July 2, 2019 International Signing Period

[bigegypt0417]

BA is still calling him a top prospect of the class...

Phillies Sign Venezuelan Outfielder Yhoswar Garcia

[fish]

And a September 13 birthdate so at least he’d be 18 the entire season, whenever that starts. Lots of people on “other” comment boards deriding his listed size of 6’1” 155 lbs, but important to remember that was his listed size more than a year ago.

[andyb]

I don't think BA has attempted any sort of re-rank and being one year older certainly means that any performance or tools he showed previously should be projected as if he is one year older (and he is on the older side of the July 2018 class which would have had an August 31st cutoff on birth dates.

He probably still has good tools. But being older you can count on him to add less power and refinement compared to prospects a year or more younger. Hence he really should be something like a $500K prospect. They have not definitively reported his new bonus. We should all hope it is lower rather than higher.

[Squire]

Jesse Sanchez says the deal is for close to 2.5 million

He also says that they signed 33 other players in the period for an aggregate 2.1 million

[andyb]

If true that sure looks like another example of the Phillies overpaying for a kid after an early agreement as in the Jhailyn Ortiz case. There we agreed on a bonus at the top of the class more than a year out and then stuck to it when his rating sank by the time the signing period started.

If the Phillies do not get a discount here compared to what was previously agreed upon when the kid lied about his age and is a full year older than advertised then it really seems like gross mismanagement and incompetence on the Phillies' part.

[bigegypt0417]

He's 18. He was a top prospect when he was thought to be 17. What makes you think his skills have diminished? He's the same age as any high school senior.

[fish]

He's 18. He was a top prospect when he was thought to be 17. What makes you think his skills have diminished? He's the same age as any high school senior.

It’s as much an evaluation of what his skills are now and what he projects to be- and they just lost a prime year on the growth chart they thought he had.

[Lucky_Beagle]

Don't the top players (as I imagine he is suppose to be) sign as 16 year olds? Why wasn't he signed the year before if he is only a year older than originally thought? Did he age a year during the time waiting to be allowed to sign. So in theory he may only be a year older, but he lost 2 years of time in the system developing?

[andyb]

And they evaluated him against younger competition, so the judgement of those skills (given he has a year less to develop) may have been incorrect relative to his age.

Every time this has happened that I can remember the player signed for less money. That should be the case here even if he is still a good prospect.

[andyb]

He was just one year older. He was also a September birthday which would make him among the oldest players in the previous J2 class. There have been studies that show older HS draftees are less successful than younger ones relative to draft position simply because they discount the value of 11 months of development (that the younger ones have and the older ones do not).

[Squire]

Candidly, my guess is that the Phillies are so worried about their relative station among teams in Latin America that they didn't want to be seen as "breaking their word" even when the player was not what he represented himself to be. Also, its possible that the player himself did not have any material participation in the error. I don't know. I wish the Phillies had skimmed a little on the bonus too but having watched the Phillies operate for the last 25 years I am not the least bit surprised either.

[Austinfan]

Of course, there's the media report, but then there's what was actually filed with the league office (correct amount so the total spent can be determined by the league office).
Do we know if the two are the same?

[julio]

Do we know if the two are the same?

Given the way MLB treats pretty much any information that might be of interest to serious fans... how could we possibly know?

[zambonir]

And this is the one area where you can't say the people in charge have really changed, even if Sal has different bosses. But it's ultimately his connections/judgement/decision.

[allentown]

And his record is not good when it comes to finding, enticing, and signing top international prospects. His forte was finding cheap, undiscovered diamonds in the rough. You look at our biggest $ international signees and it is not acceptable. At this time in the evolution of international scouting and signings, getting the age wrong on your top signee is awful. If we really did sign him for the originally stated bonus, that is simply deliberate mismanagement for face-saving PR purposes. Like Andy, I assume we did get a discount. We should have gotten a substantial discount. An 18-year old, evaluated as a 16-year old (in reality, probably a 17-year-old evaluated as a 15 year old, or even a 16-year old evaluated as a 14-year old, depending upon how long ago our initial commitment was made) is going to have been a vastly over-rated prospect in the eyes of our scout, because over that time a lot of physical and skill development occurs. Plus we now know he isn't a character guy. Out of the whole top of the international class, he is the cheater. Likely he is a quite marginal prospect and this is a fiasco almost on a par with the two Koreans. It is time for a change in or international scouting organization. It hasn't been especially productive and this incident speaks to gross ineptitude. We still want and need to have the ability to find and sign the gems in the rough, but we need somebody who can handle the task of finding and signing the high end prospects. Sal is not that guy. There should still be a place for him, perhaps we just need to add a key, largely independent, scout to his staff to be responsible for the high bonus-type guys.

[fish]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around his scam. The minimum age to sign during the signing period is 16 by September 1. In actuality, he turned 18 on September 13. So he could have signed during the prior signing period, which means that he must have been carrying on this scheme for at least 2 years. He was even playing in their winter league the year before he was believed to be eligible to sign where he performed well, so presumably all he did was delay a substantial payday.

[bkeich]

I guess this falls under the "we have $2.5M left and no one to spend it on because we were the victims of fraud which will not be prosecuted, so we will reward the person committing the fraud and hope that they are really a good person and a great player".

Yea, it is clearly past time to clean out the International Scouting Department. The only ones worse than committing fraud are the ones rewarding them for it.

[bigegypt0417]

So your assertion is they did it because.....................why not?

That seems like quite a leap. He's the age of a HS senior and was highly rated at the time he would have signed. This at the end of the day is still a business.

Ben Badler still had him as one of the top prospects.

[allentown]

He's the age of a HS senior and was highly rated at the time he would have signed.

He was moderately highly rated based upon being more than a year older than he claimed to be. The evaluation for what is plus for a 16-year old is more lenient than what is plus for a 17+-year old. IF he got his $2.5 bonus, I don't see how this can be spun as anything but a debacle. I assume the signing bonus must have been significantly lower, because what sane person honors his deal with a demonstrated con artist, when he can legally walk away from it? I'm guessing his actual scouting value today is more like $250K.

The question upthread was 'why would he cheat and thus delay a big pay day?' The answer to that question is obvious: he knew he had no chance of commanding a big pay day when he actually was 16, because he just didn't stack up with the best 16-year olds that year (and really, since commitments are made early, the decision to con likely happened when he was 15 and did not look plus against other 15-year olds). He, his parents, his buscone, saw cheating as the ONLY way he would get big $, because his true talent level didn't justify a big bonus.

Every year, the Phillies sign older LA players -- 18 year olds, sometimes even a 19-year old. Some as first-time signings, some guys released or commissioner-freed from other organizations. The Phillies don't give the first-time signees anywhere approaching $2.5 million, although the commissioner-freed guys have gotten decent bonuses.

[bigegypt0417]

He's the age of a HS senior and was highly rated at the time he would have signed.

He was moderately highly rated based upon being more than a year older than he claimed to be.

Badler says he's still one of the top prospects in this international class...I'm not saying that...Badler is.