Upping the Ante

After three years of global scouting aimed at assembling teams that will begin play in April, after scouring ballparks from Adelaide to Anaheim, from Caracas to Cleveland, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays learn today which players will be available in next Tuesday’s expansion draft.

The 28 other teams must submit their 15-player protected lists today by 11 a.m. PST but expansion history has taught the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays that they are not likely to find the nucleus of a competitive team in the draft.

Trades, free-agent signings and scouting and development are essential in both the long and short term, particularly if the new teams are to reach the playoffs after three years, as the Colorado Rockies did, or win the World Series after five, as the Florida Marlins did.

Expansion history may also document that no two teams have been better prepared to make an immediate impact--from their three years of scouting and development to their significant financial resources, which could allow them to pay higher-salaried veterans left unprotected in the draft or big-name players who have filed for free agency.

“I think we’re all a little wary, and worried about how much those two teams might spend,” one National League general manager said.

“They’ve already created havoc in the amateur market, and it might not stop there, considering their fan and revenue base.”

Both the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays will come in among baseball’s top five or six revenue producers.

The Diamondbacks have sold 33,000 season tickets and 90% of the available 69 luxury boxes for their first season in the 48,000 seat Bank One Ballpark and are guaranteed $400 million in long-term advertising revenue.

The Devil Rays have sold 23,000 season tickets and all 60 luxury boxes for their first season at 45,000 seat Tropicana Field, the former Suncoast Dome.

Neither team hesitated in blowing the lid off the amateur market when rule violations enabled four of the top prospects in the 1996 draft to become free agents.

The Diamondbacks signed Travis Lee, a college first baseman, for $10 million, and John Patterson, a high school pitcher, for $6.075 million, then spent $3 million on Cuban pitchers Vladimir Nunez and Larry Rodriguez.

The Devil Rays signed high school pitchers Matt White and Bobby Seay for $10 million and $3 million, respectively, and a year later signed Cuban ace Rolando Arrojo for $7 million.

No apologies and no definitive word from either team as to whether they will now hit the draft and free agency with open checkbooks, although Devil Ray owner Vince Naimoli, at a recent owners’ meeting in Atlanta, said that he and Arizona owner Jerry Colangelo have warned the other owners that “they shouldn’t expect to put their big-money guys out there and have them stay out there.”

The inference is that if the Atlanta Braves, for instance, leave Fred McGriff unprotected, or the Marlins do not protect Bobby Bonilla or Al Leiter, or the Houston Astros do not protect Derek Bell or the Dodgers take a gamble and leave Eric Karros, Ramon Martinez or both unprotected, the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays will not be dissuaded by their salaries.

Both teams are prepared to spend and will. The questions are: How much and how soon?

“I don’t think there’s any way to develop a championship caliber team or even a .500 team without [taking advantage of] free agency,” Tampa Bay General Manager Chuck LaMar said. “It’s safe to say that the Rockies wouldn’t have reached the playoffs in three years and the Marlins wouldn’t have won a World Series in five without free agency. No matter how good the draft is and how well you’ve prepared, it’s only a small part in the development of a team. You’re not going to come out of it with a championship or competitive team.”

The Diamondbacks and Devil Rays will each draft 35 players, and the 28 old teams will each lose two players, some three.

The expansion franchises cost their ownership groups $130 million each.

LaMar, a former executive with the Braves, estimated that Naimoli and partners will have spent $200 million by opening day. Thus, he said, from a business standpoint, steady growth would seem to make more sense than an erratic course of wild spending.

“If you’re going to have a $30-million to $35-million payroll off the bat, then you have to be prepared for it go to $40 million the next year,” he said. “It’s tempting, but I’m not sure it’s the right course.

“I mean, we’d love to have our cake and eat it too, but there’s a fine line. The long-term goal is to be competitive year after year. The only way to build for the long term is through scouting and development, producing a steady flow of players through the system.

“If we can be competitive quickly without sacrificing development and our long-term goals, we will. But we’ve basically followed a conservative course, except in the two or three instances when we’ve had the opportunity to sign a player with impact potential.”

Good weather and the promise of even sunnier paychecks have free agents lining up for the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays.

There’s speculation that Tampa Bay may ultimately sign a couple of local kids named Wade Boggs and Dwight Gooden, but LaMar said he won’t consider free agency until after the draft.

A couple of other Tampa area players, McGriff and Bell, are expected to be available in the draft, but LaMar said he would draft for ability, not residence.

“Just because some high-salaried and recognizable names figure to be in the pool doesn’t mean they’re the right fit for an expansion team,” he added.

“Most of those players are being exposed because of high salary or length of contract or reduced production or medical reason, and most are out there only because their clubs have already attempted to shop them around and were unable to trade them.”

