Cuban outfielder Yasiel Puig has officially been declared a free agent, sources tell Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com, and could have a deal finalized with a Major League team by Friday.
Puig can now meet with teams to discuss parameters of deals but cannot finalize a contract until he is unblocked by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, Sanchez reports. That is not expected to be an issue, though, "in accordance with the new guidelines that create a general license authorizing Major League teams to do business" with a Cuban prospect who has established residency somewhere else.
The 20-year-old has been working to establish free agency so as to beat the new collective bargaining agreement's July 2 deadline, which stipulates that teams may only sign international prospects for up to $2.9MM without penalty after that date. Puig is thought to be seeking a contract similar to the ones signed by Yoenis Cespedes with the A's and Jorge Soler with the Cubs.
Do it Ben! (or not, you know, whatever)
Grab him Theo, Jed, Jason, Tim, and Oneri!
I’d love to see Dan Duquette make a splash and sign one of the remaining high end international free agents. We could certainly use the extra talent and I think it’d be a positive statement to fans that have increased attendance by roughly 33% this year.
There’s a lot remaining, but this is probably the last one before the international cap hits.
Either way, pigs will fly before Angelos signs off on us signing a Cuban defector.
Pigs will fly? Angelos shelling out dough? I don’t know if you intentionally used the Methaphor “Pigs will fly”, but you have the best of both worlds with Mr. Puig.
Either Pugs will fly or Pigs will fly if Puig is signed by Mr. Angelos and Mr. Duquette. We can only hope if the Orioles try to make an impact trade for a wild card run for the playoffs in 2012.
How does Puig compare to Soler?
he’s got a considerably worse hit tool.
More advanced, but lower ceiling.
I have heard this informally in a few places. Do you have a source on that, though?
Not really no, it was a quote from either a team representative or a scout in one of the article when we first heard about him. I’ll see if I can find it again, but it was a vague statement (like everything we’ve heard about this guy, it’s really odd to me how little we know about him compared to what we knew about Soler or Cespedes).
Fangraphs has an article up today on the subject, which also references a (subscriber-only) Baseball America article stating that his scouting reports of recent have been relatively underwhelming. Puig’s also not played organized baseball in a year.
he’ll make the majors sooner than soler, but he’s far, far, far more likely to not hit enough at the MLB level to stick.
Jesse Sanchez has a pretty decent article about him up on MLB.com that Ben linked to Monday on this site. You can read it here: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120619&content_id=33556394
I still don’t get the distinction about his celling. Yes advanced scouts can say that but he’s 20 years old? That means there is time to develop and he hasn’t actually stopped growing into his body yet. If he signed out of high school this would be only 2nd year in the minors. When it comes to prospects like this where I’m sure not many teams were scouting him everyday and it makes it hard for me to believe that they know his potential without seeing him hit off baseball players in the MiLB and MLB.
That’s what scouts do, they look at young kids every day and try to determine what they ceiling is. They know how certain body types fill out to give them a pretty good idea if a guy should add power, they can recognize bat speed, they can recognize foot speed (all that kind of stuff) and there is enough previous sampling and experience to have a pretty good general idea of how aging and body development will affect these guys. It’s what they’re paid to do and what they spend literally thousands of hours a year, for any number of years, doing.
Obviously they aren’t perfect, but they get it pretty close to correct more often than not, and it’s by far the most accurate form of analysis of these guys.
Cubs gonna get him. Watch.
My sleeper team to sign this guy: the Atlanta Braves.
The number of you guys who care which team is my sleeper team to sign this guy: zero.
I care what your sleeper team is, I just don’t get how you have a sleeper team when there aren’t even favorites out yet.
Thanks for caring, man.
this site made it seem like atlanta was willing to spend on soler so maybe they will go after puig
yankees are gonna sign him lol
I wonder how he will play in the big leagues, and where?
I think that’s the multimillion dollar question at hand …
do the padres have a chance
Mariners…Can you actually go after this one. C’mon. First Darvish, then Cespedes, then Soler, are you going to let another potential top prospect slip away?
If he can be had for 4-5 Mill per season on a 5-7 year deal, I think the Pirates should be in on him. Considering thats what they pay Barmes per season, he at least projects to give you better offensive numbers than Clint.
there is no reason puig should get 5-7 years at 4-5MM per season. he really doesn’t have the upside for that type of deal.
he probably should net a one-time signing bonus of 5-7MM and a minor league deal, slightly more than a US first round draft pick.
I still don’t get why a 19 old Dominican can get sign because he is “too old” ( reason why they hide thier age) and as soon a Cuban 20 year old comes out, teams are offering millions.
Ben, Im not sure people say that 19 is too old for a Dominican player, but with all of the recent information of so many Dominicans lying about there age, I would assume there is a certain level of skepticism. Also, Cuban baseball is a bit more advanced at the upper levels compared to Dominican Baseball. Thats why Cespedes was pretty much major league ready,
Puir is considered nearly MLB ready, and Soler is probably only 1-2 years away despite his age. Typically, if you are playing professional baseball in Cuba, and considered to be one of the better players on top of it, you wont take nearly as much developmental time to get to the bigs. Not to say that ‘some’ Dominicans sign with MLB teams that are only 1-2 years from the bigs, but those players are more few and far between. I hope I did an OK job of answering your question.
Younger Dominicans get bigger signing bonuses. A 19 year of with a 2.2 era sounds more impressive if he can do the same stuff as a 17 year old.
I believe it was Goldstein who said that scouts he talked to didn’t see a top 10 prospect for any team in Puig, hopefully no one pays too much for him.