With significant deadline trades, we’re going to attempt to provide an evaluation of the prospects changing teams from both Kiley McDaniel’s scouting perspective and Chris Mitchell’s statistical breakdowns. The numerical breakdown of both players appears below Kiley’s write-ups.

Today, the Houston Astros officially decided to go for it, acquiring Scott Kazmir from the A’s in exchange for for A-Ball prospects RHP Daniel Mengden and C Jacob Nottingham. Both were late cuts from my preseason prospect list list, which by Opening Day, with the Evan Gattis trade and losing Delino DeShields in the Rule 5 draft, included 22 players.

Both players were among the group of six given 35+ FV grades, so they were both in the 23-28 range in Houston’s system entering the year. I don’t have inside info on how the negotiations went down, but I’m guessing Kazmir was long a target for Houston (as they took a run at him this offseason) and Oakland was holding out for a top 10 prospect in the Astros organization. Based on the preseason rankings, this will look like a light return, but given Nottingham’s breakout season, they did indeed land a guy who would have ranked in the Astros top 10 if the list was re-done today.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve teased in the last few chats that some big updates on the various prospects lists will be out in a few weeks, but I wanted to address some of the most-asked-about prospects I’ve recently scouted in one piece as an appetizer for the big update.

Jeff Hoffman, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays

In Hoffman’s offseason scouting report I noted that he was in contention to go #1 overall until his elbow surgery, just before the 2014 draft where he went ninth overall. He made his first pro appearance this year and started making buzz right away, showing big velocity in a late big-league spring-training appearance, then in extended spring training and in his regular season debut at High-A Dunedin (he was just promoted to Double-A in the last few days). In the video, the first game shown is when I saw Hoffman about a month ago and the second game is when our own Chris King saw his first start for Dunedin about a month before that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Kiley initially rolled this feature out a few weeks ago, but with signing day’s arrival, we wanted to make this more prominent on the site today, so we’re re-running the initial post. The board has since been updated many times and is current with the latest information.

The July 2 Board is both sortable and able to be sorted.

Today we’re unveiling the sortable board for the July 2nd international signing period. This works mostly like the sortable draft board (which is also still accessible by means of a tab at the top of the page) with some different columns, for obvious reasons. The top-41 players are ranked based on my preference from seeing these players and talking to scouts about them, not in order of industry consensus or projected bonus, though you can sort by bonus if that’s what you’re looking for. The other players listed are not ranked, just sorted based on expected bonus, so long as I think they’ll get $300,000 (the most that the teams in the penalty can offer) or more. You can also check the international article archives for more info on many of the players listed here.

The projected bonus represents what I think the player will get, not what I think they’re worth, and the projected team is listed if I’m over 50% sure that will be where the player lands (with many of the projected teams having been certain for months or even a year). Many of the higher-profile players without a team listed are still working out for teams in the last month and are far from signing. I’ll add tool grades and reports for more players next week, but these 69 players should quench your thirst for July 2 knowledge, though I’m sure a couple guys omitted from the board will get bigger bonuses than expected.

These are the top players that are currently subject to the international bonus pools, which reset next Thursday on July 2, so older Cuban free agents (there aren’t any notable ones eligible to sign at this time) won’t appear here. Five other notable Cuban players absent here are one status email from MLB away from being added to the list. RHP Vladimir Gutierrez, CF Yusnier Diaz and RHP Norge Ruiz are the best of that group and all project to get multiple millions in a signing bonus, but are all expected to fall under $10 million, at least right now. CF Randy Arozarena and SS Alfredo Rodriguez are also in this group and are more six figure to low seven figure type prospects.

Team-Focused Update

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2015 international signing class is seen as above average, both at the top end and in depth. Check out the sortable board, introduction to the board and international article archives for more details. Even with multiple teams blowing past their pools, there appear to be more seven figure talents than they are seven-figure bonuses to hand out, which makes for an interesting game of musical chairs among the international prospects.

Early Deals Muddy the Waters

Some seven-figure-caliber players like Venezuelans RHP Alvaro Seijas and CF Miguel Aparicio allegedly turned down low seven-figure offers early in the process but then held out too long, looking for even more money, and were forced to settle for a six-figure bonus.  In talking to international scouting directors in the past weeks, there seems to be a consensus that the best strategy this year for a team staying under its bonus pool was to wait until late and scoop up multiple middle-tier prospects at lower prices than to lock up one middle-tier player early in the process for seven figures, even if this means the market dictates which players you’ll end up signing.

I’ve written about this a few times but MLB’s effort to control international bonuses has caused a number of unintended consequences. By putting in bonus pools that the majority of teams treat like hard caps, you put a limit on what a team can spend and the main way they can get better than average value is to lock players up earlier and earlier, often over a year before a player can even sign the contract, commonly when he’s 14 years old. That’s now been happening for years and the culture of July 2nd is that of early deals. Now that it’s the norm, the majority of the big bonuses are handed out before the spring rolls around, so if a prospect improves late in the process or held out for a bigger bonus, all your suitors could be out of money when it’s the optimum time for you to strike your deal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »