The Latin Talent Market

Back Bearing Fruit

by Kiley McDaniel

I'm back from the Dominican and I come bearing gifts: full scouting reports, on-the-ground buzz, first-hand accounts of top prospects, and the videos to prove it. I've got way more than I can fit in one article, but I'll try to cram as much as I can into this space. For non-subscribers who can't read much further, the embedded videos below can all be found here.

Before we jump into things, I wanted to revisit a topic that I covered last week. Teams seem to be even more open to a give-and-take between their draft and international budgets when it comes to a weak draft class, a struggling economy, and increasing bonuses being paid out in Latin America. One club official noted that it has always been common for teams that didn't plan to spend their entire draft budget to roll the excess into their international budget once they know what players they selected. It has also been circulating that a few teams may be trying to dump big-league salaries to free up more money for international purposes, with the most frequently mentioned team being San Diego, and their most mentioned contract being Jake Peavy's. The fact that Peavy blocked a trade to the White Sox recently didn't do much to quell this talk.

There is a precedent for such a move. The Rockies dumped Larry Walker's $12.6 million contract to St. Louis late in the 2004 season, and it was said that this helped provide the Rockies with the money to sign high school draftee Dexter Fowler to an over-slot deal for $925,000.

In a Prospectus Q&A from Sunday, Rays GM Andrew Friedman quickly references this thought process:

DL: When asked about their philosophy, most scouting directors will say it is to take the best player on the board, regardless of position. What you're saying seems to be somewhat counter to that.

AF: I think that, definitely, it is the approach that most teams employ, but for us, we factor in a lot of other things as well, in terms of overall player procurement, and which type of players we feel are more fungible and which types of players we feel are most difficult to acquire. We place a premium on those types of players. We also factor in the international market. Simply said, all of those things contribute, philosophically, to how we approach things.

I am including comparisons for these players, and I can already hear some of you moaning about how inexact it is trying to project 16-year-olds without comparing them to big-leaguers. Read my last two articles and you'll see that I freely admit this, and that I even put off this article so I could bring some context to this crapshoot.

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draysbay

(48151)

Nicely done, strapping young lad.

May 27, 2009 10:10 AM