July 2, 2020 - June 15, 2021: International Free Agent Period (Hopefully)

Krylian · March 30, 2020

No idea if the signing period gets pushed back or if there are any drastic plans being discussed like they are for the MLB Draft, but regardless, let's discuss....

So far I've only heard the Jays linked to Manuel Beltre Jr.

Anyone else??

BlueRocky · April 7, 2020

https://www.baseballamerica.com/rankings/2020-mlb-international-prospects-class/

8
Manuel Beltre
Dominican Republic
SS

Notes:
Born: June 9, 2004. B-T: R-R. Ht.: 5-11. Wt.: 165.

Report: One of the best hitters in the class, Beltre is a baseball rat who has spent years documenting his path to professional baseball on his social media accounts, sharing his daily training and highlights on his Instagram account of more than 50,000 followers. Beltre has a short, simple swing, performing well in games with a high contact rate, good feel for the strike zone and gap power. Beltre isn't as tooled-up as some of the other top prospects in the class, but he has a ton of game experience relative to his peers and it's evident in his all-around instincts and fundamentally sound play. Beltre, who trains trains with Jaime Ramos and Banana, is expected to sign with the Blue Jays, with a bonus somewhere in the $2-3 million range.

New released IFA rankings, our boy is ranked 8th, which is a lot higher than Rikelvin de Castro last year.

Based on signing bonus projection and BA ranking, we’re getting a guy who’s hype is somewhere in the middle between an Orelvis Martinez and Miguel Hiraldo/Rikelvin de Castro.

This is a bat first prospect though, unlike Rikelvin and perhaps Estiven Machado. So that’s exciting. He’s also a social media star with his own youtube channel and frequent instagram posts.

Krylian · April 7, 2020

https://www.baseballamerica.com/rankings/2020-mlb-international-prospects-class/

New released IFA rankings, our boy is ranked 8th, which is a lot higher than Rikelvin de Castro last year.

Based on signing bonus projection and BA ranking, we’re getting a guy who’s hype is somewhere in the middle between an Orelvis Martinez and Miguel Hiraldo/Rikelvin de Castro.

This is a bat first prospect though, unlike Rikelvin and perhaps Estiven Machado. So that’s exciting. He’s also a social media star with his own youtube channel and frequent instagram posts.

I just hope he's not a Marcus Stroman.

BlueRocky · April 7, 2020

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK6CAMj9ZgHiNAdqXYi8Vow

Instagram:

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Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

He’s got a decent following but it’s mostly videos of him working out, not really the twitter comments type.

Edited April 7, 2020 by BlueRocky

BlueRocky · April 10, 2020

Manuel Beltre swing video (courtesy of baseball america)

Edited April 10, 2020 by BlueRocky

BlueRocky · April 29, 2020

Todd · May 6, 2020

Question for you. If the jays are allowed to spend just over ten money on the top ten rounds of the draft

does that mean they have around 10 million to spend on international free agents this year?

metafour · May 6, 2020

Question for you. If the jays are allowed to spend just over ten money on the top ten rounds of the draft
does that mean they have around 10 million to spend on international free agents this year?

No, Todd. Thats not what it means.

Todd · May 6, 2020

So how much will they have to spend then?

Krylian · May 6, 2020

Don't think they've been announced yet but speculation is that it'll be similar to last years numbers.

Jays had $5,398,300 to spend last signing period.

BlueRocky · June 6, 2020

Shortstops and catchers are kinda our thing now.

Gimenez: https://streamable.com/o58x1t
Martin Gimenez could really spend time in a buffet.. like a week.

So we're looking at:

SS Manuel Beltre
SS Martin Gimenez
CF Yhoangel Aponte
C Jonathan Peguero

I'll see if I can dig up some info on these guys

Edit: Jonathan Peguero swing:

JDB baseball RD (@jdbbaseballrd) • Instagram video

WWW.INSTAGRAM.COM

147 likes, 0 comments - jdbbaseballrd on September 4, 2018: "Jonathan Peguero C 2020Class from El niche baseball academy. Top prospect 2020Class www.jdbbaseball.com".

Yhoangel Aponte pic: https://www.picuki.com/media/2145841641871676600

BlueRocky · June 16, 2020

Edited June 16, 2020 by BlueRocky

Krylian · June 16, 2020

I'm curious to see what Manfred does to f*** with the IFA signing period like he did with the 5 round +$20K draft. Each team can only sign 5 players that have bonuses greater than $50K? Then unlimited signings after that with a max bonus of $5K per player?

glory · June 16, 2020

I'm curious to see what Manfred does to f*** with the IFA signing period like he did with the 5 round +$20K draft. Each team can only sign 5 players that have bonuses greater than $50K? Then unlimited signings after that with a max bonus of $5K per player?

