Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 484: Kiley McDaniel Explains the International Signing Period

Episode Date: July 3, 2014

Ben and Russell talk to Scout.com National Baseball Analyst Kiley McDaniel about the strategic approach to the international free agent market and why the Yankees are spending so much.

There is no international field. There is no interplanetary deal. But there is no interstellar appeal. Still there is no universal ideal. Still there is An international field Good morning and welcome to episode 484 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the Baseball Reference Play Index.

I am Ben Lindberg, not joined by my normal co-host Sam Miller, who's been away from home this week And dealing with a weak internet connection And today the weak connection won So I am joined by BP author And regular Effectively Wild guest Russell Carlton Hello Russell

I guess I'd be the abnormal co-host Yeah, sure Okay, I can live with that, I'm okay Your internet connection is strong like bull. Ah, yes. With me tonight. Strong like bull, smart like tractor, yes. Yes. So we have a third party on the line here.

July 2nd is one of the notable dates on the baseball calendar because it marks the start of the international free agent signing period, which is not a subject that I would consider myself an expert on, not a subject that I would consider myself an expert on, not a subject that Russell would consider himself an expert on. But we have someone who considers himself an expert on a lot of things, isn't actually an expert on most of them. But one of them that he has some knowledge about is this international signing period, Kylie McDaniel, who is the national baseball analyst at Scout.com. Hello, Kylie. Hello, Ben. And while I am also not the normal

guest, I believe I am ear normal. That's what I'm going to go with. Well, it's a crime that we haven't had you on in the two-year run of this show. So I'm glad that we can finally rectify that oversight. So we have some listeners who are new to baseball. We have listeners in far-flung regions across the globe, maybe are not so familiar with the international signing period, although you'd think that the foreign listeners would be more familiar with it. Maybe they are. But could you just give us a quick primer? Why is July 2nd a notable date? Why does everything happen on this day? How does this international free agent spending stuff work? Okay, so anyone who is not subject to the draft. So subject to the draft would be college, junior college players in America, high school players from Canada, Puerto Rico, America,

and some U.S. protectorates in the Caribbean that don't actually produce players. So we're talking U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico is basically all that's eligible or subject to the draft. Every other country is – Taking shots at Guam there. Yeah, well, actually, the U.S. Virgin Islands had a guy that would have gone in the first couple rounds, but he moved to the Dominican

so he could get more money. So they're even losing the players they had. And that was actually one of the top players last year. And he spoke perfect English, and I interviewed him on my podcast, which you should obviously listen to. Yes. Yes, I have. So, plug. I didn't say the name of it so you'll have to go deep into google to find out what it's called marginal prospects that is what

it's called ben has been has been a guest and i consider one of my finest episodes when i broke down his experience in scout school and i believe broke down his psyche by the end yes that's fun all right sorry I interrupted you. Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia, all kinds of other ones. But Dominican and Venezuela make up the majority of them. There are also European countries, which every now and then produce a couple high six-figure or seven-figure bonuses, which in any given year, you're talking about 15. This year, it might be as many as 20 seven-figure bonuses, and it can go as high as about 5 million. Although this year, I believe the highest bonus is 3.2, just to give you an idea of how high those things go.

So this year for example, there isn't a big European guy. Last year there was a guy from Italy that signed for a million and a half with the royals. And also you have the far west. So you have Japan, Korea, Taiwanwan a handful of countries out there now japan has a somewhat complicated agreement where basically the players aren't don't actually sign at 16 they go into the japanese leagues uh they play in high school and they go to those leagues and then sign as professional players every now and then you'll see a player sign at 18 out of high school and this year there was a player from kore, which doesn't have quite as strong an agreement with their pro teams,

that signed at 18 for over a million dollars to the Yankees, who was compared to a player you may know that also came through this process, Hak-Joo Lee of the Rays, who I believe is in AAA right now, who also signed for over a million dollars as an 18-year-old out of high school in Korea, although he was technically eligible as a 16 year old. And so each team has this, this bonus pool and they range from just over 5 million, I think for the Astros this year to just under 2 million for,

for a few teams. So not a, not a huge range in those things, but teams can also teams can exceed that. We'll, we'll talk about one team that that has in a very auspicious way i believe which team would that be we will yeah if you can find out we will get to that um and teams can also trade some of their bonus pools right if they if they don't

want to spend it if they want to spend more but that hasn't seemed to happen much lately that that seemed to happen more last year anecdotally at least yeah last year more team i want to say there was five to seven trades something like that uh the way they set it up is each team's pool you get a base of i believe it's 700 000 uh and then they split the rest of it into picks so they basically create a fake draft that doesn't exist, assign slot values to the first four rounds, and then whatever the slot values add up to, that gets added to your $700,000 and that makes up your pool. You can then trade some of those slots, but not all of them, to other teams for prospects or cash or whatever, which

last year we saw some trades. This year I don't think there were any, but part of that is because the teams that wanted to spend money realized the penalties for going over actually aren't that much, so they'll just go over. There was actually a scout and then later a reader of mine suggested, well, if a team's going to go way over and pay a penalty, why don't they just trade away all their slots anyway? It's just more money. Why don't you just trade that away? I was like, it's actually an interesting point. I don't think anyone actually thought of that on the team side. But if you're going to go over and pay penalties, then why not trade all your slots away and spend more money on it? What happens if you do go over? I mean, let's say that somebody says they go out and they blow $100 million or something like that. What happens?

