International Prospect Signing Rumors

bravesfanforlife88 said:
It seems very rare that they do work out. I remember how hard on Hector Olivera the Dodgers were, then traded him to us that first year with the team. Dude was a can't miss prospect that was a bust.

But at the end of the day, sometimes quantity is better than perceived quality up front. No one saw Acuna coming when the Braves signed him for $100k.
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Olivera was an absolute disaster. At 30 his bat had already started to slow down. When your bat starts to slow you're a little late on pitches and start shooting a lot of balls straight up. Go look at Dan Uggla's IFFB%. When he was traded to us his bat started slowing and his IFFB% skyrocketed.

League average IFFB% is about 11%. Olivera's was at 24.1% in his MLB career. Nearly a quarter of the balls he put into play where hit straight up, basically a guaranteed out.

Even if he'd not beat up that girl, there's a good chance he'd have been out of the league within a year of when he did it.
 
Deester11 said:
Still in the Angels system right? Still eating more than his BA and still striking out over 50% of the time. Batting about.105, OBP is absurdly high at.171..has struck out 21 times in 41 or 42 PA'S.

NOTE: I love the international prospects. But the commitment is one that'll have you so excited for 16-17 year olds who's competition in America is about 14-15. Depending on the country. It's also the kiss of death sometimes when I hear "physically advanced for his age.". As much as we joke about Maitan almost every scout missed on him. The rub: stardom before he ever got a dime. He rock starred himself excessively.

I firmly like telling you all about my seeing these guys earlier than a lot of people. Not as much anymore but I've seen international, rookie leagues since 1993. I say this to say, for every Maitan, there are high bonus babies who work their arses off and hit. Altuve, Cueto, Starlin Castro, Kenley Jansen...are a few higher regarded ones off the top of my head...but I digress.

For the Braves, while they dodged a bullet with Maitan, they didn't with Derian Cruz, Ed Salcedo, Isranel Wilson, (Acuña was signed that year), Luis Barrios (Albies was signed that year..2014?). The year before was Mauricio Cabrera (flamed out but made it) and Jose Peraza(was useful for a bit). My guy who didn't pan out was Yeralf Torres.

I don't think big bonuses are the way to go necessarily but I understand them. The Braves scout internationally very well but other than a big bonus or two they rely on scouts and their academy. Signing multiple decent money players is a good thing. Excited about the new crop of IA'S after Coppygate. Time will tell.
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I really thought Izzy would make it to the majors. Not as a star, but I expected him to break through as an athletic sub. He just never got over the hump.
 
Jaw said:
I really thought Izzy would make it to the majors. Not as a star, but I expected him to break through as an athletic sub. He just never got over the hump.
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Izzy was always more tooled up than most, but like you said, he couldn't put it together. He was fun to watch on occasion though.
 
striker42 said:
Olivera was an absolute disaster. At 30 his bat had already started to slow down. When your bat starts to slow you're a little late on pitches and start shooting a lot of balls straight up. Go look at Dan Uggla's IFFB%. When he was traded to us his bat started slowing and his IFFB% skyrocketed.

League average IFFB% is about 11%. Olivera's was at 24.1% in his MLB career. Nearly a quarter of the balls he put into play where hit straight up, basically a guaranteed out.

Even if he'd not beat up that girl, there's a good chance he'd have been out of the league within a year of when he did it.
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IFFB% is the percentage of flies that are hit on the infield, not the percentage of total balls in play. But your point still stands.
 
striker42 said:
Olivera was an absolute disaster. At 30 his bat had already started to slow down. When your bat starts to slow you're a little late on pitches and start shooting a lot of balls straight up. Go look at Dan Uggla's IFFB%. When he was traded to us his bat started slowing and his IFFB% skyrocketed.

League average IFFB% is about 11%. Olivera's was at 24.1% in his MLB career. Nearly a quarter of the balls he put into play where hit straight up, basically a guaranteed out.

Even if he'd not beat up that girl, there's a good chance he'd have been out of the league within a year of when he did it.
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I will always regard that trade as one of the worst in baseball history or atleast Braves history. It was indefensible then and needed no hindsight. Even if we loved the guy the Dodgers lacked leverage and I have never heard anything about any other team in serious competition with us to trade for him. He hadnt even proven he could hit minor league pitching. If he had spent a year mashing AAA I could understand. MLB should have veto'd the deal to begin with because throwing money at a international player then trading them for a boatload of proven players and prospects was BS. To me it would be like if the A's just stopped trading their good players for prospects and just started selling them for millions of dollars outright. I will forever be salty about this trade.
 
Deester11 said:
Still in the Angels system right? Still eating more than his BA and still striking out over 50% of the time. Batting about.105, OBP is absurdly high at.171..has struck out 21 times in 41 or 42 PA'S.

NOTE: I love the international prospects. But the commitment is one that'll have you so excited for 16-17 year olds who's competition in America is about 14-15. Depending on the country. It's also the kiss of death sometimes when I hear "physically advanced for his age.". As much as we joke about Maitan almost every scout missed on him. The rub: stardom before he ever got a dime. He rock starred himself excessively.

I firmly like telling you all about my seeing these guys earlier than a lot of people. Not as much anymore but I've seen international, rookie leagues since 1993. I say this to say, for every Maitan, there are high bonus babies who work their arses off and hit. Altuve, Cueto, Starlin Castro, Kenley Jansen...are a few higher regarded ones off the top of my head...but I digress.

For the Braves, while they dodged a bullet with Maitan, they didn't with Derian Cruz, Ed Salcedo, Isranel Wilson, (Acuña was signed that year), Luis Barrios (Albies was signed that year..2014?). The year before was Mauricio Cabrera (flamed out but made it) and Jose Peraza(was useful for a bit). My guy who didn't pan out was Yeralf Torres.

