The Braves’ Punishment Is In and It’s Harsh
On Tuesday, Major League Baseball levied punishments on the Atlanta Braves after completing an investigation into the club’s methods of talent acquisition. In addition to the departure of general manager John Coppolella (who was banned from baseball for life), special assistant Gordon Blakeley (who has been suspended for a year), and president of baseball operations John Hart, the Braves are losing 12 players signed during international free-agency periods ranging from 2015 to 2017. Scouting reports on those players, who are now free agents subject to international amateur bonus restrictions, are below.
In addition to losing these players, Atlanta will be barred from signing shortstop prospect Robert Puason, who isn’t eligible until the 2019-2020 IFA period, as well as Korean prospect Ji-Hwan Bae, who MLB found was offered “extra-contractual compensation.” In a similar vein, the Braves will lose their 2018 third-round pick in the domestic amateur draft for extra-contractual compensation violations involving 2017 second-round pick Drew Waters, a high-school outfielder. Waters is remaining with the Braves.
As further punishment, Atlanta will be prohibited from signing players international players for more than $10,000 during the 2019-2020 signing period, and their bonus pool will be cut in half for the 2020-2021 period.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s statement on the investigation and punishment details:
“During the 2015-16 international signing period, the Braves signed five players subject to the Club’s signing bonus pool to contracts containing signing bonuses lower than the bonuses the club had agreed to provide to players. The Club provided the additional bonus money to those players by inflating the signing bonus to another player who was exempt from their signing pool because he qualified as a ‘foreign professional’ under MLB rules.”
“As a result of the 2015-16 circumvention, the Braves were able to sign nine high-value players during the 2016-17 signing period who would have been unavailable to thhem had the Club accurately accounted for its signings during the 2015-16 signing period.”
Those players are the ones listed below, as well as 18-year-old Cuban OF Juan Carlos Negret (who spent 2017 in the DSL) and three players who were part of an illegal package deal — Brandol Mezquita, Angel Rojas and Antonio Sucre — who had yet to make their pro debuts.
Below are the scouting reports on the prospects cut loose.
Kevin Maitan, INF
The crown jewel of the 2016 signing period, Maitan signed for $4.25 million out of Venezuela after a late push from Washington increased an earlier agreed-upon figure. Scouts were on Maitan early, around age 13 or 14, and monitored his development closely. By age 15, he was drawing comparisons to Miguel Cabrera and Chipper Jones. They thought he’d hit for average and power from both sides of the plate and, though he was likely to move to third base eventually, thought he had a non-zero chance to stay at shortstop. All-around talents like this are rare, and Maitan ranked No. 1 on our July 2 board in 2016.
I saw Maitan firsthand during his stateside debut in the 2016 Fall Instructional League. He had already thickened up quite a bit at that point and seemed likely to move to third base sooner than anticipated. But the bat speed, arm strength, and feel to hit were all as advertised. I left satisfied that Maitan, whom I had already projected to third base anyway, was as advertised.
Then 2017 reports started coming in. Scouts expressed concern over Maitan’s thickening body, some dropping a 30 on his lateral range at shortstop and projecting him over at first base. Others didn’t like his swing, citing stiffness and length. Pro scouts couldn’t understand what all the international fuss was about.
Maitan still has enviable bat speed and bat control, but any team that pursues him is pursuing a talented reclamation project, not a presently enticing talent. He’s still just 17 and it’s far too early to give up on Maitan as a prospect, but unless you view him using his amateur reports as context, you might not even think he is one.
Abraham Gutierrez, C
Also from Venezuela, Gutierrez’s frame started filling out early, and some international scouts believe he rose to the forefront of the 2016 J2 class simply because he had something resembling adult physicality sooner than his peers did. He signed for a lofty $3.53 million but ranked 23rd on that year’s July 2 board after scouts soured on him as signing day approached. He has viable catch-and-throw skills but will need to keep his frame in check to retain them as he ages. Offensively, the hit and power tools are fringey, requiring a long-term stay behind the plate for Gutierrez to be an everyday big leaguer. He spent 2017 in the Gulf Coast League.
