Aiken's achin': Implications of a surgery

Brady Aiken, last summer's first overall draft pick whose failed negotiations with the Houston Astros wrecked the signing plans of two other prospects, had Tommy John surgery Wednesday.

The rapidity with which Aiken's injury appeared this spring (in his first start for the IMG Academy's postgraduate team) suggests that the Astros were right last summer about the condition of the lefty's elbow. Aiken and his advisors publicly denied that there was any issue, and I was, for whatever it's worth, skeptical of the Astros' good faith in the entire fiasco. Still am, for that matter; I can name other draft picks whose signing agreement ran aground on the medical exam without turning as ugly as this one did.

Aiken had signed with UCLA before the draft, but never enrolled there; the public nature of last summer's dispute made it likely that the NCAA would deem him ineligible under its nonsencial rules about agents. He's eligible for the draft again this summer, and even with this surgery is very likely to go top 10 again. (Last year a pitcher named Jeff Hoffman went ninth overall despite having Tommy John surgery about a month before the draft.)

The Twins draft sixth in June. Aiken is presumably on their radar.

The Brady Aiken fiasco revisited

You may remember that last summer there was a brief storm of controversy when the Houston Astros backed out of at least two, maybe three, contract agreements with draftees Brady Aiken (the No. 1 overall pick), Jacob Nix (fifth-round pick) and Mac Marshall (21st round pick).

The Astros insisted the pre-signing physical on Aiken uncovered something wrong in his elbow. Aiken and his advisors are equally adamant that there was nothing significant. The Astros slashed there offer to Aiken -- a move that, had the prep lefty accepted it, would have allowed the team enough leeway in ther draft bonus allotment to sign both Nix and Marshall to overslot deals.

Aiken didn't sign for any amount -- in the final minutes before the deadline the Astros reportedly tried to raise their lowball offer and were simply ignored -- and the Astros didn't sign Nix or Marshall either, because losing Aiken deproved them of the majority of their bonus pool.

Most of the scorn heaped on the Astros was over their reneging on the offer to Nix, who passed his physical. I am, personally, skeptical that the Astros dealt in good faith with these high-schoolers, but that's just my opinion.

On Monday it was reported that the Astros settled with Nix for an unknown figure. Presumably they were afraid the arbitrator in the grievance filed by the players union would determine that they had a valid contract with Nix, and they would be heavily penalized in the coming draft as a result of exceeding their bonus pool.

The Astros get the No. 2 pick in this year's draft as a result of not signing the No. 1 pick last year. Unsigned draftees cannot be drafted again by the same club without their permission; I would expect that there was enough bad blood from last summer's "negotiations" that none of the three will give the Astros that waiver.

The Astros' 1/1 problems

Carlos Correa, seen here hitting for the Quad Cities
River Bandits against the Cedar Rapids Kernels in 2013,
is currently shelved with a fractured leg.

The Houston Astros have had the first overall pick in each of the last three drafts. With the spectacular collapse of their negotiations with this year's 1/1 as the team indulged in apparent gamesmanship with its draft pool, it's worth looking at how they've fared with those picks so far.

2012: Carlos Correa.

This was a gamesmanship draft by the Astros. Correa wasn't expected to go that high; the consensus had Byron Buxton as the top talent and three college pitchers (Mark Appel, Kyle Zimmer and Kevin Gausman) as safer selections.

The Astros took Correa and signed him for considerably less than the Twins, who picked second, spent on Buxton. They then used their bonus pools savings to buy a pair of "tough signs," Lance McCullers Jr. and Rio Ruiz, out of their college commitments.

Two years later, Correa is a highly regarded prospect, albeit out for the remainder of the season with a fractured fibia near the right ankle. He's not as highly regarded as Buxton, however, and if the broken leg helps force him from shortstop to third base, his value will recede a bit more.

As for the gain downdraft, it's probable that the Twins did better with Jose Barrios than the Astros did with McCullers Jr.

Correa wasn't a bad selection by the Astros, but I think the industry would agree they'd have been better off taking Buxton.

2013: Mark Appel

When the Astros and Twins bypassed Appel in 2012, so did several other teams, and he slid to the Pirates at No. 8. Pittsburgh didn't have the bonus pool money to appease the college junior, and Appel returned to Stanford.

This time the Astros took him (over Jonathan Gray and Kris Bryant), and Appel signed.

