The Athletics and Yankees have each agreed to terms with an international free agent, according to Ben Badler of Baseball America.
- The Athletics have agreed to terms with South Korean catching prospect Seong-Min Kim on a deal worth $510K, writes Badler. One scout told Baseball America that Kim, 17, has plus raw power as a right-handed hitter. Oakland was among the top five spenders in the international free-agent market last offseason with a budget of roughly $5MM, according to Badler. Jin-Young Kim of the Cubs was the only player from South Korea to sign with an MLB team in 2010.
- The Yankees have agreed to terms with Dominican right-handed pitcher Juan Carlos Paniagua, 20, for $1.1MM, according to Badler. Paniagua, who had previously been suspended by Major League Baseball for one year for age and identity fraud, is 6-foot-1, 170 pounds, Badler writes. His fastball sits in the mid-90s and can touch 98 mph, while scouts are mixed on his secondary pitches. The signing of a previously suspended player for fraud is not unprecedented in MLB nor for the Yankees, for the matter, as Badler notes. Carlos Martinez of the Cardinals and Jose Rafael DePaula of the Bombers are two such examples.
Yeah, the Yankees are no strangers to frauds and cheaters.
Its the Yankee way, after all.
So, how old was Paniagua originally claiming to be?
when he was 16 he claimed to be a fetus
Gotta love the first sentence of Juan Carlos Paniagua’s bio
awww look, someone else jealous their team doesnt have 27 titles…
Please man. I’m a Yankee fan and I’m sick and tired of that crap.
lol that Korean guy shares my name. for realz
Did you read about that South Korean prospect for the Dodgers, known for keeping the ball down in the strike zone, I Thro Lo.
“The signing of a previously suspended player for fraud is not unprecedented in MLB nor for the Yankees, for the matter, as Badler notes.”
As soon as I read this, I knew instantly. Time for a Yankee flame war.
(gasp) He’s a Red Sox fan…..they never had any cheaters (rolls eyes).
Yeah, that is pretty funny coming from a Sox fan. Clay Buchholz was arrested for stealing 29 laptops (each one valued between $2,500 and $3,000) from an Intermediate school in his hometown where he starred as a baseball pitcher. Buchholz then turned around to resell the laptops to students at the college he was attending on a baseball scholarship. Not a surprise he was caught. Not only is he a thief, but he’s clearly dumb.
The college and baseball coach did the right thing, first suspending Buchholz, and then kicking their star pitcher off the baseball team. Of course, there was another college willing to take his questionable personality (I’m being kind) based on his arm, but certainly not his character. This only happened a little more than six years ago.
So, yeah, we can call players frauds (insert name of probably more than 50% of players) for taking PEDs with their main crime being using a substance in an attempt to enhance their performances so that they’re better on the field, or to try and keep up with other players they believe are taking PEDs. And we can call people like Juan Carlos Paniagua a fraud for doing what many kids from poor countries in Latin America do in attempt to make a better life.
And then we have a person like Clay Buchholz, a kid on a baseball scholarship who decides to steal nearly $100,000 in laptop computers from his hometown’s intermediate school. No, he’s not a fraud. He’s not a cheater. He’s a criminal arrested on a felony charge just so he could make a few bucks at the expense of others. If a PED user, or a kid from Latin America who lied about his age, or a criminal who stole property from his hometown meant to be used to educate children all showed up on my team, and I had to cut one based on character, Buchholz would be gone before he could step on the field.
Great post. Seriously, you should copy and paste this every time a Red Sox fan spouts off about how terrible the Yankees are for baseball and the American way.
Lame people make me sick. You just too 5 minutes of your life to read 4 paragraph post about how some 18 year old ones made a mistake and made a post about how lame is to write a 4 paragraph post about how some 18 year old ones made a mistake.
“You shouldn’t throw punches if you have a glass jaw.”
“This message was anonymized by its previous owner”
Ex-con means he served time. Not even close to what Paniagua got, 1 year suspension from the MLB.
“I notice you left out the part where his family was having financial difficulties at the time and he was worried that he would have to give up his dream to play baseball in order to move back home and help pay the bills”
So you’re saying when someone is in debt, stealing is acceptable?
come on man
animal abuse < age fraud to play baseball (not hijack the country)
Vick is only forgiven for his crimes because he's good, if he came back and sucked no one would want him around. Performance outweighs any form of judgement. So we'll see what happens
I think you got that formula written incorrectly…
I was just pointing out the difference between what an ex-con would have done to deserve jail time and just a small infraction.
If you really think age fraud is worse than animal abuse then there’s something wrong with how you perceive things.
There is no proper context to it though. Stealing is stealing regardless. It doesn’t matter why someone choose to do it, he still was a thief. Not that I’m making too much a big deal of what he did, but you can’t act as if he had a good reason to do so.
every teenager steals thousands of dollars? Not every, hell not even most teenagers in this country are delinquents. So Buchholz is not “just like every other kid lashing out against society and trying to make sense of where they belong in the world”
I don’t know what community you live in, but every teenager does not go through a major felony phase despite what you want to think to justify your Red Sox heroes despicable actions. And if he was stealing to save his baseball dream and his family as you so nobly asserted he did, he is as big a moron as every Boston fan who bought David Ortiz’ “I’m gonna get to the bottom of this” proclamation of innocence after his name was leaked as a PED user. Ortiz and OJ Simpson are still out there trying to crack their respective cases.
Don’t forget RODJAH CLEMMONS
actually lying for the purpose of acquiring more money is not a ‘small infraction’ its fraud