Yunior Severino, INF
Signed for $1.9 million out of the Dominican Republic, Severino is a switch-hitting middle infielder with surprising power for his size. Scouts think his long-term defensive home is second base and are skeptical about his long-term ability to make contact. He takes big, violent swings but still hit .286/.345/.444 in the GCL this year.
Juan Contreras, RHP
Contreras touches 97 with his fastball and sits 92-95. There’s some effort to the delivery, but Contreras’s lower half is long and strong, and the arm works fine. His best secondary is a slider with purely vertical movement, a result of Contreras’ vertical arm slot. It flashes plus. It’s hard to generate any changeup movement from a slot like Contreras’s. Due to a combination of that arm slot, his size (a slightly built 6-foot-1), and issues with command (Contreras walked 21 hitter in 18 innings this year), there’s a good chance he’s only a reliever. He signed for $1.2 million in 2016.
Yefri Del Rosario, RHP
A Dominican righty who might be the most sought-after name on this list, Del Rosario signed for $1 million out of the Dominican Republic in 2016. Physically projectable, athletic, and the owner of efficient arm action, Del Rosario sits in the mid-90s with a potential plus curveball. Scouts have projected heavily on the changeup and command due to Del Rosario’s athleticism. He started the year in the Dominican Summer League but was quickly promoted to the GCL, where he struck out 36 hitters in 37.1 innings.
Livan Soto, INF
Another Venezuelan infielder from the 2016 class, Soto was considered a utility prospect by scouts who saw him this year due to a lack of physicality. He signed for $1 million.
Guillermo Zuniga, RHP
A Colombian righty, Zuniga was 18 when he signed as part of an illegal package deal. He’s a projectable 6-foot-3 with a fastball in the 88-93 range and a potential above-average curveball. His fluidity allows for command projection.
Yenci Pena, 3B
Pena is from the Dominican Republic and signed for $1 million. He has a big frame and above-average power projection. As he grows into that power, he’ll almost certainly move off of short and to third base. The actions, footwork, and arm strength will play there, possibly as plus.
****
As teams pursue these players, they’ll be restricted to signing them to bonus amounts governed by the current international-signing bonus pools, although, as a Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan reports, teams will be allowed to use their 2018-19 pool money to sign the Braves’ cast-offs.
Here are clubs’ remaining bonus pools for this year, as compiled by the Associated Press:
TEX: $3.53 million
NYY: $3.25
MIN: $3.25 (after voiding the $3 mil bonus of INF Jelfry Marte)
PIT: $2.27
MIA: $1.74
SEA: $1.57
PHI: $0.90
MIL: $0.76
ARI: $0.73
BAL: $0.66
BOS: $0.46
TBA: $0.44
This mess is complicated by the yet-unknown fate of the Japanese posting system and its impact on Shohei Otani’s potential earning power/signing restriction — and even more complicated by the presence of recently defected Cuban OF Julio Pablo Martinez, a short but athletic and tightly wound 21-year-old center-field prospect with speed and some pull power.
Many teams have deals in place with prospects for next year’s signing period, but teams have reneged on deals in the past, as the player/trainer have little recourse when that occurs, since the initial deals were technically illegal.
Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
What happens to the now-former Braves prospects financially? Does Maitan have to forfeit his signing bonus and settle for what he can get in this market?
No bonus forfeiture is my understanding.
Correct
They get to keep everything. The Braves are the ones being punished. Don’t think the MLBPA would be happy if they tried to punish the kids, and not even sure if that would make a difference if the money laundering was through third parties.
Yeah makes sense. Great for all these guys.
Not so great for Maitan long term, I think he is going to have a hard time duplicating the contract he got from the Braves, given how the industry consensus on him seems to have changed for the worse.
There is no contract. All there is is a signing bonus and a standard minor-league player contract with zero perks.
They are not allowed to be given perks. He will get the exact same contract from any other team, plus he may get some amount (albeit less than what he already has in the bank) in the form of a second signing bonus.
