For the entirety of Jerry Dipoto’s tenure, he has largely ignored the Cuban market. In fact, it is only in the last year that the Halos started investing more heavily in the international market overall. Well, that all changed today with the signing of Cuban 3B/OF Roberto Baldoquin:
BREAKING: Angels, Cuban INF Roberto Baldoquin, 20, agree to $8 million signing bonus. Played for Las Tunas in #Cuba. http://t.co/YPdi1YUZb8
— Jesse Sanchez (@JesseSanchezMLB) November 4, 2014
That $8 million (which is really about $13 million with the tax penalty) blows away the Angels’ international signing pool as Baldoquin is still young enough to count as a prospect signing rather than a free agent. That means their ability to sign international prospects will be highly restricted the next two years, but that shouldn’t be a problem as they had been self-restricting themselves quite a bit until the last year.
As for Baldoquin himself, welp, nobody seems to know much about him. It is hard to get eyes on young Cuban prospects, so there isn’t much out there about him. Given his youth, he will almost assuredly spend some time in the minors while the Halos figure out what exactly they have (including what position he will play). Until then, we’ll just have to take it on faith that he wouldn’t have gotten so much money if the team didn’t think he was something special. Or you can look at this video of him and draw your own hasty conclusions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEcodo2xoCQ
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