Oh, you probably get a cool yacht along with the players. Yes! what happens? You probably get a cool yacht along with the players. Yes! To put it in context, I believe the bonuses in any given year for all of July 2, or the entire year, but July 2 is what

it's referred to because most of it happens on the first day or two, is around $80 to $100 million. It may have gotten to $100 before. As Ben was suggesting, the CBA changed a couple years ago to where there's pools there used to be no pools and part of the reason they did that is because some teams are starting to spend a lot and in the last year before they put the pools in so

there would be no way there was no uh punishments involved because they had already set the rules for the next year to be different uh the ranger spent uh either 14 or 15 million including the highest bonus of all time and I believe the third highest bonus of all time, which was $5 and I want to say $4 million on their top two players. And ironically of all those players, the only one that's any good right now as far as big league or high minors value is the one that signed for $300,000, Ruggie Odor. So that's how that always works. Yeah, so I've lost track of what question i'm answering oh sorry the penalties so the the rules were originally if you go over your pool by over 10 you have to pay a 100 tax on the overage and then if you go i think it's 15 over uh you then can't sign a player for over $250,000 the next year, which is pretty notable that that would be basically you can't sign one of the top 75 to 100 players is what they're

saying. So a couple of teams did that. The Rangers, the team that went crazy the year before the rules came into effect, then went crazy last year, along with the Cubs. And so both of them are limited to $250,000 this year. And the year before that, the Rays and I believe one other team went over by a little bit basically saying we're going to spend the same amount of money so if we spend it on one year we're getting that talent faster but didn't necessarily blow it

out of the water just because like for instance the Rays are a lower revenue team so they can't spend 15 million dollars they can just spend what they were going to spend for the next two years and one year and then go through it. But they actually changed the rules this year that if you go over, you are limited to $250,000 bonuses for two more years. So this was actually not – last year was the year to do it because they actually increased the penalties. And then this year, as I'm sure your next question will be. I reported right around New Year, I heard just before, and then I think it took me about a week to get the story together, that the Yankees were primed to not just go over and not go over by a good bit,

but maybe double or triple or quadruple everything that had happened before them. Yeah, so the Cubs last year went over, but they went over by 15% or so, which was, which was considered a lot, but is nothing compared to what the Yankees are doing now. So, so yeah, you, you reported way back in December that, that the Yankees were planning to do this. You elaborated on why they were planning to do this. And on the first day of this international signing period, they did this. this they they did exactly what you said that they would and signed many of the specific players you said that they would and and they spent more than their bonus pool allotment on one single player i think and then

they you know multiple one single players i think and, and then sign seven other big, big ticket guys. So how much are they going to spend? What is it going to cost them? And what's the thinking here? Why are they doing this? Well, that's quite an existential question. So as far as I can gather, the Yankees signed 22 guys today, which for context, most teams sign a total of 15 to 20 players in the entire year with maybe half of them on July 2nd, usually less than that. So if you're getting to double digits, that's a big crop.

Most teams sign four to six players today. And the Yankees signed, what did I say, 21 or 22? Yeah, one came in late. so I believe it's 22. And we don't have the bonuses for every single one. About half of those players are negligible bonuses of, say, $150,000 or lower. And some of them are 19 and 20. Guys that were eligible in previous years popped up during the spring, but they wanted to wait until today when the pools reset. So most

teams were out of money and have been out of money for a few months. So a lot of players that were eligible in previous years had to wait to sign today. So they signed, my estimations have them at spending 15 million today, which means the penalties would be about 12 and a half million because their pool was 2 million and change, which would be a total outlay of $27 to $28 million with a margin for error that I would say would make it $25 to $29, we'll say. And they are tied to one player that didn't sign today that rumors were they had a parting of ways, but will sign for about a million, so he's still possible. a parting of ways, but will sign for about a million. So he's still possible. And then one other player that was rumored to have had a deal with the Padres, but then they fired their GM afterwards, and now he's rumored to go to the Yankees, and he would

cost about $2 million. So they still could, it looks like, as I suggested on Twitter earlier tonight as all these signings were coming in, it looks like if they sign that player that the Padres had, who's a Colombian outfielder named Brian Emery, if they sign him and they sign him for about $2 million, as it looks like, they would go over $30 million total outlay. And the previous record was the Rangers the year before the CBA and the pools came into effect, which blew everything out of the water before that. And that was $14 or $15 million. So they basically doubled what anyone's ever done before. Wow. So they basically doubled what anyone's ever done before. Wow, yes. And that's including having half of that being in penalties, which didn't get you any players,

and having to sit out for two consecutive years after this, which this is the first year that's been in effect. So obviously paying a heavy price, if they would have known five years ago this was their plan, they should have done it last year, they would have gotten more players. So of the, I mean, you ranked talents or you ranked projected bonuses heading into this period. Of the top guys available, how many did they take off the board? I ended up ranking them based off of the projected bonuses. I had a scouting background. I saw these players, but I missed enough of them because they were locked.