These kids are under the same contractual obligation and rules as draftees, so they don’t get any special negotiation or benefit except for their signing bonus payout.
They’re not international free agents like Yasiel Puig or Yuli Gurriel because they’re not yet 25 years old at time of signing. Being 25 is the magic key (23 until a year ago when the CBA was renegotiated) that allows you to be treated like a major league free agent and sign MLB contracts.
This is great for Maitan financially. He gets to double-dip on multi-million dollar signing bonuses at age 17 before proving much of anything in the baseball world. This extra signing bonus provides additional financial security at a time when his value as a prospect may be declining.
As far as securing MLB playing time, that’s going to be a function of performance just like it would’ve been with the Braves, so I don’t see any change there.
Makes sense. Consistent with the Dodgers getting punished for signing Beltre when he was just 15, but not Beltre.
Remind me, did MLB void Beltre’s contract with the Dodgers?
A little surprised not to see William Contreras’ name on the list (Willson’s little brother). He’s looked good.
Wrong Contreras
Oops. Carry on.
They clearly deserved to be punished but it seems really harsh. The 2019-2020 signing restriction specifically seems like a defacto ban for that year (How many specs sign for 10k or less?).
For a league that likes to talk about competitive balance, they have definitely gone a long way to cripple the Braves international market for several years, deserved or not. Not sure how I feel about the full extent of the punishment, especially when taken with the removal of 12 prospects.
Not of a fan of the loss of future draft picks and ability to sign amateurs. As a New Orleans Saints fan, I can say that I really hate how the NFL handled the punishments for “bounty gate”. Fine/suspend/ban individuals involved in wrong doing (that’s fine), but don’t take away future draft picks (Saints lost 2 second round picks). Don’t like that MLB did that here also. Taking away future picks/ability to sign amateurs only hurts the fan base of that team. Why would you want to punish the fans? It makes no sense.
Regarding Saints fans, or Braves fans… it really has nothing to do with you, at all. And neither are harmed at all. Tell your teams not to cheat, or you will all stop buying tickets to their games. Then they would be betraying you, if they did this.
That argument would be great if everybody that cheated wasnt gone already, including one guy(John Hart) that was essentially allowed to quietly retire and wasnt even so much as mentioned in Manfried’s statement because he has important friends. The punishment was way overboard and essentially cripples a small market team in a world where international free agency is one of the only ways those teams stand to get better.
Also the whole thing where almost every single team does this make the punishment way too heavy as hell. MLB puts out articles on their own website where they tell us where all these 15 year olds will be signing because of the handshake deals they have, yet Im supposed to believe the Braves are the only team thats doing this? Get real.
Small market team?
Hey, here we go! Atlanta is a “small market team!”
Forget that they’re the 9th largest MSA in the country, and the team that most MLB fans in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and both Carolinas root for.
I semi-agree with your take re: punishing fans, but calling Atlanta a “small market team” is just being disingenuous.
ATL media market is the same size as SF, Boston, Houston, DC.
The nearest MLB team is 550 miles away (only COL and SEA are more geographically isolated).
Not to mention that for 30 years ATL had an exclusive national broadcast, so basically everyone in america could watch them.
casey j – you make it sound so simple. Just “tell your team not to cheat”. It’s so easy! While i’m at it I’ll tell all politicians not to lie. Easy!
The politicians one is harder, but sports is just sports. Once I started not giving a shit about the NFL’s business, I eventually stopped caring about the players and the games. The public could do a lot if we acted in even a somewhat united fashion. Its not simple, yet it really is… the instant something becomes important to people, truly important, then their actions change.
This situation is different but both penalties are justified.
The Braves paid the piper in prospects and signing ability because that is the area where they cheated. By avoiding going into the 300k penalty they were able to sign a dozen players they otherwise couldnt acquire. MLB would like to dissuade this. The direct consequence of cheating at talent acquisition and getting caught is getting set back in talent acquisition. There’s no keeping your ill-gotten gain and paying some other price.
