Orioles IFA Signings Thread

[jcarm]

3 minutes ago, 25 Nuggets said:

You are correct - plenty of guys in the top 30 don't make it and vice versa, just like the amateur draft.

I was speaking more in terms of the amount of $$$ you need to sign them.  Who are they going to spend the money on if not Mesa?  He and Gaston look like the only options.

They could sign 29 players for $300K each if they chose to. You can have 2-3 teams in the DSL if you need to. Saying that, I hope they do sign Mesa for a fairly reasonable amount and can sign several other quality prospects. You are probably not going to find very much for international players that are not in the top 30-50 in rankings on the internet. This is just because, the amount of money/time needed to research and give such information is not available to the internet site managers. The Orioles do have some good scouts in the DR. One such scout seems to be Calvin Maduro who the Orioles signed out of Aruba in 1991. He seems to have an inside track on the players available in Aruba/Curacao and has been involved with signing a few players from there for the Orioles. Hopefully the Orioles can grab a few prospects that he likes.

[jcarm]

20 minutes ago, jcarm said:

 

[jerios55]

22 minutes ago, jcarm said:

They could sign 29 players for $300K each if they chose to. You can have 2-3 teams in the DSL if you need to. Saying that, I hope they do sign Mesa for a fairly reasonable amount and can sign several other quality prospects. You are probably not going to find very much for international players that are not in the top 30-50 in rankings on the internet. This is just because, the amount of money/time needed to research and give such information is not available to the internet site managers. The Orioles do have some good scouts in the DR. One such scout seems to be Calvin Maduro who the Orioles signed out of Aruba in 1991. He seems to have an inside track on the players available in Aruba/Curacao and has been involved with signing a few players from there for the Orioles. Hopefully the Orioles can grab a few prospects that he likes.

Thanks for this, I was wondering if there was a player limit.  Not that they'll sign 850 10k players, but with multiple countries, I was curious how much they could spread things around (with or without Mesa really).

[OriolesMagic83]

4 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Kind of nuts though. One gets the impression we sent somebody down there with a briefcase of cash and a directive to bring back Victor Victor and whomever else we can find.

Even that is an improvement on what the O's have been doing.  Baby steps!  I'll take it.

[bpilktree67]

2 hours ago, jerios55 said:

Thanks for this, I was wondering if there was a player limit.  Not that they'll sign 850 10k players, but with multiple countries, I was curious how much they could spread things around (with or without Mesa really).

10k players actually don’t count to the total allotment so you can sign as many as you want at 10k or less.  

[Chavez Ravine]

1 hour ago, bpilktree67 said:

10k players actually don’t count to the total allotment so you can sign as many as you want at 10k or less.  

I think the hard signing cap has only exacerbated the Gladwellian Experiment nature of MLB’s international free agent system. Invest money in teaching very young kids to play baseball. Along the way also invest money in their coaches, counselors, advisors, and mentors. All so that you get the inside track on spending a few hundred thousand to a couple of million on a 16 year old kid. I vaguely wonder what would happen if you just lurked in the weeds, scrounged the internet, spent Chris Davis’ salary every year on 10K fliers, and jumped on the odd Victor Victor Mesa opportunity once and a while.

[O-Arm36]

2 hours ago, Chavez Ravine said:

I think the hard signing cap has only exacerbated the Gladwellian Experiment nature of MLB’s international free agent system. Invest money in teaching very young kids to play baseball. Along the way also invest money in their coaches, counselors, advisors, and mentors. All so that you get the inside track on spending a few hundred thousand to a couple of million on a 16 year old kid. I vaguely wonder what would happen if you just lurked in the weeds, scrounged the internet, spent Chris Davis’ salary every year on 10K fliers, and jumped on the odd Victor Victor Mesa opportunity once and a while.

But how would you find roster room to develop the approximately 2,000 $10k players you could take a flier on each year with Davis's salary?

[Prayin4Reign]

10 hours ago, O-Arm36 said:

But how would you find roster room to develop the approximately 2,000 $10k players you could take a flier on each year with Davis's salary?

You'd build a baseball village. 

[ReclaimTheCrown]

Not a signing, but didn’t see this posted elsewhere and it’s obviously relevant for this thread. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a breakdown, albeit brief, of our international scouting presence: 

http://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2018/08/more-on-international-intentions-and-todays-game.html

“But the plan won’t really take off until the Orioles beef up their scouting department, which is one of the areas they’ve vowed to address as part of their now-public rebuild.