The way teams have responded to this is most of, I'd say, 25, maybe 22 out of the 30, treat this as a hard cap. This is the number we can't go over. And so they now see it as the best way to get a discount and get the best bang for the buck is to sign the players earlier and earlier where the players are incentivized to take these early deals because they get to lock in savings that they might not, or lock in a deal they might not get down the road uh so teams are now like you sign on july 2 i was in the dominican in january and there were five or six top players that everybody knew who they were and who they were signing with and for how much money and didn't go to any showcases and i never got to see them

so like last year i think i saw 12 of the top 14 or something like that and this year i think i missed two of the top five uh i saw most of the guys beyond that but you know missed enough of the top guys i didn't feel comfortable saying well this guy's better than that guy i saw him for a game i didn't even see some of them so so i ranked them off of bonuses and if you want to go off of talent uh it seems like the consensus is the top player is a guy that actually isn't eligible until signed to his birthday which is uh july 7th a couple days from now uh and he's gonna sign with the rays and sounds like the next couple players uh consensus wise the yankees didn't get either but then if you look at the consensus like 3

through 15 they got like half of them and is the is the consensus even accurate well no uh i i i when i worked for a team uh back in the day they had me do a study of july 2nd and what i can tell you is it is not very predictive um so there's there's certain things like players that are this position and and the highest bonuses tend to be very predictive. And if you say, you know, from this group of players, if you look at the top 20 bonuses in a given year, if you look at this kind of player, it might be 50-50. If you're looking at multi-million dollar guys turning into useful big leaguers. But when you look at them as a broad percentage, it is not super predictive. But part of the reason why is there's not really any rhyme or reason. Over the years, teams have gotten better

at it, as you can see in studies they've done with the draft. As there is more scouts and more money and more attention, teams get better at picking players. But imagine drafting high school freshmen and sophomores like that's still going to be very riddled with mistakes because often these players will sign for 50 grand, be a complete afterthought and then go from an average runner to an 80 runner after they sign. And like Jose Reyes was, I think, the 23rd highest bonus in his signing class with the Mets. And in the study I did, it took the Mets from over a 15-year period from a bottom five team as far as international output to a top 10 team by that

afterthought that happened to work out for him. So it gives you an idea of how much luck is involved. And as another example, one other team, the Pirates, that have been known for producing a lot of talent, Greg Polanco, Starlin Marte, Alan Hansen, Dilson Herrera, all of those guys had been eligible for over a year before they signed them, and they all signed for under $300,000. So you can't debate that they got good players and that there's some scouting that goes into it, but the entire industry passed on those guys for a full year and still didn't get paid that much.

And now that whole group looks like geniuses. And the truth is probably somewhere in between uh but yeah the the no one's ever spent as much money as the yankees have but in previous uh big classes you're looking for one above average guy that's going to play in the big leagues for 10 years and some other guys that will contribute at some level or have trade value or something. Obviously the Yankees are basically doubling all of that. So they're hoping they can get two big league regulars out of this and that obviously would pay for it when you're talking $30 million. But also there's no way anyone in this class is going to have any big league value for

at least five years. So you can't even just use the $6 million per win or whatever number you have, because there's obviously a lot of adjustments for the risk and that you could have spent this on a big league free agent, which would have returned, you know, more quickly and with less risk and all that sort of thing. But then there's also the, if they don't technically end up big leaguers, you could always trade them. And these guys that sign for big bonuses, keep their trade value for longer than they maybe should, because every team tends to agree with these evaluations. Even if they'll tell me they think it was dumb, they're like, well, this guy got a million dollars.

He's still pretty good. So there's a lot of ways to measure success and it's going to take a while. But I have a feeling in about two years the narrative of this class will be told in one way or another. And I don't know. It could end up being ugly because there are definitely some holes in these guys. You'd like to have a slam dunk, you know, Miguel Cabrera kind of guy if you're going to do this sort of thing and they don't have that. But there wasn't a guy like that this year. So nobody was going to get it. it, but for people who don't know and aren't familiar with this, we are talking about guys who are, a lot of them are 16, 17 years old and are even younger than the 18-year-olds that are being drafted as high school seniors. And just, I mean, being in my day job, knowing that at 16, you're not fully physically or

mentally developed yet. I mean, how do teams handle the fact that you know they're they're scouting um even below and i mean i have to imagine they've you know had their eyes on some of these kids since they were 14 and how do they handle um that that process at that young a level for such you know i mean with the yankees we're talking about 30 million dollars worth of investment based on something that is not only not a finished product but might not even be a started product. Yeah, it's interesting because they have these – when I go down there to the Dominican, it's in January, which basically there's been no competitive baseball that you can even scout other than Dominican Winter League and Venezuelan Winter Leagues for months. So when I get down there, I'm relatively fresh as far as I'm not in like the grind of baseball.

So like I, you know, during the season, I can get very used to seeing high school or college games day after day for months and months. And you get to, you can go watch a guy take batting practice infield and two at bats. And before the game's over, you already know what that guy is just because you, you kind of know all of the, uh, all the indicators you're looking at. And you've seen enough of these guys. You have a library in your mind. And also you know the context of what these guys can do based on what scouts have told you he did last year.

