Morning Rundown: International signing period starts today
International players can begin to sign with teams starting today.
Today begins the International signing period, an opportunity for teams to sign players from around the world.
The Pittsburgh have been aggressive the last couple of years when it comes to signing International talent - Yordanny De Los Santos, Tony Blanco Jr., and Tsung-Che Cheng are among some of the more notable prospects in the system to be added.
Further back, the Pirates have had the likes of Luis Ortiz and Osvaldo Bido come up through the system as International signings and make their major league debut. Bido has since moved on to Oakland, but Ortiz was one of the best prospects in baseball at one point.
Baseball America has their Top 100 ‘Bonus Board’ when it comes to the International prospects. It isn’t a 1-100 when it comes to their rank talent wise, but the size of the bonus they are expected to get.
The Pirates are linked to four players there, and since most of the names are running around social media, I’ll share them here.
OF Bralyn Brazoban
SS Abdiel Feliz
SS Kendrick Herrera
RHP Irwin Ramirez
According to John Dreker on Twitter, expect the latter two to sign for in between $500-$600K.
We will open up a tracker that will also be pinned to the top of the site when the signings become ‘official’ and as much info as we can get on each player.
Every Monday during the offseason, we will be doing a mailbag article. Please send in your questions to have them answered! Either comment below with ‘mailbag’ entered in the message or email us at bucsondeckqa@gmail.com.
I look forward to answering what you guys have!
John Dreker is to International happenings for Pirates what EF Hutton was to money matters back in the day. When he speaks, everyone listens.
would be interested to see some sort of IFA retrospective. seems it’s been an underperforming pipeline in recent years.
who have been the biggest/best signings & international prospects since Gregory Polanco debuted? Luis Ortiz was a good find, Bido was decent org depth for a while, does Bae count?