CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Here is a spreadsheet that I found for every major league team international signings from 2012 to 2016 . You can scroll around and find the Spx in the AL Central section and see for yourself. For example in 2013 the year they signed Adolfo they only spent $2.2M . https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rCfd8UiXUEGhhlwxhAES8BGjfQPLwrCLUTcB-k806Dc/edit#gid=0

Tampa Bay has had a $3M miss before yet that didn't stop them from giving $3.8M to Wander Franco. If Tampa Bay can see the importance of international scouting and player development despite one the lowest payrolls in baseball , it's hard for me to imagine a smart guy like JR would even have an over simplified risk argument . If an over simplified risk argument includes being too cheap to actually scout and develop relationships with 14 yr olds and invest in these players then the Sox will always be behind the 8 ball.

It also didn't hurt that Abreu was a big part of the video pitch to Robert especially IIRC he was also a team mate at some point. Being a known commodity does not remove the risk. Yes some were hyping Robert as the best player on earth but we all know is something that has to be proved over a period of years at the highest level' Other Cubans, though not exclaimed in such glowing terms, were known commodities like Rusney Castillo who at the age of 27 signed for a $5,4M bonus and a 7 year contract worth $72.5M . Yasmany Tomas signed at age 23 to a 6 yr. $68.5M deal , I think his agent specifically wanted that much just to beat the Abreu deal. Those 2 known commodities failed miserably despite whatever prompted the teams that signed them to big contracts. Big money equals big risk no matter how you slice it, known commodity or not. WIthout Abreu maybe it's the Cardinals that end up with Robert despite the scouting and showcases . The biggest concern is still how they operated in LatAM for years not developing relationships and maybe even to this day. They just are not networking enough and that shows in the results . As I said before it's a crap shoot like with all amateur talent so I know the risks involved in the top picks, lesser known and younger kids. I was looking at all the top ranked talent from the 3 main sources that ranked the International players in 2014 and who they ended up signing with and for how much the bonus was and I don't think I recognized any name except Amado Nunez who signed with the White Sox for $900K. Most were either Dominican or Venezuelan with a few exceptions being a few Colombians and 1 Korean counting all 3 resources lists of the top 30 . One of the top kids in 2014 was SS Adrian Rondon who Tampa Bays signed as a 16 yr. old for $3M so even a team with little money knows the importance of spending it despite the pratfalls that come with it. He had never got higher than A ball with the Rays and then they traded him to the Angels last year. https://www.minorleagueball.com/2014/7/4/5867329/2014-international-free-agent-ifa-signing-bonus-central

That's usually a concern more like some of the scrawny 16 yr old kids who later blossom like Acuna, Jr.

Yea my post was a long excursion but I knew it was still short of all the stuff that has revealed the Sox as bumbling fools in that area. Signing Robert does not excuse years and year of incompetence in drafting and developing of any player be it IFA or the American draft. It's just Internationally the Sox have been a fiasco year after year after year. Thank you for your support.

The moral issues thing is my own take because I could see no reason for signing some 16 year olds but not others. Maybe he gets reports about their family life or who represents them and if he does have moral issues he could be more picky about who they give contracts to based on family or handlers of prospects and perhaps avoid certain handlers. Like with Tatis, Jr. and his younger brother, who we also signed, perhaps they discovered it was a decent family not desperate for money because the father of the Tatis boys ( Fernando Tatis, Sr.) played MLB. Again that's my take, not corroborated with anything concrete. As far as the other question about MLB giving them the money I am probably wrong and the things I have read I misinterpreted such as this : As per the 2017-21 Collective Bargaining Agreement, clubs are each subject to a spending cap for amateur international free agents. Each club will have at least a $4.75 million bonus pool to spend, with those that have a pick in Competitive Balance Round A receiving $5.25 million and those with a pick in Competitive Balance Round B receiving $5.75 million. The key words I may have misinterpreted is "receiving" which you can see twice in the last sentence above. I thought it meant receiving money when it's probably actually referring to receiving word from MLB how much you are allowed to spend. So I am still not certain if I am right or wrong. Yes Robert was different in the way you describe but he was also just 18 when the Sox signed him and he surely would have got more had the Sox not signed him. Scouting reports however, glowing in nature do not remove a high risk. An 18 year old is still just 18 and still has to run the gauntlet through the trials and errors of playing against superior talent. A team will do it's due diligence to find out where is head is at , if he works hard. if he seems mature for his age but there are things that despite your best efforts you may never know about like what's in someones head. How will he respond to having so much money ? Will he become lax in his preparation etc. Will his skills translate when facing the superior talent, How will he respond to injury or failure ? High drafts picks bust all the time and Robert was younger by 3 or 4 years than a lot of the college player the Sox used to and still do draft in the 1st round like Madrigal and Vaughn, Top 5 American draft picks receive signing bonuses somewhere around $10M. Robert got $26M and the Sox paid another $26M in penalty money and also lost 2 years that limited what they could spend. I still call that high risk especially when weighed against how much a team spends in the drafting of American players every year, the majority of them ending up as filler in the minors until they quit baseball. Also IFA's like Soto ($1.5 M at age 16) or Acuna (only $100K to sign him which was twice as much as the next team in line for him.) sign for a pittance compared to Robert so I fail to see why not signing them is risk aversion but signing Roberts had little to no risk. The Sox actually could've signed Acuna even if they were in the penalty though I think he was signed before the penalty when they had a full allotment ! We can keep asking these same questions over and over again "Where is our Soto ? Wheres is our Acuna ? Why did we bother to sign Tatis only to trade the one guy who ended up a major talent ? Would he have ended up a major talent had the Sox signed him ? Like I said, perhaps I was giving JR too much benefit of the doubt with my theory about morality . Maybe it's just another way of not spending what you need to in order to scout and sign those players and they only end up signing the easy ones. The Sox seemed like they used to have a presence in Venezuela which is where Acuna was from plus he also had a baseball pedigree, maybe the Sox only scout in certain areas now and won't spend for trips to so many different places to find the best international young talent. I suppose cheapness is a lot easier to say. Talent from the Dominican Republic has been flowing into MLB for a while now yet I can't recall any DR players the Sox signed that became huge ML talents but those major talents were all over baseball. But if the Sox don't end up with sustained excellence they only have themselves to blame for buying one big shiny apple like Robert when they could've been involved from the start and had another source of talent flowing through the farm system like the Twins do and many other teams. Penny wise pound foolish.