Maybe in my case I've seen a lot of these guys for multiple years that are in my area. With these Dominican kids, you get down there and you watch BP and I'll pull up my camera and take some video that I can refer to later. And I'll look at my notes and like, I got my notes right here. Like every guy, it's the same thing. Like needs to add 20 pounds. Doesn't have a lot of strength. Hits the ball gap to gap. Seems to be trying to pull it too much. Just trying to hit home runs, but he can't hit it out. Like it's the same notes for almost every player. And then one random kid walks up, like for instance, uh, the guy, the Yankees just signed for $3.2 million, Dermis Garcia is a third baseman.

I saw him last year when an agent was showing me after all the showcases happened. Before I left, he goes, hey, I want you to see one of my guys for next year. And it was this kid. And it wasn't that good. It was like he was big. He might be able to play the infield. He's got a little power, but it wasn't great, but he was 15.

And you're like, oh, okay, he could be good. One year later, I see him at this big showcase, there's like 300 scouts there, and he was hitting the ball 50 feet over the left field fence with a wood bat in batting practice. And some scouts say he's got 30 home run power. And obviously it's easy to watch that guy and be like, oh, he could play third's a big dude he's got huge power that's an easy one uh but even he has what some scouts call a grooved swing where you're not sure he's gonna end up being able to hit in the big leagues it looks like he's always swinging on the same plane for every pitch doesn't seem real loose and then another guy that's also got 3.2 million it's a dominican kid has one of the wildest jeremy burnett style swings you've ever seen uh but he's big and loose and athletic and has more bat speed and has similar power

and like it looked easier to do and looks more like what you're looking for in a hitter but obviously you have to teach him to take like a normal swing but he's been conditioned you get paid more if you hit the ball farthest. That's what he's doing. And scouts look at those two guys, one with a compact, repeatable swing with huge power and one with a completely out of control, wild cut. And most of them prefer the guy with the wild cut because it looked like a better ball of clay to start with.

And it had nothing to do with how polished they were. It was that guy might be a first baseman. I don't know, but he's got his hands worked the right way, which you see a little bit on the high school and definitely at the college level. But it's definitely more picking out attributes and picking out projectable actions, seeing what their parents look like, confirming what their age is. It's a completely different process while still doing technically the same thing. You're looking for different stuff.

Yeah, you led into another question that has come up over the past few years and that was the age discrepancies that have come up. I know that Leo Nunez and Fausto Carmona and all those aren't their real names, are they? And some of those fake things. I wonder what's the status on that? What's the latest on that? Has Major League Baseball or the teams been doing a better job about finding out who these guys are really and whether you know that age 16 should be put in scare quotes or not yeah they've definitely done a better job they've they've standardized a process for if you basically if you want to get paid

high six figures or even seven figures you need to register with us. We need to have, you know, blood tests, all kinds of documentation, drug tests, the whole deal. And those players that have been busted, there was one big time player this year that I still haven't heard official word. His name was Alex Paredes. He was actually at the Under Armour All-American game with all the high schoolers. They bring a couple of Dominican kids every year. One of them was Nelson Gomez, who got $2.3 million from the Yankees. And then this guy went, and he looked like he was one of the best players on the field. And everyone was like, oh, he's going to get $3 million, $4 million. He's going to be the next guy. And then right before I got there in January, he didn't show up at any of these showcases.

And I was like, I know he doesn't have a deal yet. Why wasn't he down here? They go, oh, he got busted for age. And this was basically right after he got on the big national stage. He got busted. And I believe last year there was one guy that got busted around the same time and there haven't really been really been that many that have gotten busted after they sign and uh there was another yeah there was another guy last year at the same time that was said he was 15 if he was 15 he looked like a pretty decent player but had some holes it turned out he was 20 and by like February they had figured it out so they're definitely like once they hit the national

stage to where kids are getting deals and they're really paying attention to him and these kids are registering the last few years no one's really gotten more than about three or four months without getting caught that has been caught now obviously there's probably still kids that haven't been caught yet but MLB has definitely done a much better job. But you'll still hear you'll still hear stick out, say that kid passed all of his tests. I don't believe it. And they'll kind of steer clear because you don't have to have the right answer for every guy. You have the right answer for the kids you sign. So there's still a little bit of dubiousness. And especially when they'll do the here's the here's the eligible kids.

And then here's the guys for next year. You see it a ton with those guys because some of these showcases I went to, since they know these kids will sign up to a year in advance. There's rumors kids for next year have already signed or verbally agreed to deals. At the showcases in January, they did 20-15 kids and some of them were like 6'4", 220, lefties with huge power. And you're like, how is that possible that kid's 14 right now? Yes, I wanted to ask you about that because obviously there were so many signings on day one of this period. It's not because everyone just had a really productive morning and just got up really early and had their coffee and signed eight players. The key is having all 30 teams in your family.

Right, exactly. So these deals obviously were arranged for many months. You wrote about many of them last year even. And there's a lot of pressure on these players to sign way ahead of time, right? I mean, what is the pressure that is making team scout players younger and younger and is making those players agree to deals earlier and earlier? Yeah, well, I referenced it before. It's the 20 to 25 teams that treat these bonus pools as hard caps. Say I've got $2 million or $3 million or whatever it is and and exactly that amount, how do I get the level of player that I want and as many of them as I want?