He has been a disaster.

Appel was somewhat less than dominant for Quad Cities in the Midwest League last summer, but it had been a long collegiate season and he was shifting from pitching once a week for Stanford to a more frequent professional rotation. Nobody was concerned.

Moved up to high A Lancaster in the California League this year, Appel is 1-5, 10.80. Let me repeat that ERA: Ten-eighty. He's averaging a bit more than three innings a start, and he's allowed 69 hits in 38.1 innings.

Lancaster is a notoriously terrible place to pitch, but there is no sugarcoating those numbers. The Astros would have done better to take Bryant, certainly. At this point, they'd have done better taking anybody else. It's difficult to envision a four-year college pitcher doing this poorly in A ball and having a career.

2014: Brady Aiken.

Appel may not be what the Astros (and, to be fair, most everybody else) expected, but at least there's a chance he will contribute someday to the Astros. Aiken will assuredly not.

Whatever the specifics of the medical concerns, whatever the perceived risk, it is baffling that the Astros front office screwed up the negotiations this badly. And, of course, it wasn't just Aiken they lost, but Jacob Nix as well. I doubt that general manager Jeff Luhnow is in any real jeopardy over this, but there is a serious case to be made that this should a firing offense.

Houston will get the No. 2 pick next June in compensation for failing to sign Aiken. The Astros don't deserve it.

The Brady Aiken fiasco

The current regime of the Houston Astros has a tendency to come off as convinced that they're the smartest guys in the room -- and more than that, they frequently seem compelled to make sure everybody else knows it.

Today, with the first overall pick in the draft lost to them -- and their fifth round pick too, and, although this is perhaps a bit more of a stretch, their 21st round pick -- they look considerably dumber than that.

The Astros on Friday lost two prime prospects, maybe a third, in a dispute over a medical evaluation and, depending on which offer we're talking about, $3 million to $1.5 million. Now, $3 million is a life-changing sum for most of us, but teams toss that much money overboard routinely these days. The Red Sox dumped A.J. Pierzynski last week; they will pay him more than $3 million not to play for them.

The Astros, if we take their reported concerns about Brady Aiken's elbow at face value (and Aiken and his camp emphatically do not), were willing to risk more than $3 million on Aiken, even $5 million,  but not the agreed-upon $6.5 million. This flabbergasts me. 

Five million is the same amount the Twins are wasting on Mike Pelfrey this year -- and will spend again on him next year. The Astros couldn't bring themselves to wager less money on Aiken's future than the Twins did on Pelfrey.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. 

Linking up

Major league play resumes today after a four-day All-Star break. Here are a few links that might inform and/or entertain you in the meantime.

* I had my (usually) biweekly chat with KMSU's Jim Gullickson on Monday. It was actually the first time I'd been on the air in three weeks, but we'll get back in rhythm now. Second and fourth Mondays of the month, 1 p.m.

* Here's a lovely piece by the great Joe Posnanski on Glen Perkins and his All-Star experience this year.

Then the truck turned onto 7th and it stopped, and there were a lot of people there, thousands of people, and the cheers pushed up to 11, pushed to a sound Glen had heard before -- the sound he had heard for Mariano Rivera. Only this time those cheers were for him. Surreal.

Read it.

* Today is also the deadline for signing 2014 draft picks, and there is a bizarre late drama coming to a head between the Houston Astros and the No. 1 overall pick, Brady Aiken. To understand it, here's Ken Rosenthal's piece from earlier in the week that exposed the dispute to public view, and here's a Fangraphs piece that tries to make sense of it.

I have an opinion about this one, but it's really more of a bias. I have, with no real evidence to support it, a sense that the Astros are not a trustworthy operation. I don't know that they're trying to cheat Aiken; as Mike Pietriello says in the second piece I linked to above, cheating Aiken doesn't make any logical sense. I just don't trust them.

But I do think the Astros will sign Aiken today, and Jacob Nix, the fifth-round pick whose contract agreement is in limbo because of this dispute, as well. I can't see that the Astros are dumb enough to lose both players. And if this thing goes completely haywire, it's possible that the 'Stros will not only lose Aiken but their first-round pick next year (if Nix is ruled to have a valid oral contract at a number that pushes the Astros over their bonus allotment). There's too much at risk for the Astros; they have to sign these guys.

But they sure seem to be trying to screw this up.