Also, if you were wondering about xyz under the table or rule-skirting Shohei Ohtani signing trick, its clearly off the table now. Its not even a question of organizational sanction: GMs and PoBOs across baseball are now on notice that if they significantly subvert the CBA to secure Ohtani (who, again, may not receive any special benefit except a signing bonus and a standard MILB player contract with 6 years to free agency), they can personally lose their careers irretrievably.
That is gonna make sure that shenanigans are minimized.
Not sure the two are the same, also the Saints got exactly what they deserved, they were putting bounties on other players in an attempt to injure them!, my best friend is a Saints fan and he’s just as blind to the severity as you are.
As for this “punishment” I would argue that its actually quite lite, my logic is kind of simple.
Coppolella getting a life time ban was the equivalent of just a PR move cause its not like anyone else was going to hire him after this and we all keep hearing over and over that he wasn’t liked among his peers. Furthermore the braves now have a far more competent and crowd pleasing GM that apparently is well liked in the industry, this is not a team punishment.
John Hart left out the back door, not mentioned in the statement and not punished.
If you get caught stealing from a store you don’t get to keep the merchandise, you have to both give the merchandise back and face some type of penalty. Losing the prospects is effectively just taking back what they shop lifted so that’s not actually a punishment, leaving us with the simple loss of signing international amateur free agent for a few years and the loss of a 3rd round pick for trying to manipulate the June draft.
Just seems lite to me.
You didn’t make this mistake, but I wish more of the reporting had made clear they were being released back into international free agency, instead of just saying “free agency”. For a brief moment I thought we might get a small control as to what these dudes were worth on the open market. Regardless the whole draft and IFA system is just disgusting and gross. The sooner it burns to the ground the better.
Let’s hope Cop names lots of names now that he has nothing to lose.
Burn it to the ground, Coppy. Does anyone seriously believe that Blakeley didn’t do the exact same stuff when he was running point for the Yankees huge international haul a few years, ago.
I really hope that after his lifetime ban Coppolella doesn’t pull any punches, even if it affects my club. Just to point out how MLB will burn one club to the ground to make a statement, instead of actually investigating the matter fully, and doing a better job of solving the problem.
Good comment but…what’s the solution? A draft won’t. That takes money from the kids.
Maybe a solution is the system MLB used for decades before they implemented the bonus pool in ~2014 – free agency. Fans might misguidedly claim that the big teams would sign all the best prospects with free agency, but MLB had a free agency system for decades and that did not happen. One does not need to look for an example much beyond Chapman and Cespedes coming from Cuba as among the most highly touted and big league ready prospects in history and each signing with a small market team, but look at a list of the top players from Latin America over the last few decades and you will see players signed from all types of organization with maybe even a bias toward smaller organizations. Then look at the highest Latin America bonuses ever paid during that period and you will see almost exclusively small market teams at the top of the list.
I’d like to hear how those in the industry perceive Coppolella’s lifetime ban. A lifetime ban seems unusually harsh. Gambling on baseball and gaming the international signing system, which has always been a bit of free for all (as I understand it anyway) receives the same punishment? I get it, make a statement, make an example, etc, etc. Coppolella getting a lifetime ban for doing things other teams are undoubtedly (if less egregiously but probably just as egregiously) doing also is quite shocking.
You would have to think the likelihood of Coppolella getting another job after all this was pretty slim anyway. Seems like banning him for life was a bit of a paper tiger.
He seems better suited to be a relentless behind the scenes guy anyway. I could’ve seen a team stashing him in the depths of their FO to be a pest.
My assumption would be a collective “Phew, glad that wasn’t me.” It’s obviously an attempt at sending the message that they know what’s been going on, and it is no longer acceptable.
As to its effectiveness, I doubt it’ll make a lick of difference. All this did was serve notice to teams that their old tricks will no longer work, and they need to come up with some new ones.
It is ironic that the same teams that push for these bonus restrictions then turn around and figure out ways around them.
