2021-22 International Signing Period

Again, as Chris mentioned above, the Red Sox spend their entire international bonus money every year, including the years Dombrowski was with the Sox. Every year Ben Badler and Jesse Sanchez note them as the most active on the international market. The Red Sox have clearly made the strategy of spreading their bonuses out amongst more players - you can argue with the strategy, but they clearly are not being cheap. While the GM at the time may have some impact, like I said before, Eddie Romero runs the show.

You've also cherry picked a ton of players in your list (including multiple players that haven't even made their debut yet and one player - Woods-Richardson - who isn't even an international signee). Some of the players you listed also signed for modest deals: Arozarena ($1.25 mil), Oneil Cruz ($950k), Pache ($1.4 mil), Marquez ($600k), Amaya ($1 mil). I could go on...

———- my mistake then on woods Richardson and those “modest” signings aren’t so modest compared to our signings. Those $1 million signings would rank right up there with our signings. At end of day name last international signing not named devers who has made an impact....?? List one not named Jimenez who is ranked high enough to get anything in trade?? I’ll wait ....

Look I’m not saying they are horrible. But I AM saying there could be avenues to improve and it will be interesting to see if they chase some of the more higher priced players. While dombrowski was gm we did NOT sign impact players who have created low cost players or trade bait for Boston Red Sox outside of one player. I get we were handicapped for a year and we had a player have unfortunate circumstances. BUT in a results oriented business if you are saying the results are there then I guess Ild like higher return on investment. If that’s not dombrowski then we have an even bigger issue at hand.

As for allocating resources. Look at the whole of the group. Most of our prospects came from Venezuela with dombrowski. ( we did that because it was cheaper to sign there compared to Dominican due to the violence going on). What was last years? Of course we are going to still sign players out of Venezuela but there has been more funds spent in Dominican possibly. Or sure seemed to be last year.

Time will tell; but I believe international signings were another place he neglected the system while focusing on the major league team. ( and sorry I don’t believe for a second a general manager who is going to have his job impacted by the players signed or not signed has zero say in a department ). I don’t care what business your in—- it doesn’t work that way!! And if it does then you aren’t a successful business. I’m not saying he needs to make decisions but I darn well believe he has a day in how resources are spent outside of the signings. And he will directly want to be sure those people are acquiring him impact talent to use on major league roster or trades. So I come back to my question. “ who is impact either on team or in minors right now that was signed in international market??” 2 names!! 2. Over the entirety of his gm career here right now are impact players ..2

It will be interesting to see if that changes and one of the ways is by signing more high end talent. Again using conversations from people in tigers ... that was a dombrowski result for them.

Regardless if you believe that; let’s hope for 20 impact players this year. We sure seem to need them or for some of the last 2 years worth to become impact players. Because right now. We don’t seem to have many international players who are impact that can help us right now

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Umm wow all those guys were signed during the dombrowski era? Holy crap! I guess I didn’t realize his years of being general manager started back when Ben Cherington was gm and he was gm of the tigers. He’s good. Running two teams at once and over the gm when many of those players were signed. And come on. You seriously call 90% of them IMPACT players? Or that they could get impact players in trade? It’s no wonder we are 0-2.. good grief.

So I’ll ask again. Name an impact player on the Red Sox or used in trade by Red Sox signed when dombrowski was gm??? Besides devers or gimenez. Impact isn’t a cup of coffee in major leagues or AAA fodder or ranked as number 20 player in our system. Impact is contributor to major league team or being traded for one who contributes because of his value. My evidence is THAT. My gosh the lists are on this site. Use it. Do your own research. Without excuses. The evidence is that there is none. Not yet anyways. So whatever they were doing wasn’t working or hasn’t yet. So it will be interesting to see if that changes or if the signings from 2 years ago develop more than the previous years have.

As for my “assnine” theory: 12/15 Venezuelan (2015-2016), 6/8 (2017-2018), 6/14 Venezuelan (2018-2019). Plus the next 3 Venezuelan, 2019-2020. (7/13 Venezuelan). 2020- -2021. (6-12 Venezuelan).

So looking at percentages of top signers: it seems that percentage has went down. Now is that something that will stick or is it just random data not caused by a change in philosophy by scouting community.

I respectfully understand that maybe I’m way off based on this theory but I definitely am not so far on the fact that dombrowskis years did not produce impact international talent .

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I’m sorry that’s your assumed position. How is me listing facts asking to make a conclusion being an ass? Or a dick move? I’m really confused? I posed a couple theories one of which is that during dombrowski’s era the international group hasn’t produced impact players accept 2 players. Again how are listing those facts being an ass or dick??

You do understand I mean diverting funds to mean away from Venezuela right? And the second argument is that perhaps the not going after high impact signings didn’t work to add impact talent? And I’ve said the next two years will be interesting to see what changes if anything. I listed a conversation with a Detroit scout who got me to thinking that way. And an article saying dombrowski favored in Detroit the no high impact signings ( meaning expensive ) and it didn’t work out. Exactly how is that being a dick? Or ass? If listing facts and posing a theory based off those facts is being a dick. Holy heck dude.

