July 2, 2019 - June 15, 2020: International Free Agent Period

[Krylian]

Last year's IFA signing period concludes on June 15th. Thought we could use a fresh thread to kick off the next signing period.

 

 

 

 

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2019-20-mlb-international-bonus-pools/

 

By Ben Badler on April 11, 2019

 

 

Teams have learned how much international bonus pool space they will have for the upcoming 2019-20 signing period, which opens on July 2.

 

$6,481,200 Pool

Arizona D-backs

Baltimore Orioles

Cleveland Indians

Colorado Rockies

Kansas City Royals

Pittsburgh Pirates

San Diego Padres

St. Louis Cardinals

$5,939,800 Pool

Cincinnati Reds

Miami Marlins

Milwaukee Brewers

Minnesota Twins

Oakland Athletics

Tampa Bay Rays

$5,398,300 Pool

Boston Red Sox

Chicago Cubs

Chicago White Sox

Detroit Tigers

Houston Astros

Los Angeles Angels

New York Mets

New York Yankees

San Francisco Giants

Seattle Mariners

Texas Rangers

Toronto Blue Jays

$4,821,400 Pool

Los Angeles Dodgers

Philadelphia Phillies

$4,321,400 Pool

Washington Nationals

$0 Pool

Atlanta Braves

There are 12 teams that will each have $5,398,300 in their pool. Clubs that get a "Competitive Balance Pick" in Round A of the draft get an extra $541,500 each in their pool, while the clubs that get a "Competitive Balance Pick" in Round B get an extra $1,082,900 in their pool. So the teams Major League Baseball classifies as smaller market or smaller revenue clubs get some extra bonus pool space.

 

The Dodgers and Phillies had their pools reduced by $500,000 each for signing A.J. Pollock and Bryce Harper as free agents who received a qualifying offer. The Nationals signed Patrick Corbin as a qualifying offer free agent and, since they exceeded the luxury tax last season, they lost $1 million from their pool.

 

Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel are both still free agents who received qualifying offers, so the final numbers for each team's bonus pool still change before July 2.

 

MLB reduced the Braves' bonus pool to $0 this year as part of their penalty for international signing violations. Signings of $10,000 or less are exempt from the bonus pools, so even though the Braves have no bonus pool space, they can still sign players for up to $10,000.

 

The bonus pools are hard capped, which began two years ago in the 2017-18 period. This year will be the first that no teams will be limited to signings of $300,000 or less as a penalty for having exceeded their bonus pool under the previous system, when teams were allowed to go over.

 

Once the 2019-20 signing period opens, teams can trade for up to an additional 60 percent of their original bonus pool allocation.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Krylian

[BlueRocky]

This was posted in the 2018 thread but I’ll repost it here so guys don’t need to dig up the old one.

 

 

We are linked to Rikelvin De Castro

 

BA:

Rikelvin de Castro, SS, Dominican Republic

 

A lean, 6-foot shortstop, de Castro is a high-energy, hard-nosed player with a chance to develop into a plus defender, making challenging plays look easy. He's a righthanded hitter with a quick, loose stroke and gap power. Castro trains with Angel Perez and is expected with the Blue Jays, likely for north of $1 million.

 

MLB Pipeline:

Hometown: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Position: SS Age: 16 DOB: 1/23/2003 Bats: R Throws: R Height: 6'0" Weight: 145 lb.

WATCH

Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 45 | Run: 50 | Arm: 55 | Field: 50

 

De Castro is a high-energy athlete with an impressive set of tools across the board. He's slender, but he's strong. He's a prospect with good hands, solid footwork, speed and a high baseball IQ.

 

It's no surprise he has been compared to a young Jose Reyes.

 

At the plate, De Castro is a contact hitter who hits line drives all over the field. The belief is that he will develop gap power as he body matures, and he gains strength in the coming years. If all goes according to plan, he'll stick at shortstop and eventually sport a .265 batting average with 10 to 12 home runs in the big leagues one day.

 

But for now, he's considered one of the best fielders at any position in this year's class because of his defensive actions and plus arm strength. He's not the fastest runner, but he's quick and makes up for the lack of speed usually associated with shortstop prospects with hustle. Scouts also love his natural instincts and makeup.

 

De Castro trains with Angel Perez, a member of MLB's Trainer Partnership Program, in the Dominican Republic. The Blue Jays are considered the front-runners to sign him.

[Spanky99]

This was posted in the 2018 thread but I’ll repost it here so guys don’t need to dig up the old one.

 

 

We are linked to Rikelvin De Castro

 

BA:

 

 

MLB Pipeline:

 

I'd imagine that article's too long to post?

[BlueRocky]

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/trainers-mlb-teams-unhappy-with-current-international-signing-system/

This is a great and very lengthy article by Ben Badler. I encourage those with BA subscription to read it.

