Round 12, Pick 390: Max Foody, LHP
Posted on June 6th, 2012 by Jeff in 2012 MLB Draft, tags: Max FoodyMax Foody
The Pendelton School, FL
Height: 6’3”
Weight: 220 lbs
DOB: 6/11/93
Throws: L
Bats: L
Jeff’s Quick Take: Now that we are out of round 4-10, teams can take risks on potentially unsignable, but high upside players. The Cardinals decided to get that tough sign player in Max Foody who they would have to talk out of a commitment to Florida State. Foody is a projectable left-hander with a fastball that is already in the low nineties. If the Cardinals can sign Foody, it would be a huge win. Everything after the jump.
Foody, a Florida State commit, is big and strong at 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, but remains athletic and showed toughness in coming back from shoulder problems prior to last season. He’s employs a fastball, curveball and changeup, and has hit the low 90s in 2011. He could pitch his way into the first round with a strong spring.
Perfect Game USA:
Athletic LHP with 92 mph FB, very good BB, fast smooth arm. Coming back strong from injury. Outstanding at many PG events.
Rivals ranked Foody the number #68 (college) recruit in the nation and had this to say “Came back strong from injury and has a solid fastball.”
IMG Academies:
With a fast ball that runs up to 92 MPH and the off-speed to keep hitters off balance, Foody may have an important decision to make come June when the MLB First-Year Player Draft kicks off.
Here’s the MLB scouting report video, but most of it is him hitting and fielding:
Here’s some of him actually pitching on Vimeo. Don’t think I can embed, so here’s the link.
Here’s an embeddable one:
Here’s another one from Baseball Web TV and Skillshow:
Entries (RSS)
He’s going to be a really tough sign, but he looks like a really good prospect.
he signed for 400,000 and i know him personally and played with him throughout highschool what most people dont know is, on his pitching hand he has half of an index finger due to a biking incident but it brings great movement to his fastball… its dirtyyy!
400k is all it took? Hope this is true. Can someone confirm please?
I’m not buying it. Don’t think it would be this easy.
Foody is not a $400,000 talent. Its unlikely that he has signed and unlikely the Cards would ever offer him that much. We might offer $125,000 now and a higher amount before the signing deadline in July.
That’s where I disagree. The guy was getting 1st round consideration going into the year. He didn’t have as good a season as expected but did show that he could still throw after the shoulder issues las tyear. He’s a 6’4 lefty who could very easily be a number 2 starter for FSU next year. I think 400k is about right for what it would take to sign him.
A lot of bonus stuff more precise than you assume. There is vertical ranking of the players. Foody has already had labrum surgery, which diminishes his ranking, which was down around 330 to 340. This is down in $100,000 bonus territory.
Rumor about first round consideration is just repertorial hype. Foody went in the draft at about what his talent warrants. He is 10th to 12th round talent.
We would like to get Foody signed. Because he has an offer from Florida State, we might have to go up a ways, maybe $150,000. But the Cards would lose face to offer him $400,000 and earn a reputation as easy to bluff. We should put a realistic and fair price tag on him and then Mr. Foody chooses what to do.
The reason that Williams and Foody are past the 10th round is because of the new CBA and teams not wanting to lose any of the allotted amount. That is why a guy like our 7th rounder will probably get 10k. Jesse Winker who was rated below Williams just got 1 million dollars. If Williams is going to sign it’s going to be for more t han 400k.
Our 7th rounder should get $15,000, because a senior. This is what Allen Craig got in the 8th round coming out of U Cal, 6 years ago.
Seniors do not have leverage and teams dictate their bonus. The overall bonus ceilings for teams under the new CBA escalated the drafting of seniors as a smart way to use limited funds.
You make a good point, if Winkler commanded $1MM. He is comparable to Williams. It will be interesting to see how high the Cards go to land Trey Williams. It should be higher than $481,000, to be fair to Williams by factoring the bonus given Winkler. The Cards could factor the Reds overpaid Winkler and offer say $700,000. Its doubtful we would give Williams $1MM, because its double his bonus value.
Andrew, I just looked up Winkler. I had assumed he was 11th round, since you mentioned him. However, Winkler went 49th. Given his drafting position, he is going to command what 49th entitles him too. He got a bonus apt for the 49th selection. This is fair and not a surprise.
