "still on the board," according to an Oakland source.
So, in the course of a few days, the A's could go from a snooze of a spring camp to a circus atmosphere: Cespedes was considered a top target this winter, while Ramirez, who has 555 career home runs, sat out most of last season after violating baseball's drug policy and must serve a 50-game suspension before he can play this year.
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