On Monday, the Red Sox agreed to sign 19-year-old Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada to a deal that includes a $31.5 million signing bonus. Because Boston has exceeded its international spending pool, it will be taxed 100 percent on the bonus, so Moncada's a $63 million investment. All up front too.
The $31.5 million bonus smashes the previous record for an international amateur under the current spending rules, which was the $8.25 million the Diamondbacks gave Cuban righty Yoan Lopez earlier this winter. (Other Cuban players like Jose Abreu and Rusney Castillo were not subject to the spending rules because they were older than 23.)
Moncada received a record bonus for a number of reasons, first and foremost because he is a 19-year-old potential superstar. A potential franchise player. The kind of guy teams will move mountains to sign. Moncada was also on the open market free to sign with the highest bidder. Any team in baseball could have signed him if they were willing to pony up the cash.
So why then does that not apply to all amateur players? Scouts reportedly considered Moncada a potential 1/1 talent, meaning if he was US born and subject to the annual June draft, he would have gone first overall. But he wasn't born in the United States. He was born in Cuba and different rules apply to Cuban players.
Soon after the Moncada news broke, Rays lefty Drew Smyly shared his displeasure with the process -- not with Moncada or his bonus, but the signing process itself -- on Twitter:
Smyly, by the way, is a former second-round draft pick (2010) who received a $1.1 million signing bonus out of the draft.
The largest contract in the history of the draft went to Stephen Strasburg. He was selected first overall in 2009 and received a four-year deal worth $15.1 million total. His up-front bonus was $7.5 million. That total money -- the portion spread across four years -- is half of what Moncada will receive up front.
Since Strasburg's deal, MLB and the MLBPA have rewritten the draft and international free-agency rules to limit spending. Teams now get a relatively small bonus pool each year to spend as they see fit, and the penalties are pretty harsh if you exceed your pool, as you can see with Boston's 100 percent tax. (They also will not be able to sign an international player for more than $300,000 for the next two years.)
International free agency is just that, free agency. They can sign with any team. Drafted players get the short end of the stick. They are selected by teams and can only negotiate with that team, killing their leverage. Strasburg and Smyly couldn't shop their services to the highest bidder out of college like everyone else. If they could, you can bet they would have received larger bonuses. Strasburg especially.
Smyly is surely not alone in being unhappy with the system. It's unfair to drafted players who have their earning potential limited. The top talents like Strasburg and Bryce Harper still get a handsome bonus, don't get me wrong, but that bonus is a fraction of what they're actually worth. If Strasburg had hit the open market in 2009, he would have cleared Moncada's $31.5 million bonus with ease because teams had more scouting history with him. He might have doubled it.
Unfortunately, everything MLB and the MLBPA have done in recent years has only further stacked the cards against drafted players. MLB and the owners want to keep costs down and the MLBPA doesn't care because drafted players are not union members. It's a concession they're very willing to make. They're worried about 40-man roster players (union members), and hey, every dollar ownership saves on a drafted player is a dollar that theoretically goes to a union member.
MLB's talent acquisition system is broken and unfair, and it has been for years. The league has been pushing for an international draft for several years now -- another way to keep costs down -- and expect that talk to ramp up in the wake of Moncada's bonus. That will only make the system more unfair to the players, the ones who are generating the revenue.
Good for Moncada for getting that massive bonus in spite of the international spending rules. That's the way it should be. Every amateur player should have the same opportunity regardless of where they were born, but that is not the case.
