Compilation Board - July 2 International Free Agent Class

Saturday, June 29, 2013
by: Ben Embry

Hey, I've noticed a couple rankings, one from Ben Badler at Baseball America and one from Kiley McDaniel at Scout.com/Fox Sports, pop up this week regarding available free agents for next week's international signing day.  I thought it'd be fun to do a compilation board ala my amateur draft board from earlier this month.

For those unfamiliar, here's my crude and possibly somewhat inaccurate description: players 16 years of age or more from virtually every baseball playing country excluding Canada, Puerto Rico, and Japan (off the top of my head) are not subject to the Rule 4 Amateur Draft held every June but rather is a free agent eligible to sign with anyone.  Similar in some respects to the spending restrictions imposed on teams in the draft, there are restrictions to how much each team can spend during this signing period.  The spending allotment is based on last year's record, with the Houston Astros having the largest bonus pool with over $4.9 million and the Washington Nationals have the smallest with a little less than $1.85 million.  New York has about $1.88 million.  Spending allotment can be traded (subscription required) weirdly enough.  Even though they sign this month, they will not appear in professional games for another year, per MLB rules.  In the mean time, they practice at their teams' training complexes and attend fall instructional league.

Though players are eligible to sign with whoever they'd like, historically they often are steered in the direction of a specific team by their trainers, who are very influential parts of their lives and have pre-existing relationships with teams.  Thus you'll see predictions of "who ends up with who" pay off much more often than, say, amateur mock drafts. Spending limits, explained further in the next paragraph, will start to alter that practice with the top talents because there is a rather large disparity between what teams can spend.  After the board, I'll discuss who the Yankees are connected with.

As mentioned previously, the Yankees have very little to spend compared to the rest of the league.  Because they finished with the 3rd best record last year, they will have the third smallest allotment, just a shade under $1.9 million.  For the sake of comparison, they had $2.9 million to spend last year and spent $1.9 million alone on Luis Torrens.  Technically, they can spend as much as they want but exceeding the spending limit will result in penalties affecting next year.

Let me quickly get to the board and then I'll wrap it up:

1	Gleyber Torres	SS	Venezuela
2	Eloy Jimenez	OF	Dominican Republic
3	Rafael Devers	3B	Dominican Republic
4	Leonardo Molina	OF	Dominican Republic
5	Luis Encarnacion	3B	Dominican Republic
6	Micker Zapata	OF	Dominican Republic
7	Yeltsin Gudino	SS	Venezuela
8	Marcos Diplan	P	Dominican Republic
9	Jose Herrera	C	Venezuela
10	Jesus Lopez	2B	Nicaragua
11	Yeyson Yrizarri	SS	Dominican Republic
12	Marten Gasparini	SS	Italy
13	Carlos Hiciano	SS	Dominican Republic
14	Lewin Diaz	1B	Dominican Republic
15	Erick Julio	P	Colombia
16	Greifer Andrade	OF	Venezuela
17	Carlos Herrera	SS	Venezuela
18	Erling Moreno	P	Colombia
19	Christian Vasquez	OF	Venezuela
20	Mayky Perez	P	Dominican Republic
21	Freddy Rodriguez	OF	Dominican Republic
22	Anderson Franco	3B	Dominican Republic
23	Ricardo Sanchez	P	Venezuela
24	Luis Tirado	SS	Dominican Republic
25	Michael de Leon	SS	Dominican Republic
26	Edgar Arredondo	P	Mexico
27	Franley Mallen	SS	Dominican Republic
28	Nicolas Pierre	OF	Dominican Republic
29	Jose Almonte	OF	Dominican Republic
30	Jen-Ho Tseng	P	Taiwan
31	Wilson Amador	SS	Dominican Republic
32	Ali Sanchez	C	Venezuela
33	Yohan Aybar	OF	Dominican Republic
34	Luis Barrios	P	Colombia
35	Carlos Talavera	OF	Venezuela
36	Luis Carpio	SS	Venezuela
37	Yonauris Rodriguez	SS	Dominican Republic
38	Bryan Lizardo	3B	Dominican Republic

 

Badler has linked to Yankees to OF Leonardo Molina who, as you can see, is well regarded by both scouts.  He was ranked 5th on both boards.  I would suspect that he will be the only name on this last they get to sign, but its possible they add one more.  He's a 6'2" 165 lb right-handed CF who appeared on scouting radars relatively later than most.  As you can imagine, speed is his strength and power is his question mark.  And one other note about Molina: he's not actually eligible to sign until he turns 16 on August 1st.

There are 2 opposing schools of thought about how teams should spend their money.  You can either go after high profile, high demand athletes like Molina or you can snatch up several lower profile players hoping at least one of them exceeds expectations.  I could see going either way and am not opposed to how the Yankees approached it last year and seemingly how they're going to approach it this year, (signing two big bonus guys).