Also, I know that this was worse than what the Red Sox did, but is it really that much worse that it deserves a lifetime ban for Copollela? I understand the voiding of the contracts. But I wonder if the scope of it was so large that they felt like they had to deter future problems by issuing some bans.
I think with Coppy, they really hit him because they had evidence of the improprieties of the Braves in IFA. It wasn’t that they offered one guy money through a handler etc, it was that they basically orchestrated a strategy over multiple IFA periods in order to acquire talent they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to sign. At least that’s what the league is claiming, so I can see the ban because of how thorough and premeditated it was.
It was also not just going thru handlers or having handshake deals, it was reporting an amateur as signing for a $$ amount, but, then secretly paying them more $$ under the table & paying them with $$ from a different pool (foreign professional). It’s total, intentional, 100% premeditated fraud, accounting subterfuge to hide it & gaming the system.
Not surprised they got caught. How many guys did they publically state were signed for less $$ than they actually received? 12? & how many times would that happen before a team that was losing amateur players to them would wonder how they offered “Player X” $1.5 million, only to have Atlanta state he signed for $1.2 million (while shuffling an add’l $500K to him behind the scenes). Teams that lost players to them were probably screaming bloody murder.
“It’s total, intentional, 100% premeditated fraud, accounting subterfuge to hide it & gaming the system.”
Yup, and it’s what the Red Sox did, too. It’s what lots of MLB teams do to sign these highly coveted and ridiculously cheap (relative to their potential value) amateurs. It may not have been on the same scale or with the same flagrancy as the Braves, but again, we’re talking about a difference of degree, not one of kind. The “kind” of stuff the Braves did was, is, and will remain widespread.
It was a difference in degree not in kind, so … no. Rob Manfred needs to switch to decaf. His banhammer arm is twitch as hell.
What’s Maitan’s market value right now? 1 Mil.? 500 K?
Also, if the team that signs Ohtani is essentially out of the running for Maitan, won’t that bring his interest down, even more so after the season he had?
It’s seven figures.
Lifetime ban seems a bit harsh.
Who would hire him now? He already had lots of bad relationships, then had a cheating scheme that seemed to result in paying a lot of money to players who are considered to be worth much less just a few months later.
FYI, Yankees got $250k in bonus pool money from the Marlins. They’re up to $3.5 million.
I get that, but is it really possible to sign both of them for 3.5 Mil.?
So when is MLB going to investigate and punish every other team for similar transgressions?
When those teams are caught.
From some accounts it doesn’t sound like the Braves were caught so much as Coppolella’s co-workers just hated him enough to report him. With him given a lifetime ban, I see no reason for him not to do the same. He has to know where at least a few bodies are buried.
If other teams are doing it, you’d assume that the Braves would know about it and, like just about any criminal defendant, would try to make a deal to lessen their punishment. They may also have said something, like the Red Sox did.
When those teams aren’t the Red Sox, Yankees, or Dodgers. The Padres better start dropping some bodies.
Man, you must really like the Redsox, posting over and over about them in a comment section regarding the Braves transgressions.
Obviously, this was pretty egregious. But I also wonder if MLB didn’t have to punish severely to keep order in its own ranks. If this type of cheating becomes widespread, then those precious slots carefully negotiated become toothless. That would mean both chaos, and a bigger tab for the teams, as agents (advisors) know that there’s more money out there. The integrity of the process is important from an integrity sake–but it’s also important to keep costs down, and MLB is all about that.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect for the MLB. As teams begin their pursuit of signing Ohtani, MLB wants to let teams know that they won’t be okay with teams trying to cheat the system.
So make these kids eligible for the draft?
How does the draft help these kids?
At least right now they get their pick of team and access to signing bonuses that aren’t set by draft slot.
In the draft, only the very best of them will get more than they currently do, and most will get a lot less.
The signing bonus for a 4th or 8th round draft pick is a lot lower than the signing bonus available to a latin american teenager.