And you'll often hear from scouts, and there will even be guys that I pick out in January that I like, like in the past years when obviously these guys weren't locked up as prevalently. You'll say, oh, that guy, there was a guy last year that signed with the Blue Jays for I think $1.2 million, a shortstop named Yeltsin Gidino from Venezuela. And he was like six foot 150, had no strength at all, had the smoothest swing you've ever seen, great actions at shortstop, ran pretty well. But you could tell he hadn't physically filled out yet.

And often these kids will get faster at ages 15 and 16, which you don't see in America. Once you see these kids at 18, they don't get any faster and usually get slower. At 14 and 15, if a kid runs a really good plus time in the 60, they assume he's older because you basically can't run that fast at that age. So you watch him and you're like, oh, he's going to get faster. He's going to get more physical. He's definitely going to put on some weight and get stronger. I really like that guy. And apparently the Blue Jays saw him a little bit before that, saw the same thing, and locked him up for maybe $400,000 or $500,000

less than he would have gotten if he waited until the end. But there's a chance he gets hurt that ends up having to sign for half. There's also something that happened a lot before there were bonus pools is agents, well, more specifically the Buscones, the local guys. Now a lot of American agents have gotten involved, but the local Buscones that train these kids from ages 12 to 16 and then get, say, 30 to 40 percent of their bonus will get greedy at the end, and then all the money gets spent, and then they get left out and end up signing for a third of what they would have got, which is what happened with Odor, the guy the Rangers

signed that year. They were done spending money, and then they saw this Odor guy sitting there and they're like, we spent all our money. Can we get like another 350 or 400 grand or whatever he ended up signing for? Because this guy absolutely should have gotten a million dollars, but the market didn't play out in his favor and it sounds like the agent might have messed it up a little bit. So players are now scared of losing out on their big payday and their ability to set their family up

for you know for generations uh potentially and as much as they believe they're all going to be big league stars they know they have to get paid uh so if you if you tell somebody eight months in advance i'll give you 80 of what your best case scenario is they would be dumb not to take it and now that this has been happening i mean the yankees' first wave of the players they signed, they signed six guys in the middle of December. It turned out they're all still pretty decent values for what they gave them. But there were some deals done before that. The guy the Red Sox signed for about $2 million was the best pitcher this year.

I was told he signed. There's a guy at the winter meetings that pulled, the international director walked up to me, pulled out his phone, showed me a video of a pitcher, and he goes, does that guy look pretty good to you? And I go, yeah. He goes, he's already signed. You're pretty good to you and i go yeah he goes he's already signed you're never going to see him he's not going to go to anything you're going to and he wouldn't tell me who but it turned out it was the red sox had signed him for two million dollars or right 1.8 right around there uh and he was like what if you're you know he's a 511 right hander and he's 15 he got offered

almost two million dollars like of course you take that like maybe you would have gotten three also might have gotten nothing yeah it's same, same sort of thing that we see with young players signing extensions. The numbers are bigger of course, but it's the same sort of thing we see with, with professional players. And we've talked about that conflict with guys like Polanco and Springer and, and deciding whether to take the money or try to make more later. So you mentioned it briefly that, you know, if the Yankees get two major leaguers someday out of this, then it's worth it for them.

Is that all it is? Because, I mean, the numbers don't maybe sound huge when you consider that whatever it is, 26, 27, 28, I mean, that's Carlos Ruiz's contract from this winter or, or that's Alex Guerrero's contract, a foreign player who was not subject to these bonus pools. So is, I mean, but you know, relative to what everyone else is spending, this is some real old school Steinbrenner stuff, just spending everyone into submission. Is that just the motivation that, that it's just kind of acquire all these guys, hope, hope a couple of them pan out. And if they do, then,

then you're getting a good deal. And if so, why are the Yankees the only one doing it to this extent? It's funny because I talked to one of the teams that, uh, overspent their bonus pool in the past, uh, in the last couple of years. And I said. And I said, well, it was a larger market team. So I was like, if you were going to go over, why didn't you, we didn't know at the time, but why didn't you do what the Yankees ended up doing? And he said the problem was no one had completely blown away their pool before. Our teams had only gone a little bit over. And he said we had deals worked out with players that the agent backed out

because he thought what we were doing was we had agreed to, six deals but we can only afford four of them and we were going to drop some guys late which used to happen in the old process all the time. And so they didn't trust them basically. And then after they signed all the players, they were like, look, we're trying to tell you we were going to spend – say our pool was three, we were going to spend eight. We were trying to tell you, you could have gotten paid more if you trusted us and then it sounded like uh i talked to a couple uh international scouting directors was i was writing all the reports for this and i said uh when the yankees sort of decided to go over which it sounds like went all the way back to august when they were in the middle of not

making the playoffs and how these meetings they hatched their plan then and then everybody found out in about october november when they like their heavy hitters were getting seen like way too early scouting these players in like venezuela where the heavy hitters don't go and then in december all these guys got locked up and of course the agents are going to talk everybody figures it out pretty quickly um it sounds like from talking to these guys uh the directors did not rule it out at all and a couple of them said i think some of these teams that went over this year the red sox the rays the brewers uh may have decided to do it have gotten the okay from ownership after i wrote the yankees were going to blow this away by five times because you can go to your owner and say the yankees are going to do x y and z we need to get

