Yesterday the Pittsburgh Pirates announced the signing of five international players. Today we have two more updates on the international front:
-Another player the Pirates have signed is Danny Arribas of PSV Eindhoven, via Mister Baseball. While playing in the World Junior Championship for the Dutch Junior National Team, he hit for a .391 average in 23 at-bats. He will likely start his career in the GCL.
-I get this question about once a week: who are the big names on the international market? We don’t start hearing much about that until after the MLB draft. We didn’t start hearing about Luis Heredia until this time last year. However, Dejan Kovacevic provided an update yesterday, mentioning that the Pirates don’t envision a Luis Heredia or Miguel Sano type of signing this year.
The Pirates signed Heredia for $2.6 M last year. In 2009, they were heavy bidders for Miguel Sano, before he eventually signed with the Minnesota Twins for $3.15 M. While they might not be going for a high dollar guy, that doesn’t mean they won’t go for a mid level guy, something they’ve done in each of the last three years. Last year they signed Willy Garcia for $280,000, and signed Dilson Herrera for $220,000. In 2009 they signed at least five players to deals between $150,000 and $200,000. In 2008 they signed Exicardo Cayonez to a $400,000 deal, which was a record at the time. They also signed Yhonathan Barrios for $250,000 and Jodaneli Carvajal for $350,000.
