michel inoa
A sizable furor has been raised over the last several days in light of the Texas Rangers’ widely reported pursuit of top Dominican pitching prospect Michel Inoa, which was evidently halted when agent Adam Katz informed Inoa’s many courters that the 16-year-old phenom had agreed to terms on a $4.25 million signing bonus with the Oakland Athletics.
Though the deal will not become official until the international signing period commences on July 2nd, the reported deal, according to popular trade publication Baseball America, would be the most lucrative ever for an international amateur not hailing from Cuba, “eclipsing both the $2.44 million paid to Willy Mo Pena as part of his Major League contract back in 1999, and the straight $2.25 million bonus paid by the Dodgers to Joel Guzman in 2001.”
What makes Inoa such an alluring talent? Simple. The 6′ 7″, 205-pound flamethrower flashes a low-to-mid 90s fastball that has been clocked as high as 95 MPH, which he couples with a high three-quarters arm slot that enables him to deal major heat with armside run. Throw in a trio of developing secondary pitches (a curve, change-up and splitter, all of which project to be above-average pitches), plus athleticism and a reportedly clean delivery, and it’s easy to see why multiple teams have been falling all over themselves for the opportunity to ink Inoa.
And yet, one irrefutable fact lingers: that’s a whole heck of a lot of money to throw at a 16-year-old teenager, projectability and upside be damned. Even the most remarkably blessed prospects face an inherently stacked deck in their quest to emerge as big league superstars; indeed, many never progress past AA-ball.
The odds are far better than not that Inoa, for one reason or another, will never live up to his promise and break through as a primo big league contributor. It’s one of the many sad realities of professional baseball.
BTiA minor league correspondent Jason Parks has suggested to me on more than one occasion that Inoa’s unusually strong velocity isn’t raising nearly as many eyebrows as it probably should; athletic pedigree or not, there’s very little that’s natural about hitting 95 MPH at such a young age.
And though there are multiple reports floating around that suggest his delivery and arm action are clean, Jason’s primary point of contention - that Inoa is placing a tremendous amount of mechanical stress on his still-developing arm as a result of that ridiculous velocity, thereby potentially laying the groundwork for future arm problems - is an interesting theory to digest.
But even if you’re not a believer in that line of thought, there is a lot to be said for properly diversifying your risk. Given how intrinsically difficult it is to accurately forecast the future upside of even the most well-documented 16-year-old Latin American prodigies (let alone precisely gauge the talent differentials between such young amateurs), there’s a certain wisdom in preferring quantity to quality where international free agency is concerned.
Granted, $4.25 million does not go nearly as far in Latin America as it used to; salary inflation in baseball is not a phenomenon exclusive to the majors. As more and more teams beef up their presence in the Latin American talent acquisition market (namely, through more extensive scouting and greater monetary allocations), demand and competition for the available top-tier talent skyrocket along with signing bonus demands.
On June 25th, Kiley McDaniel of SaberScouting.com reported that Major League teams are expected to pump roughly $65 million into the Latin American market this year, representing a 30 percent increase over the $50 million spent by all teams in 2007. With the 2008 international free agent crop projecting as one of the strongest in recent memory, don’t be surprised if that figure eventually soars north of the $70 million threshold.
Dumping a significant share of your available amateur signing budget into a single player can obviously pay tremendous dividends if said player ultimately fulfills the weighty expectations placed upon his shoulders. But with the entire process being such a crapshoot, it can also be considered unnecessarily dangerous to consciously slash your chances of unearthing a hidden gem in favor of inking a player that is, at the end of the day, only marginally more likely to become a productive big leaguer than the majority of his peers.
Nobody is denying how exciting it would have been for Texas to have added Inoa to an already remarkable collection of young talent that is already positively impacting the big league club. Multiple industry sources have tabbed Inoa as the best Dominican pitching prospect of the last decade, and I’m not going to be the one to attack that evaluation.
But there is, after all, strength in numbers.
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