The 2017-2018 International Signing period begins on Sunday for the Cincinnati Reds. Every year July 2nd kicks off the signing period for new international players. To be eligible to sign during the period a player must be 16-years-old (or older) by the time the minor league season ends. If they are not, then they must wait until the next year.
Every team is given a pool allotment of money that they are allowed to spend. Unlike in the past, there are no penalties for going over. You simply are not allowed to go over your limit any longer. What you have is what you have, with one stipulation, you can trade away, or trade for more pool money with other teams. A team is allowed to acquire up to 75% of additional pool money. The Reds fall into the middle-tier of the pool, getting $5.25M in total to spend. Each team gets either $4.75M, $5.25M or $5.75M.
For the Cincinnati Reds, it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to spend all of their pool money. They will be under penalty because of the amount of money they spent in the previous signing period, going well over their limit to sign the 2016-2017 class that was headlined by three big Cuban signings – shortstops Alfredo Rodriguez and Jose Garcia, as well as right handed pitcher Vladimir Gutierrez.
That means that the Reds will be unable to spend more than $300,000 on any one signing. That, of course, comes with one caveat: Players signed from a team in Mexico (which is how almost all players from that country are signed) can be signed for more – Major League Baseball only cares about how much goes to the player, not how much is paid in total. Mexican teams can keep up to 75% of the price paid to purchase a player from their organization. This could be a loophole, so-to-speak, that the Reds could use to their advantage while being limited in overall signing ability. In speaking with Reds President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Dick Williams, he noted that the team has expanded their efforts in Mexico and Asia in order to give the organization more opportunities.
Over the last two signing periods the organization has signed a few bigger money players and then mixed in some lower 6-figure signings and a bunch of sub 6-figure signings. In 2015 the team spent $600,000 to sign shortstop Miguel Hernandez and $1,000,000 to bring in outfielder Cristian Olivo. Every other signing from the past two years has been under the $500,000 mark.
I asked Dick Williams about the approach for the Reds given their limitations and here’s what he had to say:
We intend to remain active in the international market. We have historically had success with signings less than $300K – examples of signings less than $150K with a chance to have future impact include Aristides Aquino, Chadwick Tromp, Wennington Romero, Jose Siri, and Wandy Peralta, to name a few.
We also have to be willing to be creative in terms of monetizing our assets. International cap space is tradeable so we need to keep a finger on the pulse of that market.
There are players every year that are coming from the Latin American countries that turn out to be outstanding signings from the range that the Reds are allowed to spend from. Williams noted a few from the Reds, but the Major Leagues are littered with All-Stars who signed for less than 6-figures as 16 or 17-year-olds.
Don’t expect to hear about any big names signing with the Reds on the international market over the next two years as they will be in the penalty phase. But it will be interesting to see what the team can do when it comes to signings and how many of those mid-tier $100-300,000 guys that they are able to land. Also pay attention to the trade market. While the team may not be able to sign any big dollar players, they can trade pool slot money and other teams looking for extra money to spend could be willing to pay quality prospects in return if that’s going to be the difference between someone being able to land one of those top guys or not.