The Twins have acquired $750K in international bonus pool space from the Orioles for right-hander Xavier Moore, per Betsy Helfand of the Pioneer Press. This is the second trade of the day involving Moore, whom the Twins acquired from the Rangers a couple hours ago for outfielder Zack Granite.
The Orioles have now traded away international spending room in back-to-back weekends, having previously sent an undisclosed amount to the Rangers for righty David Lebron last Sunday. It’s unexpected on the surface, as Baltimore has recently vowed to spend more internationally after long ignoring the foreign market under owner Peter Angelos. His sons are now at the helm of the team, and they’ve brought in Mike Elias to replace previous general manager Dan Duquette, but the act of parting with international money for relatively unexciting minor leaguers harks back to the prior regime.
Of course, even after these deals, the Orioles continue to lead the majors in international spending capacity. Thus, they could see these trades as easy ways to pick up minor league talent they like while continuing to hold the league’s largest bonus pool. It’s unclear how much the Orioles have left at the moment, but they had $6MM remaining – far more than the second-place Dodgers ($1.4MM) – before the Lebron and Moore acquisitions. With that in mind, the Orioles could still be in on Cuban shortstop Yolbert Sanchez, whom they’ve scouted since he became free to sign with a major league team Feb. 5.
In Moore, the Twins are quickly bidding adieu to a 20-year-old who struggled at the lower levels of the Rangers’ system a season ago. By flipping him, the Twins are adding a notable amount to their bonus pool, as they had just under $80K remaining as of Feb. 8. Minnesota entered the current international market with upward of $6MM to play with, but it has since gone on a spending spree, with outfielder Misael Urbina ($2.75MM) being its most expensive pickup.
Why is a team with no major or minor league talent trading away its international pool money?
Because we have more then anyone and it resets in July and theres no way we could spend it all and we do have minor league talent (3 top 100)… should I keep going?
Hoping that some prospect emerges late and having the war chest to go after him has a greater likelihood (if still minuscule) of reaping rewards than acquiring non-entities for said war chest.
My guess is they are liquidating money so as to have less left to be squeezed for by Sanchez.
Or O’s just plain not signing Sanchez at all.
And I’m honestly fine if we don’t sign Sanchez. His skill set would comp him to a Jose iglesias type and iglesias wasn’t even able to secure a ML deal this offseason. We’re the heavy favorites given all the money we still have and maybe there’s hope he could surprise and develop into something more. But he’s not exactly 16, he’s 22.
Why would a significant prospect come out late when there would only be one bidder? No one has a significant enough pool for that scenario to take place besides the Orioles. I find it very hard to believe a prospect of significance would find it advantageous to come out with only one team having a surplus of funds when they could just wait 2-3 months when it resets.. IF for no other reason than supply and demand. We’re real late in the game now. The last one on that ship is Sanchez.
There are 30 teams in the league. Three in the top 100 should put you at average, or a little below. Plus your three are all in the lower half of the top 100.
Your front office hasn’t got a clue what it’s doing.
Great take B-RAR. This FO has been in control for about 4months. To say anything about them is idiotic. 3 in the top 100 isn’t some kind of great feat but you can look around the league and find teams in worse situations. In addition to that we have another previous consensus top 100 prospect in sisco who scuffled last year but is playing well this spring. This is going to be a 4-5 year rebuild but to say what you’re saying is completely ignorant.
Give them like a year before trolling?
You just sound like an uniformed idiot if you’re going to say things like the “FO has no clue what it’s doing.” It just shows you know nothing about the situation and shouldn’t chime in. Saying anything about a FO after 4months is the equivalent of looking at a Spring Training Record and expecting that to have any implication on the success of your regular season.
Learn baseball before posting. They have a completely new regime.
What does an idiot uniform look like? Take a selfie and post it so we have some context.
Zinger. If you were going to go at me for the missed letter you would want to rephrase it as, “what does a uniformed idiot look like.” At least do it correctly.
Come on, we can do better than that.
“Lift up the visor on your idiot helmet and look in the mirror”
Kingslayer 1. You don’t own the team so stop saying we, you have nothing to do with decisions made. 2. Orioles system has 3 in the top 100 one in the 60s one in the 70s and one in the 90s not mind blowing by any means. 3. System is ranked 20th or worst by several major outlets. 4. Came in dead last in the league last year by a long shot. 5. Was 61 GAMES BACK in the AL East that’s laughable. 6. Major league roster is terrible and as previously mentioned farm system is not very good so looks like they will be terrible for years to come. 7. They should be using everything they have to acquire talent especially international talent since they’ve ignored that market for years for no reason.