more money and there's no way for him to know that if nobody wrote it so how can he know and he was saying there were some teams like, you know, the Red Sox and the Rays that were inclined to go over and maybe were planning to, and maybe were, you know, in the process of getting it. Okay. But once they saw the report, Oh, the Yankees are going to do this. And everyone kind of nods their head. Like, yeah, that's what's happening. All of a sudden your owner is like, Oh,

we're probably getting an international draft soon for all we know. They're going to change the rules soon. We need to spend now while we can. And it kind of pushed some teams over the wall that were maybe kind of not quite ready to get that approval from GMs and ownership and things like that. And so does this mean that the Yankees will pretty much have to sit out next year? Or is there any other way around it? Next year and the year after.

And the year after that, too. And the assumption is there'll be an international draft at that point, which will then put a hard cap on what you can spend. But, you know, based on you've got four picks, you pick these players and you pay them what the slot is, which should be an even more stringent than the draft, which would then mean the only way other than big league free agency to spend whatever you want would be on Cuban players over the age of 23,

which is why you're seeing that market explode even more than it used to because now there's no place to spend all that TV money other than big league free agents and extensions. Right. So we've been talking for a while, and we haven't even really gotten into specific players. We're talking more about the process and the strategy, and that's probably telling.

I mean, that's kind of where my interests lie when we talk about this stuff, because I figure, you know, best case scenario, it's going to be three, four years till we see any of these guys, probably more like five, six, seven. lot of interest in these specific players and just just looking at your twitter feed and you answering questions from people who are really interested in specific players and what those players are going to be is this i mean obviously there's been an explosion in interest in prospects generally but it would seem like you know guys who are this far away would be a pretty tough sell to to get the typical fan interested is this a product of you know dynasty leagues that that that includes every player anywhere why why do people want to want to know who who the best players in in the july 2nd signing period are i was just about to say it's i think it's those dynasty players because the funny thing is i'll get these really oddly worded questions like which player like first you get the question which

player reaches the big leagues first out of this july second class and i'm like no one's gonna get anywhere close to the big leagues for at least four years and you're asking me to guess who's gonna be best four years from now when some of these guys might grow three inches like that's absurd and then they get smarter and they say, all right, which player will get out of the Dominican Summer League and get to the GCL or AZL first? That's now their way of asking, which one should I pick up? I know these are the 10 players that are good,

but which one's going to have trade value in my dynasty league first? They're getting very smart about it. Yeah, and I think there's also – my family is from Alabama. We're big Alabama football fans. Part of what I do for Scout is writing about commits for SEC and ACC schools and sort of the heartland or whatever you call it, the Bible Belt. And those fans – it's funny. I remember at one point I was talking to some NC State fans

about how Carlos Rodon wasn't quite as good as the hype had made him out to be and that i thought you know say baseball america had sort of overestimated him but this is you know what i had seen and this you know relates to this and you put him a little lower based on that and this guy's a little closer and they got so angry with me it had nothing to do with the facts or what i was saying it was just we're angry and the fact that i was saying the guy who should be higher is at rival East Carolina, who just gets their scraps as far as recruiting goes, they were like incensed.

Like, what are you doing? Telling us this, we can't believe you would write something so blasphemous. And the reason I bring that up is because if you're a diehard Yankee fan, you need to know everything and you need to like you, how you follow the game. Everything is great or terrible or we won or we lost.

Much like that, you wait for prospect season in December to see everyone's list to see, oh, my team's farm system, which may as well be run by me with how much pride I take in it, is doing better or worse. You always see these questions when I put these lists up. Is the Yankees' best second base prospect better than the Red Sox' best second base prospect, which has nothing to do with anything except for you know beating your friend in a bar bet um and seeing you know what the answer is and so this is just the extension of

that if you're the diehard fan you want to root for Alabama football you want to know who they're recruiting you want to know if they're getting more commits than Auburn even though it doesn't mean anything until they get to campus and are actually playing three years from now you you want to know. And that's the same thing with this. You want to be informed. You want to live vicariously through your team and you want to sort of feel every part of it and be the most informed. This is the, you know, the razor's edge of being the most informed because you'll find guys that are like VPs of scouting with teams that are in the room for picking these players that have trouble getting invested in it because they're like, we're just going to be wrong about everybody anyway.

Why would I care? And these people on Twitter are way more invested in it. Like who's going to get to the GCL first? And he's like, I don't care. He's either good or bad. It's out of my hands. Right. So there is – we've talked a lot about the Yankees,

and I guess this is just kind of another sneaky way of asking, so who's the best player? But other than the Yankees, so we're going to talk about the other 29 teams that occasionally play ball. Who's the consensus that they had a good day today on the international market? Well, this is really going to be great for ratings. The Red Sox did pretty well. Oh, great. So we can have the Yankees play the Red Sox. That red socks that never happens yeah the red socks didn't go crazy over their pool