 

I won’t post the entire article, it’s practically an essay long. Here are some tidbits:

 

If a driver blows through a red light past a police officer, he probably won’t get pulled over. There are traffic laws, but they’re loosely enforced—especially after dark—so the roads turn into chaos.

Major League Baseball has used a similar approach to police free agent signings in the Dominican Republic and the rest of the international market, particularly when it comes to regulating players agreeing to deals with teams years before they’re eligible to sign. Instead of scouting players at 16, when they become eligible to sign pro contracts, teams are reaching agreements to sign players when they’re 13 and 14.

 

None of that is a secret. MLB knows what’s happening. It’s not about one team or a couple teams. It’s all 30 clubs trying to keep up with each other, and it happens systemically because MLB indirectly gives teams the green light allowing it to happen.

 

The big showcases in Latin America the last few months haven’t been focused on 2019 or even 2020 players.

Those events now are built around 2021 and 2022 players, who are as young as 12 and 13. The acceleration of the signing process has changed the way trainers operate their programs.

 

“I hope they have the draft,” said one trainer previously opposed to the draft. “All the trainers, to have a player, we used to get them at 13-14 years old. Now you have to get them at 10-11 years old. So you have to carry them until they’re 16 years old. How much money have you spent on those guys?

 

“I’ve got players signed for 2021, but I still have to buy that player gloves, equipment, baseballs, food, trainers through 2021. And I have to continue to get new players. So as a result, all of us have 30-35 players. That is a tremendous amount of cost. You sign a 2021, you don’t get paid until 2021 or 2022. Then you have to continue buy them gloves, equipment, feed them, take them everywhere and still play them at risk of them getting hurt.

 

“I was so depressed this week. I went to my field and I’m looking at 10- and 11-year-olds. It’s like going to Little League tryouts. I’m going, ‘I can’t believe I’m looking at these kids.’ When kids are signing at 12, the alarm goes off to the parents that the kids have to be in an academy (of a trainer) when they’re 10 because they’re signing them when they’re 12.”

 

A 12-year-old hitting against a 17-year-old is like a Little Leaguer facing a high school varsity pitcher. And it’s not uncommon. It’s hard for scouts not to get excited when they’re at a showcase with 2019 to 2021 players and the 2021s are the most talented ones on the field. But if the margin for error is already high on projecting players who are 16, it’s even bigger when teams are making decisions on kids two or three years younger.

 

“One of my players is 5-foot-9,” said the first trainer. “They told me, ‘I have questions about his body.’ At 14, you start your growth spurt. I’m like, ‘Do you understand you’re looking at this the same way you looked at Eloy Jimenez?’ And you expect them to do the same thing—except they’re 14, 13 years old and now 12.”

 

“I would have no problem with a draft,” the second director said. “I’d welcome a slowdown, to take some of the heat off the kids, let these kids grow. I wouldn’t mind doing it next year even. I have kids committed for next year—a good class, too. It wouldn’t bother me.”

 

“I never was for the draft,” said a third international director. “As a scout, it just helps lazy people. But the way it’s going now, it’s kind of a disaster. Whatever they come up with, I’m good. The way our lives work right now, we’re not capable of keeping this up. You’re looking at 16, 15, 14, 13—you’re looking at four years’ worth of players. It’s tough. There’s never a break. Everyone’s running.

 

“All we’re doing is trying to keep up with the other teams because it’s an open market. You have to know the players. And we’re all making mistakes. All of us. I think I’m a decent scout. When I see a 16-year-old kid for six, seven months, I think I’m pretty good at picking out a guy. I can’t do that with a 13-year-old.”

 

Nearly every scout has repeated some version of the same story. They say they don’t like what’s happening now. We shouldn’t be making signing decisions on kids who are 13 and 14. And we’re doing it, too, because MLB is quietly giving us the thumbs up to do it, and if we don’t, we’re going to fall behind, our GM and owner are going to be mad, and I’ll get fired.

 

“I’m all in for the draft,” said a fourth international director. “I wasn’t in favor before, because if you have contacts and abilities, you can beat other teams in the D.R. I thought if you go to a draft, it takes that skill set away. But now, it’s stupid. We’re gambling millions of dollars on kids.”

 

“The gloves are completely off now,” one international scouting director said. “It’s go scout everybody. So people are coming to deals with 2022 players, contingent upon there being no draft. So where does this end? I think we’re pretty good. I think other teams are pretty good. But nobody’s good enough to scout a 13-year-old kid.

Edited June 26, 2019 by BlueRocky

[jmomcc]

The drawback to the draft is that I can see them using it as an opportunity to just pay players even less.

[BlueRocky]

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/why-were-not-ranking-the-top-july-2-prospects/

 

Why We're Not Ranking The Top July 2 Prospects

By Ben Badler

on June 26, 2019

 

At this time of year, we typically publish our rankings and scouting reports of the top 50 international prospects for July 2.