So as you put it.. should I keep going?
It’s a new regime. They aren’t avoiding the market. The new regime inherited a surplus of money when the market was dry. We have 3 current top 100 prospects as well as 2 who were on the last season but scuffled. We have the #1 pick in the draft now, are going to spend in the market when there’s players to spend on and are going to likely stack up multiple #1-3 overall draft choices. Was anyone arguing that this was going to be a fast turnaround? No it isn’t but we are on the right track. And getting riled up over us trading 750K worth of bonus at this stage in the game when there’s very few guys left and we have over 4 million more than the next team is stupid. You don’t give some nobody prospect who is worth 20k from the DR a million bucks because you can. That’s what would be stupid.
Can we quit with the “don’t say we” garbage already… if you’re a fan of the team, they’re “your” team. People have been talking like that for ages.
I wept for hours
OMG, the Orioles coulda had Zach Greinke.
No, it was Zach Granite. Bu-duum! That joke was gold — like a ton of bricks. Bu-dum dum! Time to rock this joint. What do you do with Orioles prospects when they don’t pan out? You barium. Get it? What, do I gotta get you stoned to laugh? Bu-duum! You guys want to hear a compliment on the new Orioles regime? Hold on a second and let me dig something up. Come on people. Why you booing? Do me a solid and play gneiss.
No more corny schist, okay?
I’m sure some people thought the other team in that market traded a player for himself when they traded Tanner Roark for Tanner Rainey.
Makes sense. You’re not going to spend the full 6 million on Sanchez, so why not fill out your farm system with a few other guys as well?
Theres more players to sign outside of Sanchez
It’s a 19 year old lottery ticket. Elias wasn’t in charge during the entirety of our intl signing season so this is all we can do given our surplus amount of funds. There’s not the level of talent left to spend that sum of money on at this point. I’m sure this is the last offseason you’ll see the O’s operate like this but for the time being it makes sense
Such an Orioles thing to do.
Let’s remember these are 2018-2019 slots. They really don’t need them if they’re not going to sign anyone. Why not pick up the lottery ticket?
Also, you don’t build an International scouting staff overnight. And it has to start there, unless you want to sign guys out of Baseball America. Developing a sound international strategy is going to take a couple of years, anyway. You need a good Director, who hopefully brings along some scouts.
Elias just got hired too late to make that happen; all the good SD’s were already employed. Let’s see what he does in the course of this year.
Exactly right. Elias has an extensive scouting background and I have full confidence in him when he’s given the time. To expect him to come in and be able to work magic with a bottom of the barrel pool of candidates within an organization that has done very little in that market in recent history is just stupid. 2019 IFA period will be a completely different story for the O’s.
Xavier, you’ve been traded to Minnesota *packs bags* ….couple hours later…..scratch that Xavier, you’ve been traded to the Baltimore. I feel bad for his family, such a rollercoaster of emotions lol
He’s 19 year old. Instead of the Cedar Kernel Rapids he’s going to go play for the Aberdeen IronBirds. I’m sure he’s heartbroken to come and play 30 minutes north of Baltimore instead of the middle of Iowa…….
I’d be more worried about working my way up to the majors only to find you’re in Baltimore
You’re on fire, Jd.
Stop drop and roll!
If you feel bad for his family, why the lol?
You feel bad for his family? It was only like 8 hours. It’s not like he sold a home and bought another one and now needs to sell the new one. Get some perspective.
The whole thing was a joke and just made me laugh. Didn’t have to take it all literal. I forgot the true fans search MLBTR posts on international bonus money for the serious rumors. To each their own. Life is too short man.
The Twins DFAed Granite and was able to trade him to the Rangers for Moore. The O’s then paid 750k in int’l money to get Moore?
Twins are going to Red Paperclip their way to Mike Trout.
The O’ always give their international money away, why is that ??? Don’t they want to fill up their farm for their rebuild ?
Sigh
Orioles tried to get the top 3 international prospects and failed even though they had the most money. Orioles obviously won’t spend it on picks, might as well traded it.
We did not have the most money for the Mesa’s. The marlins did everything they could to increase their pool and overtook us. We had the most only for Gaston and it still surprises me we did not get him. But he wasn’t familiar at all with our organization because we had little to no presence down there with our old regime. There’s no possible way to spend all this money we have now.