i believe their pool was like two and a half million uh they signed a player i was talking about from venezuela his name's anderson espinoza uh his i had a scott telling me he's at 97 i hadn't heard that until recently but he's been basically hidden for the last six months so who knows what he's been doing uh but he's like a 5'11 dynamo with all kinds of stuff in his arm. Everything's above average already, and he's only 16. He signed for basically what their pool amount was, about $2 million. They also got the best pitcher out of the Dominican, Christopher Acosta, for I believe 1.5, and then signed another guy, Elwin Tejada,

another guy that I like, one of those sort of skinny shortstops that if he ends up having the body that ends up putting on 20 pounds and retains all of his athleticism, could be a steal. So they've spent, what is that, like $3.8 million? I'm sure they'll spend a little bit more, which is about double their pool, which I'm not – the funny part is I'm not sure if not being able to sign a player for the next two years is worth going double your pool, but getting to move three years of players into one year, I suspect that could be enough, especially if you think an international draft is coming soon. There's also now a strategy issue of, well, they might have gotten the second best crop of players, but was it worth the price they paid?

Should they be getting somebody else as well? else as well. And so just to placate the dynasty players in the audience, I mean, can you give us a very quick scouting report on the top couple of guys, Adrian Rondon or Nelson Gomez or whoever the guys with the biggest bonuses are or the guys who will get to the GCL quickest? You know, it's not all about bonuses. Yeah. So one of the players i was talking about i don't know if i said his name that had the big crazy swing but had all the elements you want to look for in a swing was gilbert lara who signed with uh the brewers today for believe 3.2 million uh he's a potential 25 home run middle of the order third baseman but also may end up being a first baseman and with a swing obviously who knows if he's going to hit for enough average.

He's got to get through six levels of the minors. The next one would be Adrian Rondon, who isn't eligible to sign for a couple more days, but has been comped to Carlos Correa, Manny Machado, Hanley Ramirez. And he's, I believe, the youngest of the top prospects, which, again, we've learned with the draft, high school players being a year younger than their peers is big. At 16, that curve is super steep. So the fact that he's like eight months younger than all the other guys I'm going to mention bodes well. And he's another one of those 6'1", 170, lanky dudes. May end up being a third baseman if he puts on 20 pounds, maybe a shortstop if he doesn't.

Advanced field to hit and field and run. Everything's's good but it's not a huge power guy maybe maybe 15 homers as opposed to some of these other guys are more you know 25 or 30 home run potential guys uh mentioned dermis garcia the guy that might have a groove swing but has simple mechanics and might have 70 power which would be about 30 homers might be able to play third a little better chance than laura he went to the yankees uh for i believe 3.2 uh nelson gomez another guy the yankee sign i believe it was 2.3 million uh he's a not great body guy uh looks physically like a first baseman isn't great laterally but has good hands and a plus arm would probably third baser right field advanced bat chance for 15 to 20 homers uh he was also in that under armor game with alex paredes the guy that now is i believe 20 years

old and is suspended for a year so he he may not better in that equation uh and then a couple more guys i mentioned anderson espinoza the pitcher the red sox sign out of venezuela uh there's another guy that's venezuela brian hernandez that the mariners signed for 1.8 million he's your prototypical center fielder above average to runner, chance for 15 homers, good simple stroke, above average bat speed. And I think the most interesting guy in this year's class is from Colombia. His name's Brian Emery. He's been training in the Dominican for the last year. So in that way, he's been easy to see.

You don't have to fly all the way to Colombia. But his agent, Ivan Neboa, is notorious for two things. One, he gets some of the craziest deals. He had a player that some guys didn't think was a prospect that got $1.1 million a couple years ago, and he got a player that was maybe $1 million, maybe $2 million guy, the $4.95 million biggest bonus of all time two years ago. Now he's got this kid, Brian Emery, who works out in the infield,

works out in the outfield, is probably a right fielder down the road, but he's a 6'3", 180, lanky switch hitter, really good swing, power potential, right field arm, butt average runner. Everything's great. The other thing Ivan Debo is notorious for is he does not let his players play in games so no one I don't think anyone's ever seen him face live pitching before which if you think about it's kind of amazing because this used to be normal 10 years ago and now it's been essentially outlawed they have all of these prospect leagues all the things that I go to there's games being played and some of these teams are seeing guys like 100 at bats

before they sign them which is one of the reasons why they're better at picking players and the showcase season we have in america another reason why teams have more confidence in picking high school players and are better at doing it statistically has been proven so this guy is a classic huge upside huge risk but uh if he if he had those 100 at bats and was performing pretty well might get the highest bonus in this class as is he looks like he's in line for aboutbats and was performing pretty well, might get the highest bonus in this class. As is, he looks like he's in line for about $2 million. He was rumored to have a deal done with the Padres about a month ago before Josh Burns got fired. Now it's looking like he might sign with the Yankees.

Of course. Yeah, and the Yankees had a guy that they were locked up with for a long time. And then about a month ago, it like uh they parted ways with them right around the same time josh burns got fired so they might actually have a budget that they were running up against and said we got to drop this guy to go get emory and he was the guy that i mentioned earlier if they end up signing him i believe pushes them over 30 million dollars for the uh for the total outlay you mentioned the brewers signing a big bonus guy are they a team that has ramped up their presence in this market because historically i don't know i think of the rangers

as a team that spends a lot on the international market and is very active and the the brewers may be at the opposite end of that spectrum uh has that changed are there other teams that have really dedicated themselves recently there was a time i believe years ago, when only two teams didn't have an academy, the Dominican, and it was Milwaukee and Washington. Washington, it was because their international director was put in jail. Right. So that was a pretty good reason to kind of reevaluate what's going on down there. And Milwaukee just didn't have one. They ended up sharing it with Washington.

