Nov. 24: The Rockies are receiving $500K worth of international bonus money from the Orioles in the trade, tweets Rich Dubroff of PressboxOnline.com.
As Matt Eddy of Baseball America points out, the O’s have now made eight trades sending away their international bonus pool funds since the signing period opened on July 2. The other 29 teams in the league have combined to make 13 trades involving international money in that time.
Nov. 21: The Orioles have added an arm in a swap with the Rockies, picking up righty Konner Wade in exchange for an unknown amount of international bonus pool money. Roch Kubatako of MASNSports.com first reported the prospective swap, with Jon Heyman of Fan Rag tweeting that it has in fact gone though.
Wade, who’ll soon turn 26, repeated Double-A last year and showed strides against his 2016 performance. Over 109 1/3 innings, split nearly evenly between starting and relieving, Wade pitched to a 4.28 ERA with 6.5 K/9 and 1.7 BB/9.
It seems reasonable to expect that the O’s might ultimately consider Wade as a swingman option, though there’s also not much cause to believe he’ll factor in the team’s plans to open the 2018 season. Wade is eligible for the Rule 5 draft, and can no longer be protected, but that fact doesn’t seem to have dissuaded the Orioles from pursuing him — suggesting that the O’s don’t expect he’ll be taken.
Whoa, Orioles doing the opposite of what they normally do. “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite, would have to be right”.
Nope you must’ve read it wrong. I guess they don’t want Maitan
Wow, I did read it wrong. I stand corrected. In that case, Orioles doing business their usual way.
Watching the Maitan situation develop should be quite interesting. I have not read or heard a single positive comment about him, to the point of some saying he wouldn’t even be considered a prospect at this time.
The Orioles should start running their team based off the Geroge Costanza model
Some team should pick him, just to make them mad
Wasting a 25 man roster spot just to make another team mad? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
Trying to understand troll logic is the equivalent to banging your head against a wall and asking for seconds
I wonder if this is their big off-season move ?
Wade is only 6’3” and 190, so he’s not very big.
Hey I’m 6’3″ and 190. You take that back! Haha
What the Orioles do makes no damned sense.
On the other hand …. The Rox get some money for the kids the Braves are losing.
Angelos continues with his mandate to not sign any International Free Agents. Those players make up 27% of MLB players and the owner of the O’s has decided that he doesn’t want to sign any of them. The O’s used to sign them. Schoop is an IFA signing and the team has traded or signed some like Castillo after they made the majors. Not sure what happened. Maybe its John, not Peter, calling the shots now.
It’s not that they don’t sign any international free agents, it’s just that they resist the push to throw huge bonuses at unproven talent. Instead, they sign under the radar IFAs and add high-level minor league depth with the pool money, assuming, I guess, that these players have a better chance of impacting the major league team. And maybe that’s true from a one to one perspective, but it’s still frustrating to see because the entire game is prospect crazy and these IFAs can, at least, develop into buzz-y prospects that can be used as trade chips.
What makes this Konnor Wade thing annoying is that I would have assumed the 500k could have fetched a more promising prospect with the Otani sweepstakes heating up and the Braves thing. But maybe not.
The Orioles do have a Dominican League team that used 37 players so they clearly sign players. The Phillies added 4 players to their 40-man roster this week. All 4 were international free agents. None of them were signed for over $100,000. At the same time they didn’t add four others who signed for over $500,000 a few years ago. This isn’t really a fluke with them. The team is loaded with players signed as international free agents for little money.
It may well be that the Orioles are smarter than the other teams. Sure, sometimes your big money signee turns into Nomar Mazara, but it’s tough to know that at age 16. Of course the other half of this is that they have to trade the money for better prospects than they could’ve signed on the international market. If they don’t do that then the strategy is a bust.
They “resist the push to throw huge bonuses at unproven talent” and yet manage to find 161 million dollars to spend on a player who had absolutely zero value in 2017. That’s smart spending for sure.
And what about the millions thrown at ifa players that never see the mlb at all? That sounds like a worst investment.
Orioles may not get big value out of the Davis contract- had 2.8 WAR in 2016, but many teams get 0 value on several ifa spendings for players who never will see the show.
That 2.8 WAR is far more then many ifa signings will ever achieve. Not 161 mill worthy, but dont act like ifa is guaranteed to produce value.
