Yesterday, it emerged that MLB had banned the Red Sox from signing international amateur talent for the 2016-17 signing season, and had voided contracts to which the Red Sox had agreed with outfielders Albert Guaimaro and Simon Muzziotti, righty Cesar Gonzalez, and infielders Antonio Pinero and Eduardo Torrealba. Under the terms of MLB’s ruling, those players will get to keep the bonuses they received from Boston. MLB’s ban punished the Red Sox for using “package deals” during the last signing period to get around previous penalties for having exceeded their international pool while signing Yoan Moncada in 2014-15. Those penalties prevented the Sox from signing any player for more than $300K, but the team allegedly circumvented that penalty by paying bonuses that did not exceed the $300K threshold to multiple players with the same agent but then funneling more of those funds to the best regarded player. Here’s the latest on that story.
- Other teams are not yet allowed to negotiate with the players who had their contracts voided, Baseball America’s Ben Badler writes (all Twitter links). The players will be eligible to pick new teams during the signing period that began today, but for now that process is on hold, while the league works with the players’ union to find the players new agents.
- Guaimaro was the primary recipient of the Red Sox’ extra funds, Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs notes, writing that he would rate Guaimaro the 17th-best international prospect for this signing season. Muzziotti projects as a fringe prospect, while the other three players look like organizational types. Still, Longenhagen notes, the Red Sox’ ban for this year is limited in scope because the team did not have a huge signing season last year or project to have one this year (although they were connected to a few prospects, including Venezuelan outfielder Roimar Bolivar).
- An informant helped MLB gather evidence the Red Sox were violating spending rules, reports Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald. The case could prove to be significant in that it could set precedent for similar situations in the future, Drellich notes. “Other clubs would completely lose confidence in the system if MLB learned stuff like this was happening and did nothing,” a source close to the investigation told Drellich. “It’s been an important issue.”
The Sox should have offered to give back Rusney Castillo.
Shady shit, BoSox
I’d bet my child’s college fund MB923 was the informant.
Shame on you Judge Judy.
Know what they say about snitches, MB…..
“You’re a hustler”
Are there any Boston Pro teams that don’t cheat. I don’t think so.
Jealous much? I think so.
I agree. What team won’t test the line to see what it can get away with.
For the record, pretty much every pro sports team has cheated or been linked to cheating via players cheating PED style or something to mask PEDs or circumvent cap rules etc.
Doesnt make it right but lets stop acting like its JUST boston that has been caught cheating. Pineda got caught with pine tar, probably multiple times he did it, with the yankees, blue jays have been accused of stealing signs as recent as 2011 and former blue jay greg zaun flat out said yes we stole signs. Orioles had matuzs ejected for the same thing as pineda not sure if it was pine tar. And peralta was found to have pine tar back in 2012 w the rays.
Pineda-
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/73145346/yankees-right-hander-michael-pineda-ejected-for-having-pine-tar-on-neck
Zaun- http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/gregg-zaun-admits-to-stealing-signs-as-a-blue-jays-player/
Matuzs-
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/126266710/brian-matusz-ejected-for-foreign-substance
Peralta-
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/33603304/
Pine tar?
Lmao
Most baseball players and coaches would rather pitchers use pine tar so they had more control of there 95 mph heat.
Don’t make excuses for constant Boston theme of cheating.
From the middle of the order Manny and Papi in 2004 and so on its been a series of lies and cheats to be one what they believe is sports town USA.
1. Still against the rules to use pine tar. Cheating is cheating. Cant condemn the red sox for cheating and gaining a competitive advantage and then somehow say “oh its just pine tar” no big deal. Very hypocritical of you billy.
2. Who’s making excuses? I literally said just cause teams and players cheat doesnt make it right to do so regardless of whatever the violation is. You get busted breaking the rules dont complain about the punishment cause you were caught.
3. Ok pine tar isnt your fancy despite being against about the rules these.
*How about Manny ramierez retiring instead of facing a 100 game ban for testing positive for a ban substance when he was with the rays
*How about andy pettite saying he doped in 2002 and 2004 with HGH
*How about zaun saying jays stole signals 04-08 as cited above
*How about jason grimsley and his whole issues with dealing and using HGH for god knows how long. Palmerio in 05. Tejada charged with lying about using drugs. So many orioles caught up in that ordeal.
4. The whole point is boston isnt the only team to circumvent the rules, only the latest to get caught doing so. People act like their teams are somehow better cause they didnt get caught……yeah, name me a team, padres included, i can find skeletons in their closet.
5. Boston got caught, they got punished, lets hope they dont pull shady stuff again.
Yes cheating is cheating but this goes beyond individual players making a choice to circumvent the rules. This is organizational cheating. Most teams push the envelope and dance either on the line or just before the line. It just seems that Boston’s 2 most successful franchises they few years have been marred with some serious scandal over the last decade plus. Between spy gate and deflate gate with the patriots, and PED usage and now this with the Red Sox it doesn’t look great coming from one town. I get that just about every team in baseball had a handful of guys using PEDs but it’s hard to look at 3-4 combo like Manny and big Papi and not see how the Red Sox clearly benefited from it. You are probably right about every team cheating in some small way, the cardinals hacked the Astros and only the lone gunman got any kind of punishment.
While I agree with you. There’s a lot of cheaters there but you examples are individuals vs the back office cheating.
I’m sure some exist but I think that the big deal here is that it was the back office doing the sneaky stuff and dragging kids who just wanna play ball into their BS. Not cool.
I find it very unlikely the front offices and staffs had no knowledge about their players, however many there were and are, doping. While the players may not be involved in the dealings of the front office i don’t believe for one second the front office isnt involced in dealing of the players. Not a biconditional situation.
I dont believe texas or the yankees were unaware a rod doped, the orioles were unaware of tejada palmerio grimsley, etc.
As such, front offices dont deserve a pass for players doping, especially ones that have for years.
The Patriots and their deflated balls, the BoSox and their inflated bonuses…does anyone play by the rules up there?
This mlb ban is bullshit. Once again mlb pretends it’s cracking down but what did they do to evil empire red sawx?
1- ban them from spending in 16-17 amateur international draft but they were already limited this year so no real loss!
2- remove prospects with no real prospect value?
What did mlb really do to the Red Sox?
What was the penalty?
What a sham!
Are you suggesting they receive punishment for signings in which they acted within the rules? I’m assuming you want them to lose Moncada, Devers, and Espinoza while also losing the right to sign in future seasons… You’re absolutely ludicrous. They got punished for the crimes the committed. Anything else would completely ruin credibility of MLB and every team would lose faith in the system. And on top of that, the reason these players have low prospect value is because they didn’t sign for much money.
This isn’t the NFL, MLB handled the situation in an appropriate manner.
Nope never said they but they should be banned from international signings for at least three years and not just this year in which they are already hit with a cap on spending. It’s a joke!
Cheat the system for one year, assuming its just 1 year, get banned for 1 year, lose the prospects that were involved in the fraction, dont get the money back they already gave the players. If its just the 5 players that caused the infraction and their entire draft class that consisted of
3 years is excessive.
The prospects are of no real value.
The one year of no international signings is a joke since they are already limited!
The only thing they lost was money which is nothing to them.
This was mlb trying hard to convince teams they are being tough but giving red sawx a wink wink penalty.