I don't think big bonuses are the way to go necessarily but I understand them. The Braves scout internationally very well but other than a big bonus or two they rely on scouts and their academy. Signing multiple decent money players is a good thing. Excited about the new crop of IA'S after Coppygate. Time will tell.
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I saw Mauricio Cabrera live at the big league level and thought he would be the next big thing. High heat. The scoreboard at the Target Field read "100" at a time when there weren't a lot of guys who could hit triple digits.

Isranel Wilson's bonus was around $100,000 and he was signed long after the then-July 1 opening of the signing period. Kevin Josephina's bonus was a little less than Albies' and they were signed the same year.

Curious to see how the last few rounds of signings go. Some promise there, but I think the Braves rush some of these guys before they truly get their feet underneath them.

There are so many highly-ranked international prospects that really flame out. There was a guy named Jackson Melian who everyone thought was going to sign with the Braves, but the Braves' head international scout--I think it was Carlos Rios at the time--moved to the Yankees and took Melian with him. Yankees doled out a huge bonus (then highest ever) for a guy who played for seven different organizations in 12 minor league seasons and never made it to the majors. Was a trade piece sent by the Yankees with three other guys in a deal to acquire Denny Neagle in 2000.
 
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Just look at how much drafted players stock changes from ages 16-18. We really are better off taking a quantity over quality approach. Some of the top college talent weren't big time prospects coming out of college. It truly is a lottery.
 
Perdomo is exciting and its cool for us to play at the top end of the international game. I trust AA to stock the minors with good talent.
 
Jaw said:
I really thought Izzy would make it to the majors. Not as a star, but I expected him to break through as an athletic sub. He just never got over the hump.
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He was the big guy with supposed attitude issues?

I thought that guy might turn into a good mlb'er too.
 
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cajunrevenge said:
I will always regard that trade as one of the worst in baseball history or atleast Braves history. It was indefensible then and needed no hindsight. Even if we loved the guy the Dodgers lacked leverage and I have never heard anything about any other team in serious competition with us to trade for him. He hadnt even proven he could hit minor league pitching. If he had spent a year mashing AAA I could understand. MLB should have veto'd the deal to begin with because throwing money at a international player then trading them for a boatload of proven players and prospects was BS. To me it would be like if the A's just stopped trading their good players for prospects and just started selling them for millions of dollars outright. I will forever be salty about this trade.
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Yeah, I remember reading about it when it happened. I was in complete disbelief. It made zero sense.

One thing that should have been considered is why the Dodgers would have been so eager to trade Olivera when they had just paid him a massive amount of money. The Dodgers had realized they made a mistake and wanted to offload him to a team stupid enough to still be interested.
 
cajunrevenge said:
I will always regard that trade as one of the worst in baseball history or atleast Braves history. It was indefensible then and needed no hindsight. Even if we loved the guy the Dodgers lacked leverage and I have never heard anything about any other team in serious competition with us to trade for him. He hadnt even proven he could hit minor league pitching. If he had spent a year mashing AAA I could understand. MLB should have veto'd the deal to begin with because throwing money at a international player then trading them for a boatload of proven players and prospects was BS. To me it would be like if the A's just stopped trading their good players for prospects and just started selling them for millions of dollars outright. I will forever be salty about this trade.
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Clearly ranks up there with the Len Barker deal. I actually thought Coppolella had done fairly well with the tear-down, but he rushed the build-back and made a couple of really terrible mistakes in the process. The Olivera deal is at the top of the list of bad decisions. I don't know if there was pressure from above to try and make rapid strides in the W/L, but whatever it was, it certainly didn't work. Coppolella would have probably been gone within a year even without the international penalties.

Edit: Just checked and my history was off. John Hart was in the big chair when the Olivera deal was done. I stand by my Coppolella remarks.
 
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Whatever scout was pushing for Olivera deserved to be fired immediately. What a terrible, terrible evaluation there. Even if he hadn't been a POS woman beater, his best case scenario was a 30 year old 3-4 WAR third baseman entering his decline years. Chase Headley was 1 year older and the off-season prior had just signed for nearly the same amount of money Olivera was due. These guys aren't exactly rare. Like what the actual **** were they thinking.
 
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50PoundHead said:
Clearly ranks up there with the Len Barker deal. I actually thought Coppolella had done fairly well with the tear-down, but he rushed the build-back and made a couple of really terrible mistakes in the process. The Olivera deal is at the top of the list of bad decisions. I don't know if there was pressure from above to try and make rapid strides in the W/L, but whatever it was, it certainly didn't work. Coppolella would have probably been gone within a year even without the international penalties.

Edit: Just checked and my history was off. John Hart was in the big chair when the Olivera deal was done. I stand by my Coppolella remarks.
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Yeah, but wasn't Coppolella shooting all the shots?
 
Carp said:
Whatever scout was pushing for Olivera deserved to be fired immediately. What a terrible, terrible evaluation there. Even if he hadn't been a POS woman beater, his best case scenario was a 30 year old 3-4 WAR third baseman entering his decline years. Chase Headley was 1 year older and the off-season prior had just signed for nearly the same amount of money Olivera was due. These guys aren't exactly rare. Like what the actual **** were they thinking.
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The issue imo is the trade not necessarily the scouting. Every scout is going to miss on some players. They could have been in love with Oliveria and not made such a terrible trade. The Dodgers had no leverage whatsoever.
 
MLB gonna change the rules if we start signing the top international prospect every year. If we get the top prospect 2 years in a row an international draft is going to be coming to MLB as soon as they can figure out a way to rig it in favor of the Dodgers and Yankees.
 
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