 

We're not going to do that this year. We're going to do something different instead.

 

I have been following the 2019 class since 2017. Over the last year I have traveled to different programs throughout the Dominican Republic, seeing players at the fields where they train, getting to know a lot of the kids and some of their families. I love covering international signings, so it hurts to not be writing about these players the way we usually do leading up to July 2. But given what's happening in the international signing process right now, I think it's the right thing to do.

 

I wrote in more detail today here about how teams, in some cases, are reaching agreements to sign players two or more years before they are eligible to sign. There are a lot of people in the game who would like to see the signing process slow down. That includes scouts and trainers, those who want a draft and those against it, and I share those concerns. There's also the practical challenge of trying to produce a ranking that has substance behind it because it's based on reports that are fair, accurate and up to date on every player, at a time when the scouting industry has long moved on from following the most prominent 2019 players.

 

Let's get into the practical side first. International free agency is a vastly different scouting process from the draft in the United States. The reality is that teams are not currently scouting the top 2019 international players, many of whom reached agreements to sign with major league teams when they were 14. That means, in many cases, the last time those players worked out for clubs outside of the organization they're expected to sign with on July 2 was two years ago. So when I speak with scouts, they don't have an updated read on the players going to the other 29 teams.

 

When a player commits to a team, he stops working out for other clubs. The player still practices at his trainer's field and can go to a team facility for a certain amount of time, but he stops going to open showcases or tryouts. If a scout goes to a trainer's field to watch other players in that program, he might happen to see a top committed 2019 player, but it's usually a superficial look—a shortstop taking groundballs or taking batting practice, rather than a real game. Nothing that a team would make decisions on or that you would want use to build a substantive report.

 

It doesn't work that way in the draft. In the U.S., top high school players commit to colleges when they're freshmen. But a player committing to Vanderbilt or UCLA at 14 years old doesn't suddenly shut it down from playing high school baseball, travel ball and going to showcases. Every MLB team still scouts those players right up to the day of the draft, and that fresh information is reflected in our draft reports and rankings.

 

Internationally, once a player commits, other teams generally stop watching him play. The exception, in past years, has been Major League Baseball's own showcases. For the 2018 class, I went to the MLB Dominican national showcase, Venezuelan national showcase and then in February 2018, the annual MLB international showcase. A lot of the top 2018 players were there. Even though the players had commitments, it's MLB, so they often felt compelled to go, which gave teams one last look at that year's class.

 

For the 2019 players, MLB did not hold those showcases. MLB now runs their events through the Trainer Partnership Program, using uncommitted players from multiple classes. That change is fine. The MLB showcases before had value—a lot of the pitchers were still uncommitted and teams could see them face top competition—but it makes sense for MLB to focus its events on players who are all still looking to sign. So it's not a criticism of MLB that they made that switch, but I say it to add more context on how little teams have seen of the top 2019 players over the last two years.

 

One year is a long time for a teenage player to develop. Keoni Cavaco, an 18-year-old high school shortstop from California, vaulted from under the radar last summer to become the No. 13 overall pick in the draft earlier this month. If you read a lot of our international coverage—especially our annual International Reviews series—you know how much players can change in three to six months. Two years is an enormous amount of time for players to change, especially in the window from age 14 to 16. Players can grow two or three inches, pack on 30 pounds and look totally different. There are players in the class whose fastballs have jumped five mph or more in that time, improved from below-average speed to a plus runner and from a 30-grade arm to a 60-grade arm on the 20-80 scouting scale. Those are major transformations to a player's present ability and future projection.

 

So from a practical standpoint, it doesn't make much sense to write up our usual reports and rankings. I don't want to put my name or Baseball America's name on a list just for the sake of having a list. I don't think that's the right thing to do, especially when we're writing about kids who are 15 and 16 years old. I don't think it's fair to the players, I don't think it's fair to the teams and I don't think it's responsible for us mislead our readers by publishing surface-level information that would be heavy on uncertainty.

 

That's why we have a new plan for how we're going to cover the top 2019 international signings that's different from what we typically do. Normally, we review each team's international signing class the following year beginning in March, with scouting reports on every player who signed for at least $125,000. Those International Reviews end up containing around 300 scouting reports on international signings.

 

Instead, we are going to move those International Reviews earlier in the calendar to publish them later this year, after the end of the 2019 season. That gives us the opportunity to give you better information on these players. The reports will account for how players look in the Tricky League (an informal league for July 2 signings), U.S. instructional league and Dominican instructs. That means our July 2 coverage will be delayed a few months, but the end result will be more comprehensive coverage earlier and better quality information that, I hope, adds more value for our readers and is fair to everyone involved in the international baseball community.