And I believe they now both since have their own and have some new personnel and new guys running, I believe. I know that Washington does. They end up taking Johnny DiPuglia from Boston, who is a very respected executive, is now running for the Nationals. And the Brewers now have a new group as well. And they – it was actually interesting lara was one of the top players that wasn't signed at the wasn't didn't have a verbal deal when i saw him in january and at that uh thing the event the mlb showcase where i have the video of lara with his crazy swing uh you would think he wouldn't be able to hit in games i believe he went four for six with a home run two doubles a

walk and uh strikeout i want to say like it was a surprisingly good showing against guys throwing like 85 or 90 for a guy with the nuttiest swing you've seen uh and right after that it was milwaukee the yankees uh the dodgers a couple other teams started bidding and then milwaukee came in and i don't think they were planning to go over their pool until they've realized to get this guy, you have to go over your pool, and they decided to. And I don't think they've signed anyone else today. So that's another team where you're like, they went over their pool, they're not going to be able to sign guys for two straight years, and then they went over by like a million to get one player. Like, they must really like this guy.

And this is like their first big salvo of their sort of new regime down there. So he seems to be the face of what they're doing. of their sort of new, new regime down there. So he seems to be the face of what they're doing. And I believe after, after I reported they had a deal in February, two beat writers asked Doug Melvin and he was forced to say that they didn't have a deal. And then the agent came out and said they didn't have a deal. And then today they signed for the money that I said they signed for in

February. Okay. And then, oh, and lastly, is there anyone who is not part of this signing period who's not subject to these bonus pools, but is maybe an international player who's obtaining residency somewhere or could be signing somewhere and make an impact fairly soon that we should be aware of? There are two Cuban guys to know. One of them just signed with the Reds for $30 million.

I thought he was going to get about $10 million to $15 million and some speculated size $20 million. And then the Reds said, his name is R thought he was going to get about $10 million to $15 million. Some speculated his high is $20 million. Then the Reds said his name is Rizel Iglesias, a Cuban reliever. I saw him last year play College Team USA in a game where Collar's Rodon and a bunch of other first-rounders pitched. He had been mostly

88-92, and then in this thing he was 92-95. He's like a six-foot guy, shows you two-plus pitches. The Reds said they think he can start which is why they paid him that much most teams thought he was more of a neat inning guy which is why they thought he'd get about 10 or 15 million uh but he could potentially be down the stretch coming up into the big leagues uh but since they said they want to make him a starter you'd think they'll take it a little slower than that the other guy is yas Tomas, who is a, we'll say probably a right fielder.

He shows you some of the qualities that have been seen in Jose Abreu and Diane Vecchietto and some of these previous big power Cuban guys. He just defected, so he's not going to be eligible to sign for maybe another six or eight months. So he's more of a 2015 guy. And he's a big power, maybe even a swing and miss kind of guy that's put on some weight, might be 240 pounds, is kind of a below average runner. So could turn into that 4A slugger for certain teams that think he's maybe a $10 to $20 million guy. But there's some buzz.

Some teams think his power is a 70. There's a video of him and the WBC against Japan hitting the ball over the fence for like 50 feet in left center field. And there's some rumors he might approach $50 million if he really gets in good shape and really starts killing it at these workouts because like I said, there's nowhere to spend your money other than big leaguers

if you want to because everything else has some penalties associated with it. So it might get out of hand. Okay, well we have kept you too long. The Yankees have signed three players Everything else has some penalties associated with it. So it might get out of hand. Okay. Well, we have kept you too long. The Yankees have signed three players since we started talking. Back to Twitter. Right. Yeah.

So everyone, you can find Kylie's work at scoutingbaseball.com. You can find his podcast on iTunes, Marginal Prospects. He does have me on sometimes, but he also gets good guests and has interesting episodes. And you can find him on Twitter at KylieMCD. He is reporting lots of signings. Clearly he is a man in the know because he knew things that happened today last year. And he covers all manner of prospects.

You are flying in the morning to North Carolina to see team USA and cover some amateurs there. So all, all, all shapes and forms of prospects are covered by you. Uh, so you are, you are a good, good follow. I would say, uh, so 70% of the world is covered by water and the other 30% is covered by me. 70% of the world is covered by water, and the other 30% is covered by me. Okay. Well, thank you, Kylie. Yes.

Thanks for having me. And please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com. Subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We actually will have a show tomorrow that is the current plan, so you can listen to it on your day off. You can listen to it next week when you're working again, whenever you want to listen to it. You can listen to it as things explode.

Yes, exactly. So thank you for joining us. We will be back with a new show tomorrow. Is that the horn you used to start the podcast? for joining us we will be back with a new show tomorrow hmm is that the horn you used to start is there like a tugboat i can't hear in the distance it's my traditional pre-podcast yawn well i just threw some chalk in the air just so you guys know i've been talking to you for a few minutes and i'm bored already that's about par for the course