No draft slots. I think a problem is the “handlers” and shady nature of it. Why are caribbean amateurs treated any different than American amateurs?
Speaking on things hurting the young players who were let go, doesn’t it hurt them to not be in the ORG that signed them in the first place?
Very much so, I would think. They go from heading into a season kind of knowing where they will play and where they stand, to complete uncertainty about their pro careers.
I think technically they can re-sign with those teams, but they can also grab a little extra cash to go somewhere else if they like. Given the lousy minor league pay, it’s not surprising they take the extra cash.
Honestly, I don’t know whether the general uncertainty of being a minor leaguer makes this uncertainty more or less tolerable.
The unintended consequence: guys who rejected the qualifying offer.
A team that signs, say, Lorenzo Cain, now loses 500K (1M if they are in the luxury tax threshold) in international spending dollars. If they want to go after someone like Maitan, a team likely has to decide: QO player, or make a run at a top Int’l FA.
Multiple players beat women, cheat in ways that more quickly/directly impact the game, cardinals steal proprietary info….but sure, lifetime ban and cripple an entire org for several years for paying teenagers tens of thousands of dollars more and working a pretty crooked system.
Are you Braves fan?
I don’t understand the downvote. My post wasn’t whataboutism.
MLB clearly sees this as a lesser infraction than domestic abuse, racial slurs, stealing info, etc.
No, those players should get a lifetime ban or a salary cap (on the player).
I wouldn’t mind the punishment if it were proportional.
Haven’t players that have committed crimes like domestic battery been suspended?
Is MLB supposed to fry the organization for playing the guy, who ends up with a DUI? I dont get your logic
So a 25 game suspension for beating someone vs a lifetime ban and an org crippled in intl free agency for gaming the system.
You don’t see my point? It’s about moral consistency. If Gurriel only gets what? 10 games for a racial slur and still gets to finish the WS, then what the Braves were hit with is excessive.
Why not just revoke the Atlanta franchise? They were already bad, and now they have been killed for what, five more years?
I think Rob Manfred suffers from penis envying Roger Goodell. Two crappy commissioners, each struggling to be the toughest, or least rational, with both succeeding beyond anything imaginable.
Where is Bud Selig now that we need him?
I wish Ted Turner was still around to go all Jerry Jones on Rob Manfred.
None of these players will even sniff the majors this decade. They’ll be just fine.
I always hated Bud Selig, and I never imagined I could be sorry to see him go–until Manfred became commissioner.
As an aside and speaking of lifetime bans, Selig, Don Fehr, and Dick Ravitch earned bans of their own for what happened to the 1994 season.
Goodell suspends people who are accused (some even get exonerated).
How did MLB find out?
I hope these chaps don’t lose the money 🙁
They don’t.
If you’ve got some change this offseason and don’t land Ohtani, who is first on your list? Is it Contreras, Del Rosario, Maitan, Pena, Gutierrez, Severino? Or is Maitan still top of the pile for the tools alone?
When mlb owners force spending maximums onto a market to line their pockets with cash, teams find ways around it. The limitations on international spending are disgusting and an incredibly flawed rule.
Perhaps I’m mistaken but didn’t the players know they were signing a crooked deal? If that’s the case, why is everyone defending them and why aren’t they also being punished? In fact, it’s the exact opposite and they are now being rewarded by being allowed to keep their sign-on bonus plus receive a second one. When college athletes take money from Boosters they are vilified but in this situation everyone wants to make sure they don’t lose their money? I don’t get it. I’m not defending the Braves in any way but both parties deserve to be punished. Given these rules, the smartest thing an Intenational prospect can do is seek out/encourage a team to sign them to a backwards deal and then turn them in. Boom! Double sign-on bonus!
They’re literal children (16-17 years old) who don’t speak english or understand MLB at all who do what their agents tell them to do.
The idea that they are making premediated fraudulent actions is laughable.
They were being exploited.
Now the agents (“trainers”) do need to face consequences, and Manfred mentions they intend to work with MLBPA and the governments of the countries in question to determine how to deal with them because they are already not certified player agents via MLBPA.
