In case you missed the recent action, be sure to catch up on the major July 2 signings. In the midst of teams agreeing to deals with young talent, they were also swapping quite a bit of bonus spending pools amongst themselves. Matt Eddy of Baseball America provides an exceedingly useful chart showing the aggregate results (as of this morning) of all those exchanges.
- Now that the dust has largely settled, Baseball America’s Ben Badler breaks down at the clubs that have exceeded their total allotment. By Badler’s reckoning, fully one-third of the league will be restricted from spending more than $300K in next year’s July 2 market, with the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs, Royals, and Blue Jays joining the five teams that are set to serve the second year of their bans. (Toronto will only face one season of limitations, as their spending stands.) Badler also explains how all the bonus pool deals were put to use by the teams making them.
- In the same piece, Badler takes a stab at predicting which clubs are planning to blow their budgets next year. He says that the Braves “seem determined” to make a big splash, while the industry chatter is that they could be joined by the Nationals, Rangers, Twins, and Padres.
- MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez looks at the challenges to Cuban baseball posed by changing diplomatic tides. The stream of ballplayers heading for major league organizations has obviously hurt Cuba’s domestic league and national team, as Sanchez explains.
- If you’re still confused by the way the international market works, check out this solid primer from Jonah Keri of Grantland. He uses a Q&A format to help simplify the often baffling series of rules, strategies, and factors weighing on this segment of the baseball transactional world.
Braves supposedly have a deal in place for Kevin Maitan, who is one of the top players of next years signing period. He has comps to Miggy and is a “generational player.” He is graded with 70 tools overall.
We “signed” him for $4.25M and our pool is around $4Mil, sot the Braves will probably go overboard. I’m excited!
If the Phillies don’t go crazy next year, I will be extremely disappointed.
Well, the only Braves, Rangers,Nationals, and Twins as competitions…
I don’t know about the other teams, but the Braves are supposedly talking with half of the top prospects of next year.
It’s been long known that Braves will be going all in next year. As you stated, Maitan is pretty much a done deal it seems. That being said, Phillies should be able to outbid everyone except for maybe the Nats and Braves for some of the other top talent. Will certainly be interesting.
I’ll be more than extremely disappointed, I’ll be downright angry if they don’t go crazy. They should have the highest international bonus pool of any team next year in addition to having the resources to spend big regardless of their pool. Like you said below, with most of the big players forced to sit out of next year’s signing, the time is right for the Phillies to pull a Dodgers and go after the big names.
The Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs could all be players for lots of the top players next year. I’m sure many teams with restrictions will be taking a page out of the Red Sox book from this year.
All the Dodgers, Red Sox, Yankees, and Cubs(Im not sure) CAN’T sign prospects over $300k next year.
July 2nd of next year that is.
I’m aware, but the Red Sox were facing the same restrictions this year and signed a top 15 prospect and another top 25 according to BA. I’m not sure how they pulled it off since almost every other top 30 prospect signed for $1,000,000+, but I have to think the other front offices know their secret and will copy it.
They literally cannot be players since they are restricted to 300k per player. They can’t go over even if they want to.
The Red Sox were able to get a top 15 prospect to sign for $300k. He was the only one of MLB’s top 30 to sign for less than $700k and 26 or 27 of their top 30 signed for $1,000,000+. The Sox were also able to sign the #24 prospect according to BA and another that was rated in the top 50 according to FG. I have to think smart and rich teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Cubs will copy the Red Sox plan and join them as players for the top prospects next year, even if no one thought they would have a shot at that type of player.
Mets- Brewers trades always screem collusion to me, didn’t Alderson work for Bud at one time, K-Rod trade come to mind.