However, Williams did not gain the advantage of being selected up high at 49. He went down around 360 and this is $100,000 territory for many a high schooler. However, Williams can get a much higher bonus, on talent. He fell in the draft well below his talent, maybe because he was asking for more bonus money than teams wanted to give him on talent. Or maybe teams are dubious of his attitude. The Cards should be willing to offer him $481,000, fair for his scouting rank. He is not Austin Wilson, with a Stanford education waiting. Williams may sign. Its pretty unlikely the Cards would double up on $481K.
You were talking about bonus position based on how they were ranked. Winker was BA’s 159 I think while Williams was 99 and that was iwth his stock being low. I thought you were assuming bonus based on rating not draft position.
Actually Winkler was 105 on BA’s list
http://www.baseballamerica.com/draft-preview/?srch=byNatRank&top=500&submit=Search
He was also way ahead of Williams on both of these list
http://www.minorleagueball.com/2012/5/17/3024055/2012-mlb-draft-board-5-17-12?login=1337297399
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/prospects/watch/y2012/#list=draft
Rumor is that Alford (drafted by the Blue Jays) will sign for about $850K He is ranked higher than Williams everywhere and has the football leverage on top of his college baseball leverage.
Another interesting note is that most #1 picks are signing below slot – Correa, zZimmer, Cecchini, Roache. Coulter signed for slot.
Wisdom signed for $275,000 beneath the norm for where picked. The Cards took a guy whose talent rank was 160 and elevated him in the draft. Both sides benefited. Wisdom got a lot more bonus than if drafted at 160, while the Cards got bonus relief too, gaining an extra $275,000 to use on Trey Williams or some other kid below the 10th round.
The bottom line is the Cards have bonus money available to sign their draftees.
Guess we will see how much money we have left over. Ian Rice and Javier Machuca are also very interesting guys.
We have bonus money for post-10th round draftees, because we deliberately saved money via 5 selections (four seniors plus Wisdom) within the first 10 rounds.
I know that but a good deal of the extra money may go to Kelly and Williams. If one of those two doesnt sign then I can see some of the guys i mentioned getting extra money.
Andrew we have more ceiling to spend than most teams. Please consider being more hopeful and not knee jerk doubtful.
Foody has had one shoulder operation already. He is not going to command an immense bonus.
I’m not not optimitic. The money we can spend will be what we save in underslot bonsues from Round 1-10. Kelly and Williams will cost alot. Reading Foody’s profile a draft person said with a good spring he could be a 1st rounder. He’s not going to come cheap when he could easily go to FSU and be a number 1 or 2 guy and be a 1st rounder in a few years.
Kelly is going to get a lot, owing to his slot. There is no reason to pay him more than slot.
Williams will cost a lot, but Mo has a lot of money tucked away. Williams is vastly more signable than Austin Wilson for instance, a smart kid going to Stanford, no matter what. We can give Williams enough to get him to the Gulf Coast League this July.
Foody is no number one draft pick. He has already had a left SHOULDER operation, which really hurts value. He should be offered at least $100K to forget about Florida State. He might take it.
We drafted some other interesting talent. Juco and high school guys cost money, but Mo has plenty to dole out to them. We should ink most of our draftees.
Kelly won’t sign for slot? Did you see his tweet after Day 1 when he wasn’t drafted. About God having a plan for him to go to College and become one of the 5% of Big Leaguers that get there education. That obviously means that he was upset he wasnt taken and didn’t understand that teams could organize things so that they could go overslot. That right there shows that he wants first round money. We will have to give him that much to get him to sign.
This just sounds like a negotiating ploy, to drive up his bonus.
The Cards should make him a reasonable offer. If Kelly instead prefers to obtain a college diploma, good for him and he should do so.
If we’re just going to offer 2nd round slot money to high-upside high school guys rated in the top 50-60 prospects, we might as well not draft them at all. Kelly’s slot is about $500k. There is no way in hell he signs for that.
A reasonable offer would be the $1.3m we signed Tyrell Jenkins for, arguably a slightly less polished prospect. Whilst I think it’s possible the new CBA rules will push down the bonuses of high school guys a little, I also think it’s entirely possible Kelly will hold out for late first-round money, which would be in the $1.5-2m range.
