The Pittsburgh Pirates have made their eighth international signing of the July 2nd signing period according to Jesse Sanchez at MLB.com. There is very little information available on the newest player. His name is Jerry De Los Santos and he is a 16-year-old right-hander out of the Dominican, who signed for a $100,000 bonus. No other information is available at this time. We will have more on De Los Santos in the near future.
You can find information on the other seven signings in our international draft signing tracker. The Pirates have just $540,400 left in their international signing bonus pool, though that number could be lower as every signing may not have been announced yet.
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
Is it just me or are the Pirates now signing a much higher percentage of Dominican players than before? It seemed like they always had more Mexican, Venezuelan, Colombian, and Panamanian players in the past. I wonder if the new academy is making us much more competitive among the best talent pool in Latin America, no disrespect meant to those other countries
It’s just you, we announced numerous players from Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela last year and they usually got signed in groups. A couple years ago, they got five players from Colombia at the same time, including Tito Polo and Richard Mitchell, plus Harold Ramirez is from there, and others like Oderman Rocha and Yhonathan Barrios. They had three players each from Venezuela and Mexico last year at the same time and three players from Mexico in 2012 announced at the same time. It could be because the names came in at different times this year, it seems like every player(except Sousa) is from the Dominican. There are always going to be more players from there because it’s the biggest pool for talent, but there are plenty of other countries represented heavily
You may have covered this topic before, but how do teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, etc. sign so many of the “top” international prospects, when teams like the Pirates are limited to $1.9m?
The “limit” is before severe penalties kick in, so it isn’t really a maximum. Every player the Yankees have signed after the first 1-2 or two will cost them double what the bonus amount was due to a 100% tax. In reality, it’s more than double because they had to outbid other teams for these players, driving the price up. They also won’t be allowed to sign anyone for more than $350k next year, so they are assuming that this season is going to be better than next year, which they have basically punted. Pirates could do it too, anyone can, but it’s a heavy price to pay for a group with such a high failure rate