They did that, 2017 and prior with exceptions being penalty seasons of course. I can see them targeting perhaps 1 decent IFA kid, like they did Bleiss in the previous year, or preferably MLB gets it's act together and starts lumping all amateur players, under a certain age (20-21, whatever) as eligible for the June Rule 4 draft and gets rid of bundles of problems and corruption in one area of the world and 1 size fits all simplification of who ends up where. It even more than likely cuts down bonuses, which should be 1st and foremost on the mind of roughly 1/3 of the teams in the game constantly complaining about revenue.

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Chris:

I have been reading sox prospect for YEARS and respect your posts and thoughts. So I decided to post a thought and get ripped for my theories. I did not realize this is a members only club to post so my apologies.

So here is my thought again to repeat: During dombrowskis years zero impact players were signed accept gimenez. Now I can define impact by being regular contributor on team or trades directly as key piece for a player who is a regular contributor on team. I was giving devers as benefit of doubt, but since you pointed out that he was signed prior to dombrowski he can be taken off that list also. So 1. Period. And I don’t count mata because we all know international guys agree to deals the year before or many do.

I don’t buy excuses. Sorry. He had bad circumstances. But the years since SO FAR anyways no impact players have been signed ( that fit the criteria above). And before you say some haven’t had time, there are some players in systems that could be traded for impact players right now who signed over past 1-3 years. It will be interesting to see if this changes over next 1-2 years.

As for what you didn’t understand I was showing percentages of Venezuelan signings have seemed to go down ( in terms of high end signings and where they were from). Again I posed the question this could be because of the old Mets guy and where he did much of his talent acquisitions. ( Dominican). Again maybe neither theory pans out. I think we will see in next 1-2 years. Or maybe as poster above theorizes, maybe it’s because we have had such a crappy system so wanted more tickets to hit the lottery with rather than 1 or 2.

And where I came up with theories were 1) talk with tigers scout, 2) article in Detroit newspaper talking about how he had same philosophy with tigers ( which didn’t produce results with them), 3). Results it seems so far with Red Sox, 4) percents from past signings and honestly what I haven’t brought up is how Tampa does things with their international team. ( higher end free agents are signed)

I'll try to kick this through the moving goalposts as quickly as possible, but 1/4 of our Top 60 is international signings from 2017 to 2019:

Gilberto Jimenez
Aldo Ramirez
Brainer Bonaci
Brayan Bello
Jorge Rodriguez
Eduardo Lopez
Luis Perales
Antoni Flores
Ceddane Rafaela
Darel Belen
Bryan Gonzalez
Eduardo Vaughn
Wilkelman Gonzalez
Nathanael Cruz
Felix Cepeda

Despite the fact that almost none of the 2018 and 2019 classes have played stateside, there are a ton who have shown potentially impact talent. In large part, this is the group that has observers thinking the Red Sox system is primed for a jump in status once games resume. Bonaci and Lopez, in particular, are players who have Top-100 prospect type talent and are the two guys I'd peg as likely breakouts not just within the system but in the baseball community overall.

That also doesn't include the top-bonus prospect signed in that period, as he died.

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Let’s hope your correct. I agree many of them hold potential to possibly bring impact talent but as of right now they aren’t there yet. This year could be very interesting for many reasons.

You seem like you really just sort of picked out the top 5 players from the last 3-4 periods and sort of say why can't they sign these guys, without really knowing much of the prospects. This is classic "heardahim" name salad to try and prove a point that isn't really there to be made? Luciano and Dominguez were probably outliers on the list because they were so special, but Hernandez and Diaz are what 16-17? How many GMs are going to give an impact MLB player for a player without a single professional AB that would be a junior in HS? Lora just almost died 2 weeks ago, and a passenger in his car did die, so who knows if he will be playing any time soon, that in itself should speak to the fragility of the international process. 

The Sox have plenty of players that can be considered as peers to some of the players here, and that's really the entire point that I think you are refusing to accept. If not for tragedy Flores could be right up on these lists, by end of the year Jimenez and Bonaci could have more national exposure, Bleis and Lopez, or Gonzalez, or  someone else way off the radar could jump up. You are talking about players that agree w teams when they are 14-15 yrs old and making this into a sports radio type argument, deflecting context and changing your thesis half way through your paper. 

Not to prolong this, so take it as a general even unrelated question: was Xander a big international signing? I mean... I know the Sox liked him a lot, but if I recall they were originally looking at his brother. I just wonder if he was sorta under the radar.

Like Vermont said/meant(?): Let's move on. These interminable discussions repeating the same themes get old fairly quickly and detract from the enjoyment we otherwise derive from this excellent forum.