City Under Seige: CHEEEEEP Watch Day 423

Tick Tick Tock goes the stately clock, another night, another day, and we'll see if McGeary or Smoker are the one. The deadline for signing them (and all '07 draft picks) is tomorrow at midnight. And it's another test for whether the Nationals words match their actions. At a minimum, one of them needs to be signed. In an ideal world, they'd tell Herr Selig to go stick an HGH-filled syringe into one of his liverspots.

But that's not likely to happen.

Major League Baseball exerts a ton of pressure on clubs to stay within the recommended signing bonuses. There's no official requirement that they do, but teams typically want to stay within Bud's good graces, especially if they want delicious cookies tossed their way, such as the All Star Game.

And with Stan Kasten, a noted hardline labor guy, and the hand-picking of the Lerners, there's a chance that the Nats won't rock the boat.

It seems like they're a few hundred thousand apart on Smoker. I'd bet anything that that would get done. There's a few million apart on McGeary, whom they drafted in the sixth round knowing he'd want first-round money. He's much less likely, but, really, they should make the commitment to the kid.

NFA, in a way, argues otherwise. He argues that you can't point to the major league payroll and investment there and use that as a hammer to beat the Lerners with for not signing the kids because the nature of the money is different and because MLB and the Union have set up a system where kids and vets are treated differently.

He's right to an extent. The money IS treated differently. Typically, major league teams have set budgets in various areas, and money doesn't bleed from one area to the other. A dollar spent on the MLB level (provided its within the budget caps they've set) doesn't really take away from that on the minors. So, yeah, you can't really point to the money blown on Dmitri Young and day that they should've spent that on McGeary.

But, as he does acknowledge, the ultimate source of the money is the same. And when you're talking about a few hundred K in McGeary's case, you can find that under the average MLB team's cushions. Know how you save $300K next year? You don't re-sign Alex Escobar. His minimum-salaried roster replacement cost that much. Calling up Joel Hanrahan (or whoever) to replace an injured John Patterson cost the team that much. These are tiny amounts of money in the scheme of things. No, it's not the same account (or "color" as NFA suggest), but if that's the problem, reprogram the money. Shift an extra $300K from some other account and get it done.

(His other point about how the teams CAN stick it to the kids because of collective bargaining issues is exactly correct. But it's also safe to say that while it behooves the industry to keep things down, it doesn't make sense for any particular team to do so; that's why you're seeing so much more pressure on clubs to keep $$$ down)

To the end of reprogramming money, Svrluga shares some good news:

Yesterday, the Nationals held their regularly scheduled ownership meeting downtown at the Washington Square offices of the Lerner family, the corner of Connecticut and L NW. It is my belief that the baseball operations people pushed for more money to sign Smoker and McGeary, and there is some thinking that - in order for the Lerners to live up to their pledge of building through scouting and player development - they have to come through and sign these kids (particularly Smoker), whatever it takes.

Amen.

This team made a promise to invest in the long-term future of the club when it slashed payroll by $30 million in the offseason. So far, they've lived up to it, hiring the best employees and really making a commitment. But the draft is the biggest commitment they have, and it makes no sense to spite themselves over $200K for Smoker. And ideally, $1-2 million over McGeary.

Next year, in the new park, money is going to roll in, even far beyond the projected payroll increase. They owe it to the fans of this team, the suckers like us who still follow this team no matter what, to spend that extra piddling amount, that drop in the bucket.

One other note on that. Because the Nats don't have any compensable free agents this year (having re-signed Belliard and Young), the Nats will have fewer draft picks overall, fewer high (1st, supplemental and 2nd round) draft picks, and it appears that they'll have a lower draft position (ie lower slotting value). Again, this goes to the whole color of money argument and how they likely won't spend next year's money this year, but they'll be spending LESS money on draft picks next year. Shouldn't that then free them up to spend more this year?

Just a quick eyeball of the slotting chart from NFA shows that they'll be spending about $1.5 million less, if all things stay the same, next year. Couldn't they find a better use for that money THIS year?