You bring up some good points. I’m not suggesting the players punishments should be on the same scale of severity as the punishment to the Braves organization, but I’m not buying into the thought that they were helpless victims in this situation. Many of them were probably presented with multiple options. You can sign with team A for a $10K sign-on bonus it you can sign for the Braves for an under the table deal with a $15K sign-on. I’m not sure how much of this was apparent to the players and how much of this was some creative back office accounting, but if it can be proven the players were aware of what was going on, I don’t think they should get off scott free and I definitely don’t believe they deserve a second sign-on bonus. 16-17 year olds still know right from wrong. I also have to assume that the person negotiating the deal with the players and players “agents” was speaking to them in their native tongue and it wasn’t a matter of sticking two parties in a room that had no clue what the other was saying and just asking them to sign a paper.
This is a very bad take. First off, many of these kids are dirt poor. Do you think they care one iota about whether they’re getting more money in a deal that maybe is a little fishy. They’re probably also told that this is how the system works. I’m pretty sure most of the negotiation is done with the agent anyway. Punish the kids, gimme a break..,
And Danny Almonte didnt know he was 14 years old either right.
I don’t know all the details of this situation, but most of the time the kids don’t see the extra money…it goes to third parties who broker access to the kids. The international amateurs are basically pawns, and punishing for bigger parties moving them around a chessboard seems a little harsh.
It seems clear that the rules are in place, the rules were broken, and the rule breakers were punished properly. Got it.
Am I the only person who finds this whole thing to be lunacy? The entire system of ‘here’s how much money can be spent on players from America, while there’s a whole other amount of money that can be spent on players not from America, and oh by the way, there’s no salary cap on players, but there IS a tax on players on the 25 man roster over a certain point, but you can’t actually spend money the way you want for your franchise, because there are a million rules that the average fan doesn’t actually understand’ seems to be complicated, unfair, and simply asking for corruption and cheating.
Again – the Braves were in the wrong, and I’m glad MLB is enforcing the rules they have. I just wish the rules were different. I really liked Dave’s idea from a chat recently about there being a hard cap on yearly spending organization-wise, top to bottom. If teams want to sign all players from not America, fine, let them. Let teams build their organizations how they want.
The way it is currently just all seems silly, to me anyway.
Welcome to the world of collective bargaining.
Well, if there was a way to send a signal to other organizations to cease and desist their own shenanigans, this was it. Braves just had the poor luck & judgment to be particularly egregious at the wrong time.
Minor League ball released their list Braves top prospects and Maitan was #13. The Braves will be fine. So they won’t be able to get international players for a few years. Does it hurt? Sure. Will it have any effect on the major league team or the ability to put a team together? Not really.
It goes by the saying if you can’t do the time don’t do the crime and the punishment metted out is justified.
Those claiming other teams are doing it, maybe that is true but it really isn’t about that, the Braves got caught committing acts of fraud to gain competitive advantage.
This sounds out a big caution to all considering these kinds of dealings, and the consequences are dire.
Talk about burying the lede….
“Many teams have deals in place with prospects for next year’s signing period, but teams have reneged on deals in the past, as the player/trainer have little recourse when that occurs, since the initial deals were technically illegal.”
Get Manfred on the line, sounds like there’s more investigating to do.
I would love to talk to Kiley
Kiley is probably keeping his mouth shut, hoping that this all blows over and people will forget he was Copollela’s guy. He’s been “reassigned” to another part of the organization is probably won’t be saying anything about this.
Can we be certain that the USA Today article linked above (using AP data) has accurate data for remaining int’l spending pools? It states that the teams under penalty (like the Padres) are “capped” at $300k, which I believe is incorrect. They are limited to that number for signing any individual player, but they still have their pool money left to spend. The Padres are listed as having signed 34 IFA’s according to BA.com, but incomplete data exists regarding how much those players signed for. The Padres and other teams on at list may be in play for those players willing to sign for $300k or less, and there are several in this list.