Catching Up on the International Signing Period

I've been out of the loop for a couple important days in prospect land, so let's get right to it.

SaberScouting:

The Yankees have also made their signees official:

- INF Giancarlo Arias
- C/3B Jackson Valera
- OF Ramon Flores
- SS Anderson Felix
- RF Yeico Calderon

As mentioned above, Felix was for $500,000, and all of these players were fringe seven figure talents that the Yankees locked up early in the process. While the bonuses aren’t clear yet for all of these players, it appears all five were for below-market, value-type deals between $500,000 and $900,000.

Based on SaberScouting's prospect reports this looks like a good haul for the Yanks.  Instead of competing with the new kids in town, like the A's and Padres, who signed the top talent for millions of dollars ($5 million for Michel Inoa), the Yankees used their established network of scouts and their strong reputation to target several bats (the weakness in the system).

I try not to get too caught up in the hype around 16 year old baseball players, but I'm glad to see that two of the hitters mentioned in the prospect reports are lefties.  If one of those five becomes a fixture in Yankee Stadium by 2017 then we can all look back fondly at the 2008 signing period.