The Rangers have acquired an international bonus slot from the Mariners in exchange for outfielder Ryan Strausborger, both clubs have announced. Texas will receive a $210,700 slot in the swap, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reports on Twitter.
Entering the July 2 signing period, the Rangers had just $2,157,400 available in their overall spending pool allocation. They’ll bump that up to $2,368,100 with today’s move. As Baseball America’s Ben Badler explained in the run-up to this year’s international market, Texas is expected to put together a class headlined by catcher David Garcia — who the team has already locked up.
Seattle obviously felt that it wouldn’t need its entire pool to accommodate its arrangements with this year’s crop of amateur talent. In return for giving up the slot, the Mariners will receive a player who has only scant MLB experience at 28 years of age.
A 16th-round pick in the 2010 draft, Strausborger has played exclusively thus far in the Rangers organization. Over parts of three seasons at the Triple-A level, he has put up a .273/.328/.411 slash in 919 plate appearances. Strausborger has only hit 19 long balls in that span, but does add some value on the bases, having racked up 57 steals in his time at the highest level of the minors.
Further evidence the Rangers have no plans to exceed MLB approved budget.
This says to me that Seattle doesn’t have a serious interest or presence with international scouting.
Maybe that isn’t that big of a deal if you’re finding talent domestically, what is the Seattle minors system ranked?
It’s ranked bad, but they have a lot of prospects that most say are over achieving