JULY 9: The Phillies have officially announced the signing. They also announced the singings of Venezuelan catcher Rafael Marchan and Dominican infielder Kuedy Bocio and lefty Manuel Silva. As Baseball America’s Ben Badler notes (on Twitter), Ortiz’s bonus is actually $4MM, which will help the Phillies to stay within their international bonus pool, which now stands at $5.28MM.
JULY 2: The Phillies have an agreement with Dominican first base prospect Jhailyn Ortiz, Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com reports on Twitter. Agreement is still being “finalized,” per MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez, who tweets that the bonus is for an estimated $4.2MM.
Ortiz ranked sixth on Sanchez’s list of top international prospects, with Fangraphs’ Kiley McDaniel ranking him 14th and Baseball America’s Ben Badler ranking him 18th. Already listed at 6’2″ and 260 pounds, raw power is Ortiz’s best tool. He’s currently a left fielder, but most expect him to move to first base. Ortiz as the type of power “that does not come around very often,” per Sanchez. McDaniel gives Ortiz 70-grade raw power and notes that he’s surprisingly fleet of foot at the time being, though he figures to eventually slow down some. Badler notes (subscription required and recommended) that Ortiz showed a lot of swing-and-miss at events in February and March, leading to some concerns among scouts. There’s a lot of risk, per Badler, but there’s 25-plus homer upside if Ortiz can make similar adjustments to the ones Nomar Mazara made after signing with the Rangers.
LOL. Phillies, IN PART, didn’t sign Yasmany Tomas because they were concerned about “HIS CONDITIONING” but are ok with a 260 pound 16 year old ? BwaaaaHaaaHaaaaa. Is it any wonder their in the mess they’re in ?
Don’t get me wrong, as a tall, fat kid with power, I like him because I was mostly the same. What I don’t get is why they’re willing to lock themselves out of top tier signings next year, and the following, for him. Especially since next years class has projected to have great prospects and so many other teams will be restricted. Their farm is so weak, that they’ll need more than one guy to make a difference.
When MLB started allowing teams to trade international bonus slots they set a cap of 50% being additionally added to a teams original bonus pool.. Has that rule changed? If it remains the same then the Phillies should have a max bonus pool of $4,562,550 since their original pool was set at $3,041,700..
If that is the case I hope the rest of their signings were for around $100k because Ortiz alone eats up almost their entire pool..
The Phillies can exceed their pool by up to 5% without incurring signing limit penalties. So they can push it to a little over $4.7 million. Marchan signed for $200k. The others likely signed for less.