Where did you find he played with Robert ? That's the 1st thing I googled because knowing they were the same age I thought they could ve played together but my research couldn't prove it.

Oh I don't know what to think of JR at this point. I gave him the benefit of the doubt before thinking he might 've had moral issues contributing to the way the youngsters are recruited and used by people who might not have their best interests at heart . But it is what it is If the Sox don't draft these kids others will It's just a matter of who gets paid after a contract is signed. In some cases we don't know how much of that money the kid himself will get especially as a minor. Will his parents use it all up ? Will some coyote get a big piece? Is at least some of it put in a trust for the kid until they reach a certain age ? Are guys like Wilder the rule or the exception ? JR knows enough about baseball to know the any kid you draft and sign, be it the college draft or IFA that it's a crap shoot . So I don't buy that he needs proof because a kid doesn't pan out. It's also money given free to each team . I don't know if the league mandates what can or cannot be done with that money. Obviously they can spend it on the players or trade it away but it must all be gone by the next signing period or the league gets it back , isn't that true ? Signing Robert was not very risk adverse. It was a huge investment and perhaps the odds of it working out were better or equal to a Top 5 pick in the College Draft but not $40M worth of better. JR surely knows that the Robert signing carried a lot of risk too. It's not JR's money (but the Robert signing was his money) it's money from MLB so there is no reason to be risk adverse . You either spend it ,trade it, or give it back . Either way it's gone. If he was going to be risk adverse surely it would've been with Robert because $50M of mostly his own money and the penalty that came with spending that much was extremely risky. Even though Robert wasn't 16 it still carried risk. Maybe Robert knowing Abreu meant something to JR but that doesn't lessen how risky that was compared to signing a few 16 yrs olds for $1 or $2 M once in a while with money MLB gives you .

I swear I'll turn this car around if you don't settle down. And no more "Are we there yets" out of you !

Just transferring stuff from the Major League catch all thread on him to here.

Yea he was good with that. I tried to google more about the kid and see if he had any connection to Luis Robert but too much came up in Spanish and only one mentioned Robert in the article but not as knowing him, I just assume they knew each other since they are the same age and likely played at the same levels before Robert signed with the Sox.

You'd be preaching to the choir with a lecture in that regard. I harp on that and their whole approach to IFA with regularity.

Double negative. It's better to say you believe he has sources to be more clear to all.

Pretty sure the answer is yes. They no longer have penalties and likely have their full allotment of IFA money when Colas becomes available. Might even be a good time for them to increase that amount by seeking trades that get them more money like the kind that they have been doing trading their IFA money for players. Now that would be shocking. But he fits their mold . Sox like to draft the older guys more than 16 yr. olds . If we see any trades that increase the Sox IFA money you can guess that Colas is their target. We are just not sure at this time at which signing period he will be eligible. Could be as early as this July .

He's roughly the same age as Robert and it's likely they knew each other playing at the same levels in Cuba.

I'll be the 1st to say the White Sox sign him.