The dodgers spent millions on guys who they released, castillo, tomas, etc its not guaranteed to produce a star if youre signing guys.
Davis’ $161 million contract would be 34 years of IFA signings under the current CBA. Some teams signed as many as 40 players this year. The O’s signed zero.
I think it’s better to spend money on a prospect – who may not work out – than an incredibly flawed player like Chris Davis. I think by the time the O’s outbid themselves and handed him 161 million dollars, basically everybody in baseball knew what kind of player he was. In the best season of his career he was worth 2.8 wins. That’s basically Chase Headley. I’d take the lottery ticket over that any day of the week.
The best season of his career- 2015- he was worth 5.7 WAR according to fan graphs and 5.2 according to baseball reference.
Not sure where you got 2.8 was his best season…….he’s 2 years into the 7 year 161 mill. So far he’s had 2.8 WAR and 0.2WAR according to fangraphs.
Also, never said it was a good deal. But chances are the Orioles would get more out of the deal then they would on ifa spending.
IFA spending is a crap shoot like anything else.
2014- top 9 arent even top prospects http://m.mlb.com/news/article/80379210/2014-top-30-international-prospects-list/
2015- like two or three actually have a chance. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/134058394/clubs-sign-top-july-2-international-prospects/
pretty much every year the top 30 produces 5 at best. That’s a lot of money being wasted.
Of those 40 roughly 35 will bust. If they all received 200k a piece, which isnt the case, teams just wasted 7 mill. all in all avg cost is probably closer to 400k a player meaning they wasted 14 mill on players who wouldnt have a chance.
A while back there was an article saying the mlb make up was 70% usa born and drafted vs 30% international. Majority of players are US born and acquired through the draft.
I guess I’d rather waste 14 million dollars on a possibility than spend 161 million dollars on Chris Davis, who isn’t a particularly useful player. Sorry I got his career-high WAR wrong but he’s on the wrong side of 30 and I think even that 2.8-win season is a fond memory at this point. He had the most strikeouts looking of any player in baseball last year, by a wide margin. I’ll take your fact about US-born players at face value, but even if it’s true, where are these young American-born players that Baltimore is drafting and developing? Obviously, Machado is a great one, but the O’s leader in 2017 WAR was signed as an international free agent.
According to BA the O’s have spent $0 dollars on the IFA market this signing period. They spent $0 dollars last signing period.
Here is a link to the free portion of their site. If you have a subscription, which is something I highly recommend if you are interested in prospects, there is more info available.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/2017-team-team-international-signing-trackers/#pZFQBqjSOl57iOoc.97
The crazy part right now because of the braves prospects and Ohtani the bonus money is way more valuable. So why not use it to target teams that are looking for top international talent and get back legit prospects or players. They are using it like normal when it’s worth more right now. Usual Orioles, a year behind the curve
When they talk about international bonus money, why is it always expressed in US Dollars?
Because that is where the money comes from. Would you prefer it be expressed as Monopoly money?
lol
Something more international, like Yen or Pesos.
id prefer yen. gotta pump those numbers up!
Players get paid in US dollars. It’s a stable currency and any bank in the world will take the check.
But US dollars isn’t very international to US Citizens. I guess it’s like when you go to IHOP. Nothing is really International about it except for the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity which was originated in Zimbabwe.
O’s gonna have best AAA team in baseball…..way too compete….Let’s Go Norfolk !!!!
Are the Rockies in on Ohtani?
Not for 500k
I can’t think of the last free-agent starting pitcher who chose to sign with Coorado, and Ohtani would be an odd choice to do so.
Holland?
He’s not a starting pitcher, though, which is what David was referring to above.
Interesting.
As a member of the 2012 Arizona Wildcats baseball team, Wade won the College World Series as a No. 2 SP, together with No. 1 Kurt Heyer and No. 3 James Farris (Rockies).
His other teammates included Baltimore’s Joey Rickard, Rob Refsnyder (CWS MVP) and Alex Mejia (Cardinals). The team of College HOF coach Andy Lopez beat South Carolina in the final.
Sure hope that Konner makes it to the big league one day. Good on him that he hasn’t given up on his dream.
Bear down, Konner!
Is this the season where they rebuilt or chips all in
As a fan that’s what I want to see not some middle of the road junk moves
Come on O’s let’s do something