[Spanky99]

Thanks man, that's a good read.

[Ray]

Michael Smith (Canada): Hey Ben the Jays seem very quiet this international signing period! They usually always get at least one of the top 10 guys. Any idea why they seem so quiet this year ? Thank you

 

Ben Badler: They're going to be very active. Rikelvin de Castro, Robert Robertis, Estiven Machado, just to name a few, and there's more.

[Spanky99]

Michael Smith (Canada): Hey Ben the Jays seem very quiet this international signing period! They usually always get at least one of the top 10 guys. Any idea why they seem so quiet this year ? Thank you

 

Ben Badler: They're going to be very active. Rikelvin de Castro, Robert Robertis, Estiven Machado, just to name a few, and there's more.

 

Yeah, Michael's way off the mark.

[Krylian]

Michael Smith (Canada): Hey Ben the Jays seem very quiet this international signing period! They usually always get at least one of the top 10 guys. Any idea why they seem so quiet this year ? Thank you

 

Ben Badler: They're going to be very active. Rikelvin de Castro, Robert Robertis, Estiven Machado, just to name a few, and there's more.

 

What I take from this is that the Jays are gonna land a kid with a stellar name. Robert Robertis is an 80 grade name.

[BlueRocky]

INF Estiven Machado

 

 

 

 

 

 

OF Robert Robertis:

 

 

Edited June 26, 2019 by BlueRocky

[Spanky99]

I was going to post this, aside from the pics. TY.

[Orgfiller]

If anyone is wondering, Estiven is the bastardization of the English name Steven/Stephen, pretty much spelled how it sounds to them. Just like Maikel (Franco) is the equivalent of Michael.

 

Latinos are really weird man.

[WONDERBAT]

If anyone is wondering, Estiven is the bastardization of the English name Steven/Stephen, pretty much spelled how it sounds to them. Just like Maikel (Franco) is the equivalent of Michael.

 

Latinos are really weird man.

 

Is this guy just dumb or really racist?

[jays4life19]

Is this guy just dumb or really racist?

 

Yeah he hates Latinos. It's been a problem for awhile now. Mods should really do something about it.

[Krylian]

If anyone is wondering, Estiven is the bastardization of the English name Steven/Stephen, pretty much spelled how it sounds to them. Just like Maikel (Franco) is the equivalent of Michael.

 

Latinos are really weird man.

 

Deiferson

Jeison

[Plat]

Is this guy just dumb or really racist?

 

Looks like hes a bit of both, lol what an assclown

[Pendleton]

If anyone is wondering, Estiven is the bastardization of the English name Steven/Stephen, pretty much spelled how it sounds to them. Just like Maikel (Franco) is the equivalent of Michael.

 

Latinos are really weird man.

 

Dutch people are also weird

[jays4life19]

Canadian Scottish/Croatian guys are pretty weird too

[Deadpool]

Dutch people are also weird

 

My father, who was born in The Netherlands, is named Theunes, so I don't know what you're talking about. His mom was named Jantje. too. Totally normal names.

[Todd]

So how many international free agents will the blue jays sign on july 2.

And all together.

[jays4life19]

So how many international free agents will the blue jays sign on july 2.

And all together.

 

You're the expert, Todd. You tell us.

[Todd]

I'm hoping at least 60. And adding other dsl team would be great as well.

More playing time for each player.

[Deadpool]

I'm hoping at least 60. And adding other dsl team would be great as well.

More playing time for each player.

 

Probably all of them, I bet not a single other team will sign an IFA this year.

[Krylian]

40 on July 2nd. 39 in total. Think about that for a minute, Todd.

 

No 2nd DSL team

[BlueRocky]

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2019-mlb-international-signing-preview/

Toronto Blue Jays

 

Rikelvin de Castro, a lean, athletic shortstop with a chance to develop into a plus defender, is expected to sign a seven-figure deal with the Blue Jays. They're also expected to land Venezuelan shortstop Estiven Machado, Venezuelan outfielder Robert Robertis, Venezuelan catcher Victor Mesia and Dominican outfielder Cristian Feliz (video).

 

Five names now

[PhillyBlueJay]

Are the rules different for international free agents when they are signed unlike the amateur draft?

 

Can the Yankees as an example trade the 16 year old kid they signed as part of a package to get Stroman? Are there restrictions for trading international signed players in their first year?

[Spanky99]

Are the rules different for international free agents when they are signed unlike the amateur draft?

 

Can the Yankees as an example trade the 16 year old kid they signed as part of a package to get Stroman? Are there restrictions for trading international signed players in their first year?

 

Most likely the same rules as the rule 4 draft, those kids signed from last season are tradeable now.

[jays4life19]

Happy July 2nd everyone.

[Spanky99]

Happy July 2nd everyone.

 

Going to be an interesting day.