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The second annual MLB Prospect League international showcase starts tomorrow in the Dominican Republic.

Jesse Sanchez' story

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Top Prospects:

Dominican Republic:

SS Obispo Aybar - being investigated by MLB due to age questions
3B Rafael Devers - connected to the Boston
RF Micker Zapata - linked to the Seattle, Minnesota and Cleveland
OF Eloy Jimenez - linked to Houston
RHP Mayky Perez
RHP Marcos Diplan
SS Franly Mallen

Taiwan:

RHP Tseng Jen-Ho - age 18

Venezuela:

SS Gleyber Torres - linked to the Cubs
SS Yeltsin Gudino - linked to Oakland and Seattle

Official Signings:

Cubs: RHP Armando Rivero, Cuba, age 25 - $3.1 million - will not count towards 2012-13 international pool
Mariners: RHP Jose Santiago, Dominican Republic, age 19 - $205,000 bonus - counts towards 2012-13 international pool
Rangers: OF Todd McDonald, Australia, age 17 - $475,000 bonus - counts towards 2012-13 international pool
Reds: LHP Jacob Constante, Dominican Republic - age 19 - $730,000 bonus - counts towards 2012-13 international pool

I just asked Parks and he said good class. Lots of bats, no Sano type talents. Some solid arms as well. With our budget, we've got to make a couple of serious splashes. Bats are probably a bit easier to project out, but I hope we get a couple of the best pitchers.

The top Taiwanese prospect this year will be pitching at the WBC, so we should get a nice preview:



It will be interesting if this regime will make Asia as big a priority as the previous one did. If the Cubs truly are interested in signing older international prospects (a la Paniagua) since they deem them less risky, Asia is the place to go as Koreans and Taiwanese players don't sign till they graduate high school.

This seems tailor-made for our situation, if he's worth the money. We've got a huge financial advantage over most in IFA money and a bigtime need for SP. At 2 mill, it'd still leave us in the middle of the pack for IFA money and we could still basically add a class financially as we did in 2012.

No interest in loading up on an 18-year-old pitcher.

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Team Theo.

Why not?

Because he's an 18-year-old pitcher. I'd rather go for quantity over quality at that age.

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Team Theo.

Well, of course. Despite signing quite a few 5-and 6-figure bonus pitchers, the current set up will often lead to big spending teams signing one expensive pitcher. In that case, I'd rather drop 7-figures on an 18-year old than a 16-year old (or a 22-year old in the case of Paniagua last year).

Isn't the IFA market considered pretty [expletive] this year? Might be worth spending the money on him if there aren't a lot of guys that look to be quality prospects.

Not that I know about such things, but a few posts up, davell mentions that Parks says this is a good IFA class.

Well, after the reports from their showcase in January, that's changed somewhat. Some decent bats, not a lot of pitching.

In his review of Tampa's 2012 IFA haul (the Rays went over their pool and face harsh penalties in the 2013-14 IFA class), Ben Badler said the 2013-14 IFA class would be down:

That's what I read/was thinking of when I made my post

There's one bigtime pitcher, Maykky Perez, the best hitter seems to be an OFer named Micker Zapata. In Parks scouting report, he only mentioned a couple of guys he'd put a seven figure bonus grade on. It's a main reason why I'd be perfectly fine throwing 2 mill on Ho, assuming he's worth it. It'd still leave us with around 2.8 milk to spend elsewhere. Likely including at lwast one more seven figure guy, maybe even two. Plus, the expected allotment of projectable low six figure pitching prospects.

My issue with what Tampa did, is they barely went over the limit. To me, if you're going to incur the max penalty, you may as well go all out with it.

Zapata does look like the best at this point.

OF Eloy Jimenez and SS Joan Mauricio are two other big names.

RHP Jefferson Mejia is a 17-year old who will turn 18 in August and had some age issues (banned from signing last year for a year) whose stuff probably warrants a 7-figure bonus if he's cleared.

Can't remember first names, but there's a SS named Aybar that looked really good, but he's got age questions as well. The 2nd best pitcher is some dude named Diplan, but he's not all that projectable.

Yeah, Diplan is 5'11".

But with the Cubs budget allottment, can't they kind of do both?


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Yes.

And they did it last year with a smaller allotment (admittedly, Paniagua was 22, not 18).

That's the big difference for me. If there's no older pitchers like that, I'd prefer any big purchases be a position player.

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Team Theo.

We've got 4.7 or 4.8 mill to spend and evidently there aren't that many seven figure guys as it is. We can spend 2 on the pitcher, still get one or two low seven figure position players AND still get a nice group of projectable pitchers. If the Taiwanese kid grades out as a guy that'd be a top 50ish guy in the draft, it's completely fine with me.

Just because Ben Badler or Jason Parks wouldn't pay 7 figures for more than a few prospects doesn't mean those guys will be the only ones getting 7-figure bonuses.

Badler said he wouldn't pay 7 figures to a lot of guys all while correctly predicting those guys would sign for 7 figures last year.

That all seems particularly unlikely to me. The last few years have taught me to not believe anything that comes from the international amateur punditry. There will almost necessarily be more than a few seven-figure guys out there.

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Team Theo.

If 18 is not in your definition of "older" international amateur pitchers, you've completely limited the sample of high profile arms. The only two I can think of in recent years who signed at 20 or older are Paniagua and Rafael DePaula (Yankees). I would never want to intentionally limit the talent pool.

Like you, I have no problem passing on high profile 16-year old Latin American pitchers.