Cards commit big dollars to Latin American talent
Posted on October 13th, 2008 by erik in July 2 intn'l signing period, Roberto Pina, Santo FrancoBen Badler of Baseball America (subscription only) is doing a division by division approach in looking at what teams did during the international signing period. As it turns out, the Cardinals spent a total of $2,685,000 in international players, the sixth highest figure among major league clubs. The Reds outspent all the teams, putting an astounding $5,705,000 towards signing Latin American players.
It seems crazy to see the Cards outspending teams like the Mets and Red Sox on international players, but that is what they did. Looking around the division, the Pirates spent $1.2M, the Astros spent a little over a million, the Cubs spent just $250K, and the Brewers spent nothing, oddly enough.
It’s definitely an encouraging sign to see the Cardinals investing in top shelf talent.
For more on the signings, Jeff Luhnow was nice enough to provide scouting reports on the players signed back in July. You can find them here.
One of the names missing from the article is OF Gerwuins Velazco, who also signed for a six-figure bonus. Can’t say I know anything about him…
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I was just curious of where some of these guys will play next season. I would love to track these players during the season and see how they progress.
I wonder — is any of this commitment of “big dollars” going to be invested in countermeasures against the PED problem that exists in several of the Latin American leagues? Losing some of these kids to 50-game suspensions due to positive drug tests would make the investment look significantly less wise.
Cardsfan-
The best any of them will do is GCL. Most will probably remain in their latin camps this year. It is the rare super prospect that moves above GCL before they are 18ish.
The print edition of Balder’s story said De La Cruz could be ready to junp into Johnson City next year.
Luhnow has said he expects De La Cruz to start at Johnson City.