High school 3B Nick Castellanos got $3.75m from the Tigers a couple of years ago. Whilst he’s probably not comparable to Kelly for a variety of reasons, that alone should make it obvious he’s not going to sign for $500k.
If Kelly gets $1.5-2m, that’s $1-1.5m over slot. It’s not easy to gain that sort of freedom under the bonus pool cap without severely lowballing Ramsey and Wisdom (which I guess we might’ve done) and signing a lot of the college juniors and seniors in rounds 5-10 for an absolute pittance. Of course, we might do that, but then it’s hard to free up more than about $1m in total to offer Williams and Foody. No way Williams will sign for that. Foody might.
I think we sign either Kelly or Williams, and Foody might sign for 500k or so as a second high school guy, but no way can we afford all 3.
Kelly was 43rd in talent rank. The bonus guidance for 43 is $1.2MM, so Felonious was in the ballpark on Kelly.
The bonus for Williams should be about $481,000. If he makes more, he has done well in negotiation.
Foody is not a comparable talent. He was ranked in the mid 300s, much lower. The Cards may offer about $120,000.
It sounds like he wanted first day money. The bottom end of that range is $900K. I would expect $900K to $1.2MM would get it done for Kelly.
Foody was projected at one point to be a “possible” first rounder. There are probably about 15o kids who that applies to at one point or another. He wasn’t a first rounder because he didn’t perform as well as some expected. He can’t (and probably won’t) expect to be paid as if he had performed as well as some had hoped. I don’t really know what his $$ expectations are but I would guess a sound business decision for him would be in the $300K range.
The comments about Foody above also apply to Williams. It is great someone once projected you to be drafted highly. But he (as did Foody) dropped in the rankings for a reason and it wasn’t money. Williams will expect and should get more than Foody. He has higher potential. But I think much more than second round money for him is not realistic.
If the priority of these players is to play pro ball, they’ll sign for amounts in line with their play and potential. If they want to spend 3 years in college they’ll hold out for more and probably won’t get it. I’m not willing to break the bank for Kelly since we get the pick next year if he doesn’t sign. I think we can sign all our picks if they sign for thee amounts. If they don’t I’d imagine we’ll sign all but Kelly and let that pick roll to next year. That would still be an excellent draft in my mind.
Well, I hope you’re right! I think Foody is a guy you could probably get for 500k or so, if they really want him. I doubt Kelly signs for less than $1m, maybe $1.5m is about right for him and like you I’d let him walk if he wants much more. High schoolers have so much leverage in the draft. Look at what Nick Castellanos got – a good talent, but not that massively ahead of Kelly. Kelly was a supplemental round talent, and I think supp-level high schoolers generally want mid to high first-round money.
FWIW I actually think that both Foody and Williams dropped as far as they did largely due to money. Williams was ranked a top 100 talent by just about every publication out there. He should maybe have fallen to the 2nd or 3rd round at the absolute worst, but the reason no-one took him there is that slot for those rounds is around 500k and a lot of teams simply can’t afford to pay triple or quadruple the slot value to a pick in those rounds, with the new cap system in place. So really it does come down to money for him. FWIW I also think both guys end up going to college. I just can’t see us breaking the bank for either but I’d really love to get one or both. For me, that would turn the draft from “average” to (as you stated) “excellent”.
I don’t know what to make of their player analysis at times, but Lincoln Hamilton at Project Prospect is a huge believer in Carson Kelly, ranking him ahead of Wacha. I’m inclined to believe Kelly is a guy for whom the Cards saved some money. Then again, I’m not sure the Cards would be wise to stand in the way of God’s plan to get Kelly a college education.
Williams most likely won’t sign for less than 750k. Yes, he didn’t perform this year but with his pedigree and being a Top 20 talent for the last 3 years it’s likely that he easily gets his status back with college. I think Williams is a better prospect this year than Charlie Tilson was last year. I’m happy because it doesn’t seem like he’s a tough sign because he wants to go to school more so that he’s considered a tough sign because going to school could replenish his value. So the only thing that would keep him from signing is if we don’t pay him.
Good luck getting him to skip on Oregon for slot. He fell because of rumored demands (I heard two million), not because he went where he was supposed to go.
If the Cards fail to sign Foody, it will be 2 years in a row they have not signed a HS pitcher.
He’s got a nice delivery to the plate mechanics look good.