TODAY: The signing slots acquired are worth around $700K, per Dan Connolly of BaltimoreBaseball.com (Twitter link). That would appear to suggest that the Reds have added Baltimore’s first ($538,800) and fourth ($154,500) pool allocations.
YESTERDAY: The Reds have picked up two international signing slots from the Orioles in exchange for minor league righty Franderlyn Romero, according to a Baltimore announcement. Dayton Dragons pitching coach Derrin Ebert had revealed the news that Romero was headed to the O’s earlier today (via Dayton broadcaster Tom Nichols, on Twitter).
This move fits alongside Baltimore’s draft pick deal earlier today. In both instances, the club picked up questionable minor league talent while passing off some of its amateur spending capacity. The other trade also saw the O’s shed just under $3MM in salary, in the form of Brian Matusz’s contract. Only certain draft picks may be dealt, but teams are able to trade individual signing allotments, subject to certain restrictions.
It’s not yet known which slots were sent to Cincinnati, but Zach Buchanan of the Cincinnati Enquirer notes on Twitter that they are for the current signing season, not the one set to begin on July 2 of this year. What that means for the Reds’ plans remains to be seen, but it’s an important distinction. After all, most of the talent available for the 2015-16 period has already signed, though there are some notable Cuban players who could sign in either period.
Among those players is Cuban shortstop Alfredo Rodriguez, who had a reported deal with the Reds. As Steve Adams of MLBTR explains here, that created some issues and raised some questions. The organization has seemingly sought to push the signing back to this summer so as to avoid incurring a two-year ban on future signings. After all, Cinci enters the coming July 2 period with a total bonus pool of just over $5MM (second-highest in the league), and the club would surely like to utilize that availability to boost its talent pipeline.
In return, Baltimore picks up a 23-year-old hurler who’s yet to advance past the Class A level. Romero opened the year there after previously making just one outing above Rookie ball. He’s off to a solid start for Dayton, at least, with a 2.87 ERA in 47 frames and 8.0 K/9 against 1.7 BB/9.
Pretty sure they didn’t dump Zach Britton’s contract. That’s a pretty significant error there.
Yea it was Matusz’s contract, kinda want to change that.
Yeah, it was a solid mental gaffe. I fixed it. Hopefully it was fairly evident to anyone who noticed.
What the hell, Jeff! You scared the crap out of me!
Hahahahaha
Ha! We need to be able to upvote comments.
Sorry man, you’re safe.
No mention of Zach Britton here, unless it is edited. One quote from Zach Buchanan though.
It was edited.
Wow. Orioles really don’t care about the future. I know two int’l signing slots isn’t huge, but for one class A player, it doesn’t really make sense.
The O’s aren’t going to do anything in the current international window, so why not get something for those slots instead of letting them waste away? Makes perfect sense to me.
It does make sense, honestly. They get a player into the system who is already on a development path and that they have some concrete information about. That’s basically a slight upgrade on a crapshoot international signing, which could turn into nothing.
The O’s rarely sign international players and they need pitching help in the minors, so this deal makes perfect sense.
Not sure how you get from these, reasonable acquisitions for low value (historically) picks, to “the Orioles really don’t care about the future” when they’ve got plenty of options to build value into their farm system. This is a better path given the club seems hard pressed to find (and develop) solid pitching on their own. (Which is an entirely different conversation.)
I’m not the original poster, but I’m guessing it might be a “If you don’t even bother spending your international cap space, how do you plan to compete long-term?” voice.
The Reds’ international pool allotment for 2015-16 is $2.873 million. Cincinnati spent $3.46 million. That puts the team $587,000 over its allotment. I speculate the Reds acquired Baltimore’s No. 2 slot, worth $363,900, and No. 3 slot, worth $245,700. Those slots total $609,600 and bring the Reds back under their pool limit. The Orioles spent $852,900 under their limit in this signing period.
Thanks, Turtle. Didn’t make any sense to me for either team without that context.
I believe this is correct.
I’m starting to think this is a conspiracy trade- 750k for a 23 year old single A pitcher? Seriously? If the Reds use the dough I think there will be a reciprocal ptbnl.