Red Sox Reportedly Land Yoan Moncada

Yoan Moncada has a home, as Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com has reported that the Cuban prospect will be signing with the Boston Red Sox for something in the $30 million range. Of course, that price automatically doubles, since the Red Sox were already over their spending limit, incurring a 100% tax on the overage. Because they had already blown past their pool allocation, they’d already taken the hit of surrendering the right to sign international talents for more than $250,000 for each of the next two years, so the marginal cost of adding Moncada is lower to them that it would have been to a team that was pushed over their bonus limit by adding him.

Kiley McDaniel has covered Moncada in depth all winter; here’s a selection of his most recent post on him.

Moncada, 19, likely spends 1-2 years in the minors before settling in the big leagues at either second base, third base or center field, with the offensive upside of Yasiel Puig. For those wondering where Moncada would land on a top 100 prospects list, he’d be somewhere from 5-12 for me, with comparable talent to guys like Carlos Correa and Corey Seager, but with far less proven as Moncada hasn’t played in a game for a long time. That said, Moncada was a standout performer in nearly all of his international tournaments before leaving Cuba, so his hitting tools are expected to lead to big numbers.

With Dustin Pedroia already pushing Mookie Betts off second base, it seems unlikely that Boston will push Moncada to that position, given the long-term commitment they’ve made there. However, third base remains quite viable even after signing Pablo Sandoval, as it’s perfectly reasonable to think that Sandoval could shift to first base after a couple of years, opening up the position for Moncada in 2017 or so. Or, as Boston has shown this winter, they never think you can have too many outfielders, and perhaps Moncada will end up as a right fielder flanking country-mate Rusney Castillo.

They’ll figure out the fit when Moncada’s ready. This is the kind of talent that isn’t readily available, and so the Red Sox decided to invest in a high-end prospect. We’ll have more on the price and whether it makes sense — or whether others should have bid more — a bit later today, but for now, the Red Sox get to celebrate adding one of the game’s best prospects to their farm system.





Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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spencer00
9 years ago

Boston would have been over their pool anyway, straight cash