Of the 72 players selected by the Rockies and Marlins in 1992, only three were everyday players, Colorado’s Vinny Castilla and Eric Young, now back with the Dodgers, and Florida’s Jeff Conine, who was recently released. Castilla and relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman, later traded by the Marlins to San Diego for Gary Sheffield, were the only players in that draft to develop into star caliber, although the Rockies were still reaping benefits in 1997 from draft selections Darren Holmes, Curtis Leskanic, Steve Reed and Kevin Ritz.

Both LaMar and his Arizona counterpart, Joe Garagiola Jr., expect several trades to evolve from the draft, as they did in ‘92, and both expect to open the 1998 season with their 25 man rosters including only 16-18 players from the draft. The bottom line, Garagiola said, is that Arizona and Tampa Bay are starting with the 16th-best player in each organization.

He added, “The irony is that with all the excitement and hoopla about the draft, with all of the work and preparation that goes into making the best possible choices, you immediately look for ways to begin upgrading the players you’ve selected.

“That’s through trades, free agency, the Rule 5 draft [of minor league players] and, most importantly, scouting and development. I mean, it would be folly to say you can go into the draft thinking other teams are going to make available large numbers of players on whom you can build a future.

“If that was to be the case, then people made a lot of mistakes on their protection lists, which is not something you can count on. Our goal is to get the best possible players out of this draft, but we can know all there is to know about them and that won’t make them better.”

Both the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays hope to focus on pitching in the draft, but the addition of those teams will further dilute that already diluted category. Leiter, 11-9 with the Marlins, could be the first player selected, but Garagiola said it would also be foolish to expect to find many quality pitchers, given the current shortage.

The Diamondbacks, he said, have an aggressive but tangible goal of .500 in ’98 and will not simply run an “all-prospect team” out there.

However, he hopes to keep the initial payroll in the $30-million to $35-million range, indicating a strong free-agent foray.

“Whether it’s free agency or the draft, the great thing about our revenue base is that it enables us to look at and consider all the ways to put a club together and not simply reject a player based on economics,” Garagiola said. “On the other hand, because of our ticket sales, we don’t have to rent a name just to juice sales. The only criterion is, does he fit or not.”

How long will the honeymoons last in Arizona and Tampa Bay? Difficult to say, but it may determine how quickly the teams have to move into free agency.

The success of the Rockies and Marlins, LaMar said, definitely has raised expectations.

But Garagiola said, “Everybody focuses on the amount of money the Marlins spent last year, but where would they have been without guys like Charles Johnson and Edgar Renteria and Livan Hernandez, who were products of their scouting and development systems?

“People forget that they took their lumps for four years while putting the building blocks in place. Then they decided it was time to go to the next level.

“They basically did it the way we want to, building a foundation through scouting and development.”

The new teams have had a three-year start on scouting and a two-year start on farm systems. The Devil Rays waited until last week to select a manager--Florida pitching coach Larry Rothschild--whereas Arizona has had Buck Showalter in place as manager almost from the start.

The former New York Yankee manager has played a significant role in scouting and had a major voice in the type player the Diamondbacks should be considering.

“We may misjudge a player’s arm speed or bat speed or foot speed,” Showalter said. “We’re human. But given the time we’ve had, we shouldn’t miss on makeup and character, and that should be a large factor in the type product we put on the field.”

The expansion teams will get a better feel for that product after receiving the protected lists today. The 28 other teams already have a feel for what they’re up against financially.

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Expansion Draft

FORMAT

* The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays will each select 35 players from a draft pool made up of unprotected players from the other teams.

* A coin flip will determine how the teams select. The winner may choose to select first and fourth in the first round, or second and third. The teams will alternate picks after that.

* Each of the 28 other teams, which are allowed to protect 15 players, will lose one unprotected player in the first round. At the end of that round, Arizona and Tampa Bay will each have 14 players.

* Each of the old teams will be allowed to protect three more players before the second round. The second round will proceed as the first, with each existing team losing an additional player. At the end of the second round, Arizona and Tampa Bay will each have 28 players.

* Each existing team will be allowed to protect three more players before the third round, during which seven American League and seven National League teams will lose one player each, giving Arizona and Tampa Bay 35 players each.

ELIGIBILITY

* All players in an organization are draft eligible, except those with no major league experience who have less than three years’ service if they signed at 19 or older, or have less than four years’ service if they signed before their 18th birthdays.

PROTECTED PLAYERS

* From the eligible list, teams may protect 15 players before the draft. Those players with 10 years of major league service, the last five with the same team, and players with no-trade clauses in their contracts for the 1998 season must be on the protected list unless they waive those rights. Free agents will not be protected but cannot be drafted.