$5K? That's too much.

Boxcar · June 17, 2020

I'm curious to see what Manfred does to f*** with the IFA signing period like he did with the 5 round +$20K draft. Each team can only sign 5 players that have bonuses greater than $50K? Then unlimited signings after that with a max bonus of $5K per player?

For every dollar over the tax limit, a team exec loses a testicle

DigitalRock · June 17, 2020

Manuel Beltre swing video (courtesy of baseball america)

Interesting.

BlueRocky · June 17, 2020

Our boy has been putting in work during quarantine:

BlueRocky · July 5, 2020

Manuel Beltre decked out in Blue Jays gear.

Edited July 5, 2020 by BlueRocky

Spanky99 · July 5, 2020

Fungo that harder, skip.

Spanky99 · July 5, 2020

Kid's young and good, real good.

AintNoThang · July 5, 2020

Our boy has been putting in work during quarantine:

What's the chances he changes his mind and signs with another team? Has that ever happened with another top international player who was linked so closely to a team?

BlueRocky · July 6, 2020

There’s been broken promises, but it’s actually been mostly on the side of teams not keeping their promise of signing guys, rather than the other way around. This doesn’t tend to happen to the higher end guys though, like Manuel Beltre or Orelvis Martinez.

The whole system is pretty flawed and they’re gearing towards an international draft in the next CBA so everything could change. But to give a little context of how things generally work now..

Most of these kids being scouted are down south in dominican republic, venezuela, cuba, mexico, panama, etc.

They typically come from a very modest family, but not always (e.g. Vlad Jr), so when their kids show promise they get into amateur showcases and also join a baseball program guided by a trainer. These guys will help groom them and help promote them to teams while overseeing their development. They sometimes participate in amateur tournament too where teams will send international scouts. Of course they’ll usually be paid a commission from these kids signing bonuses.

At some point a team will approach the players and trainers and come to an agreement. This can be as early as 3 years before they’re even eligible for the IFA period, 13-15 year olds, sometimes earlier. So you can imagine their bodies will change drastically over the course of their development by the time they sign. But with how competitive international scouting is now, it’s getting earlier, it’s basically a race for teams to get to the best guys first. But sometimes its very difficult to predict as you’re projecting kids that haven’t finished puberty. They’ll come in agreement with dozens of guys hoping to land the next Guerrero, Soto, Acuna, Tatis, etc. a million dollars is literally generational life changing money for a lot of these kids families. A team will even supply these kids with equipment (bats, gloves, uniforms) for years as they grow and enter IFA eligibility. So you can imagine the amount of emotional investment on both sides to see a kid grow from 13-14 to when they finally sign and enter the farm system. Sometimes there’s multiple teams interested and get to a kid before they’re fully committed, it’s case by case. But usually no, when a high profile prospect like Beltre is already decked out and advertising the team’s logo, other teams know he’s already taken and won’t be breaking his commitment unless there’s special reasons. At this point they’ve likely already agreed to a lucrative $. By the time a kid is this committed, he won’t even do showcases anymore or workouts for other teams, so they have no idea of the prospects growth and won’t throw half their bonus pool for a kid to outbid the parent team. Funny things do happen but generally it doesn't work that way.

There’s a lot of these stories. Acuna was signed for only 100K with the Braves and they basically got to him really early and it was a lucky break for them, you can read about him here: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.mlb.com/amp/news/how-the-atlanta-braves-signed-ronald-acuna-jr-c283634544.html

Ohtani was a weird case, but essentially the Angels got to him very early as well. Although it wasn’t a commitment, Ohtani favored the Angel due to Billy Eppler when deciding who to sign with and it ultimately paid off for them.

https://theathletic.com/1880892/2020/06/25/inside-the-unheard-of-process-that-brought-shohei-ohtani-to-the-majors/

Edited July 6, 2020 by BlueRocky

polar bear · July 6, 2020

Kid's young and good, real good.

Looks really sure of himself also,that never is a bad thing.

Krylian · July 6, 2020

He'll be the Jays starting 2B in 2027 and will have an OPS of .782 that season.

BlueRocky · July 16, 2020

Spanky99 · October 20, 2020

Blue Jays sign four international free agents...

The Toronto Blue Jays announced on Monday that they have agreed to terms with international free agent pitchers Jeury Hiciano (20), Geison Urbaez (20), Johan Simon (19) and Kendry Rojas (17).

Rojas is a native of Cuba, while the other three pitchers are from the Domincan Republic.

https://www.tsn.ca/toronto-blue-jays-sign-four-international-free-agents-1.1540859

Information on these guys...

https://futurebluejays.com/2020/10/16/blue-jays-ifa-intentions-becoming-clearer/