You can’t sign more international prospects if you can’t find them.

The Orioles are still relatively thin in that department, as anyone in the industry will point out. And it’s important to find the right people to fill the gaps. Scouts with contacts in Latin America, for example, who can be trusted.

Cale Cox, assistant director of minor league and international operations, and former pitchers Calvin Maduro and Luis Noel scouted Ramirez. Until yesterday, I didn’t realize that Noel had changed careers while staying in the organization.

Noel, who’s based in the Dominican, hadn’t pitched with an affiliated team since appearing in 29 games with Single-A Delmarva in 2011. He finished his playing career in the independent North American and Frontier leagues in 2012-2013.

Maduro and Joel Bradley are the only international scouts based in the United States. Ji-Young Koo is based in Korea, responsible for the Pacific Rim, and they’re the only names on the international side who are listed in the team’s media guide. Maduro lives in Maryland and Bradley in Florida.

The Orioles employ three scouts in the Dominican, two in Australia, two in Europe, one in Venezuela, one in Columbia, one in Panama and one in Curaçao. I’m also told there are five or six in the Pacific Rim.

“We’ve got pretty good coverage,” said one person in the organization. “We could use more.”

Perhaps most important is for the Orioles to expand their presence in Venezuela, where it’s common for teams to have three or four scouts, plus four or five in the Dominican. The Orioles haven’t developed a player from Venezuela who reached the majors with them, losing one opportunity when they traded left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez to the Red Sox for reliever Andrew Miller.”

[jerios55]

1 hour ago, ReclaimTheCrown said:

The Orioles employ three scouts in the Dominican, two in Australia, two in Europe, one in Venezuela, one in Columbia, one in Panama and one in Curaçao. I’m also told there are five or six in the Pacific Rim.

Perhaps most important is for the Orioles to expand their presence in Venezuela, where it’s common for teams to have three or four scouts, plus four or five in the Dominican. 

Does anyone have an idea of what other teams have?  Clearly it mentions the a few "common" levels, but where does it compare to other areas.

People also mention we have had a DR team for years, but do clubs have teams/leagues in other countries (like Venezuela). 

While we joke about signing a Chris Davis worth of 10k players, would there be some benefit to adding many players if it means adding full teams to develop in other countries? 

[ReclaimTheCrown]

10 minutes ago, jerios55 said:

Does anyone have an idea of what other teams have?  Clearly it mentions the a few "common" levels, but where does it compare to other areas.

People also mention we have had a DR team for years, but do clubs have teams/leagues in other countries (like Venezuela). 

While we joke about signing a Chris Davis worth of 10k players, would there be some benefit to adding many players if it means adding full teams to develop in other countries? 

I don’t know about more typical levels (as I mentioned this was the first I’d ever seen that laid out our international scouting presence), but you’ve got to think our newfound interest in Latin America is going to alter this perhaps substantially. I think it’s a fair assumption that Peter’s unwillingness to dive into Latin America caused a reallocation to some other places; for example, our numbers seem a bit high comparatively in the Pacific Rim, though there is talent there, and high in Europe and certainly Australia. If we can’t just add scouts overall, a reduction in those areas makes sense to me. I mean, Alex Wells is a cool prospect, but how much talent are we legitimately mining down under? And I don’t think we’ve got any legit prospects from Europe, nor do I really hear of any.

Take all this with a grain of salt, as it’s just what seems reasonable to me. I’ve got no idea how all this truly works.

[Tx Oriole]

On 8/3/2018 at 7:25 PM, OriolesMagic83 said:

Even that is an improvement on what the O's have been doing.  Baby steps!  I'll take it.

Me too.

[ISU94]

 

[bandy75]

4 minutes ago, ISU94 said:

 

google translate:

 

Officially: Carlos Daniel Del Rosario new member of the @Orioles of Baltimore. Thank you very much me God, my dear twin Dario Francisco Del Rosario, the coach of pitching Ronny Severino who fajó to work very hard with him. Here is the first part of the work done!

 

[TGO]

Not seeing a ton of info on him online but he is the nephew of Manny Del Rosario (who posted the news on IG and Twitter), who played in the O's system in the late 90s/early 00s.