I wouldn't be too happy either coming off a career year and entering my last year to get a decent contract if i was relegated to a back up either. But even he has to realize that his career before this year and his pitch framing are the reasons why he isn't in a great position to be unhappy about playing second fiddle to Grandal. He'll either be traded or have to prove himself getting less PA's and catching less. Either way he still has to prove himself as more than the one year wonder to be relevant as a FA.

Especially when you only have one year of bad data and 1 year of good data with a only few months at AAA and the bad data was when he was at a lower level when he was hurt.The tools are great but they don't always translate well if you are not aware that you are playing a game within a game with the pitcher. Our new poster talks about his baseball IQ . If he adjusts quickly and becomes very good earlier than Eloy then I will believe he can play that game within a game and the baseball IQ is high. If not and he struggles like Moncada did. It might just take longer and Moncada just took too many pitches. That won't be Roberts problem and his learning curve will improve with more experience and if that high baseball IQ is real.

If that's what they meant then they should have worded it my way :P. Ray Ray responded to it in a post the same way I thought of it. No one consistent HITS good breaking stuff well. You need to recognize it and realize when it's going to be a ball and take it. You learn to do this when ahead in the count and knowing baseball to meaning recognize the count at all times and the men on base and pitchers tendencies. Good hitting is not just physical tools its also a chess game with the pitchesrand you better learn when you have the advantage and when to adjust when they change their approach to you.

J feel like this is my post after writing almost the same thing 2 weeks ago when I hardly saw anyone mention Pence as an option. Concerns about his fielding might be legit though because he really was almost exclusively a DH with the Rangers. I'd like to think I am responsible for the increase in Pence posts.

That's the 1st thing that popped in my head too. Who the heck hits "good breaking pitches"? More than likely the best you can do on good breaking pitches is take them and hope they are out of the zone like with someone like Keuchel. It would make more sense if they worded it "his ability to TAKE good breaking pitches" instead of "hit" them.

This is the 1st time I heard about him working on a new swing. I assumed it was because of the thumb injuries that sapped his productivity or caused hit to alter his swing to protect the thumb. But hey if he worked on launch angle that's a plus for him and the organization which in turn leads me to think they could talk to Mazara about the same thing.

I think it's hard for most fans to look at the big picture. They focus on a few bad things and don't relate it to the good things . Sometimes they go hand in hand. Hes get fooled plenty of times or guesses wrong like a lot of hitters but sacrifices the all or nothing approach that many hitters take into every AB for just making enough contact to drive in runs. It's sometimes why I don't understand those who say RBI's are meaningless because they are a product of how often you bat with men on base. Plenty of good hitters in baseball come up with men on base but Abreu has consistently driven them in throughout his career. That is very valuable and shows the kids how to take an unselfish approach at the plate.

A lot of good hitters chase sliders. We see it mostly from guys that like to hit rather than walk and RH'ers that like to get hits to right field so outside pitches from RH pitchers are doubly tempting. Also guys that can't recognize the spin differences between a FB and a slider or don't expect a slider in a FB count. Eloy has long levers so he likes to extend his arms and drive the ball to right and CF. He rarely pulls his HR's because he lets the ball get deeper when he swings and is not yet adept at pulling his arms in and getting out in front of a pitch. I had a feeling Semien was going to be good because I saw him hit a HR on an inside pitch maybe 6 inches or more inside where he shortened his arms and pulled it far to LF early in his Sox career. I think I remember Hawk marveling at how he even kept the ball fair. Hawk also called that "hitting with alligator arms" in case some people didn't know what that meant .when instead of extending your arms you pull you them in toward your body but can still generate bat speed and power. I have no idea if this comp is accurate because I don't remember how Dave Winfield hit but just their height and long lever approach to hitting seems the same. I have no idea how good Winfield was at pulling the ball but I'm reasonably sure he would go up the middle and oppo a decent amount. Eloy could learn to pull too but now going oppo and to CF suits him but adjusting to pull more can pay huge dividends . Abreu chases balls a lot because he is the consummate team player. He does anything he can to drive in runs. When defenses give him a huge hole between 1st and second he just reaches out to poke pitches into right. Not sure Abreu can change his approach at this point . There might be even more runs for him to drive in this year and he has proved he knows how to do that because despite swinging at those sliders he also hit very well with RISP. With runners on Abreu is fairly sure a pitcher will not want to walk him so on better pitches to hit he hits better. If you see any kind of better walk percentage from him it won't be "considerable" . If there is any improvement it'll likely come when the bases are empty.

I like posts like this , very fair take. Easy to see Robert will be abused with sliders until he proves he can lay off them just like Jimenez, Also would love to see a couple of relatively healthy years for him . Plus side is the speed ,fielding ,bat speed , power , mistake hitter . Recognizes hanging stuff and jumps all over it and then we marvel at the sound from his bat .