But to say we don’t have any OF with value outside of Jackson is way off, and even if we miss out on both Cubans we could still have good young outfielders coming up over the next few years. But Soler or Cespedes would vault right up along Jackson at the top of the pecking order, no doubt.

And GMs are GMs for a reason. They have resources that focus entirely on player valuation. If the market bears out that this particular individual is worth 6 years/$60 million, then that’s all there is to it. If they agree with your assessment, then the contract price will be lower, or there won’t be any contract.

His dominance against other college players was one of them, but it was hardly all of it. Scouts also timed his fastball, assessed his curveball, looked at his mound presence, and concluded he was outstanding.

Had Strasburg never gone to college, I believe he would have been a first rounder just based on his tryouts. I have nothing to base it on, but I would bet that’s correct. More surely, however, is my belief that Strasburg’s dominance against college players was only one of many factors that went into his assessment.

Now, with Cespedas, we don’t have that one component of adequate competition, but we do have scouts that have looked at him and made a judgement on based on the skills he brings to the table … and they projected. I’m fine with assuming that their assessment is based on solid baseball knowledge. Should they feel that Cespedas has a very good chance of being a productive major league player, I would have no ability to prove them wrong.

I hope the Cubs sign him. I get jittery at $60M though.

Forget the league Cespedes played in. The track record for the top guys from the Cuban national team has been pretty good, whether from the success of pitchers like Livan and Orlando Hernandez (who clearly had no MLB competition prior to their defection, but did well right off the bat) or more recently Aroldis Chapman (who is raw but has probably surpassed Cincy’s expectations to this point), to position players like Kendrys Morales, Alexei Ramirez, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Dayan Viciedo.

It seems to me that in addition to traditional evaluation methods (watching film, putting them through workouts), a scout/GM can make reasonable evaluations about Cespedes, Soler and others by seeing how they stacked up against the same competition as some of these other guys. That doesn’t necessarily translate to “$60 million would be a good investment” — the White Sox signed Viciedo and Ramirez for much, much less — but it also doesn’t mean you’re making a completely blind leap.