Pretty sure it was Tseng/Eloy and Torres that caused them to go over: worth it based off of what they bought. WS title TOR pitcher and a nice arm that has potential to be a staple in a team’s (not necessarily the Cubs) rotation.
Sure looking at a team in the penalty the names are really not flashy. But what put them there is a whole another story.
And all were international vs domestic.
Cease was the lesser chip to get Q.
Honestly my approach is: Cubs are in a contending window and acquiring talent via the farm is best used as trade goods.
In a rebuilding phase like the Sox are in then it is used for the base of the next generation.
You really have to tank now to even consider taking the farm too serious. Until then it is more miss then hit due to the team’s draft pick’s and international penalty
Maybe I'm not just not understanding your point here. Where you've lost me is we started talking about the additional slot money and what that means and you've morphed that into a discussion about IFA. There's two types of IFA signings in a some what similar fashion to how you can view draft picks. There are obviously top 100 pick type draft picks and there are high dollar IFA's. So, you're talking about your Eloy/Torres/Tseng(to a lessor extent but was still top 30) types compared to any 1st/2nd round pick. You then have your cheaper signings as IFAs who frankly more often than not are just org filler for the DSL which are some what comparable to any pick after the 10th round in the draft.
You're always going to have the second type of IFA signing. Even when the cubs had little max they could spend i literally just showed 33 players they signed. And like Castro/Contreras/Alzolay....etc some of them are going to turn out to be better than you expect. But you can't count on that just like finding a gem after the 10th round of the draft is really hard. If you want to argue that there are more gems in the IFA class than post 10th round in most drafts I can see that argument. But there's also far more busts that never amount to anything. Effectively you're dealing with players who've been scouted less so sure some guys will surprise you both good and bad. They are also younger(16 vs 18 usually) which means you're projecting more.
If you're point was they can get better ceiling talent out of IFA... i mean sure but that was never what I was arguing against with regard to the extra picks. And the cubs were going to invest that sort of IFA money on top 30 IFAs anyways. However, you have to realize that things aren't like they were even 2 years ago. No team signed more than 2 top 30 IFA's(using mlb.com rankings). The new rules severely limit what you're able to do. Best case you're likely talking about 2 maybe 3 potential impact talents in a given class and then the rest is going to be DSL filler that may or may not be anything. You aren't refilling a system that way. And honestly the odds of even the impact talent flaming out are fairly high.
What having additional slot money in the draft allows you to do is to increase the amount of players you bring in yearly who have more than an average ceiling. For example let's say in a given year you can bring in 5 guys like that(2 IFA big money guys and the first 3 rounds of the draft). If you manage to create additional draft money via picks and can then use that to acquire another guy that's a big deal. And if you continually find ways to do that every year for say 5 years you've effectively created a draft class out of nothing.
