2020 July 2 Signing Rumors

[Smichaelis9]

Baseball America released their Top 50 for the 2020-21 class today and 4 future Brewers made the list.

14. Jackson Brayan Chourio (SS/CF)

46. Gregory Barrios (SS)

47. Daniel Guilarte (SS)

50. Hendry Mendez (Corner OF)

On Page 1 of this thread there are some scouting reports for each of these players.

[balsamlaker]

Seven of the Brewers top 30 current prospects are international signings. Hopefully in the next few years, Groopman's efforts will start making an influence on the major league level, including these upcoming signings.

[Soupbone]

With January 15th right around the corner is there any new information on the Brewers intentions?

[balsamlaker]

Adding four more top 50s continues the Brewers consistent additions on the international market. Adding up to a handful of top 50s compared to one big prize (G. Lara) seems to be working better in recent years.

[Smichaelis9]

Baseball America updated the Brewers article today. Only new information I could see was, “Dominican shortstop Jonathan Guzman and Venezuelan catcher Felipe Valderrama are also expected to join the Brewers’ signing class”. They had a little video of Guzman as well.

[Austin Tatious]

It’s not discussed much but it amazes me their approach to international signings. Spend big up the middle as we have come to expect but in Stearns era they have yet to give big bonuses to pitchers. They kind of spend very conservatively on them. Hope that these cheaper arms grow, fill out, and blossom. With risk involved with young pitchers, I definitely get it but still surprises me

Big bonus International pitchers are a rarity in general. Last year the top 15 International prospects were all position players. The year before there were two pitchers among the top ten International prospects, one of which was from Cuba. Among the top 60 International prospects over the past two years (2018 & 2019), only 11 were pitchers. Not saying they aren’t also avoiding them, but when there is so little supply of highly paid International arms it’s tough to make any definitive conclusions.

 

This is a good point. It seems like the Brewers are trying to align risk and reward. They are also focusing on opportunity as they heavily invest in Venezuela where they see the opportunity instead of the intensely competitive market in the DR. In the international market, I’m sure we would sign a top pitcher if we had our hooks into one. But, the opportunity is much smaller as you mentioned so our focus is up the middle position players or OF. Then in the draft, we seem to focus much more on college pitchers for the most part (Woodruff, Burnes, Small, Ashby, or even Kelly from juco) or position players that could be either from the high school ranks (Turang, Lutz) or college (Mitchell, Hiura, Zamora). We aren’t drafting high school pitchers so much really high. I’m sure we would in the right circumstance but we can see a larger strategy where we are trying to avoid squandering a large resource for nil production. If you go through our history of drafting high school pitchers high, it’s been pretty much a disaster.

 

Personally, I am really happy with our drafting and international player signings now. We have a coherent strategy that marries reward with risk. We had a period from like the late aughts until the mid teens where we were a barren wasteland of failed acquisitions that harkened back to the 90s when we signed a lot of high upside guys that bombed out. That was a very annoying period where you could just see them making mistakes in real time. That’s all corrected now IMO.

 

For as much criticism as our system has gotten recently, one more good draft (and we have high picks coming), finally signing Chourios and company, and perhaps a trade that nets us a good prospect, and suddenly our system will be rated nicely IMO. The media guys tend to be a tick behind.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Austin Tatious

[Austin Tatious]

Adding four more top 50s continues the Brewers consistent additions on the international market. Adding up to a handful of top 50s compared to one big prize (G. Lara) seems to be working better in recent years.

 

I agree. Spread the odds around. A lot of the highly rated international prospects weren’t the biggest bonus babies. Lara was quite a bad experience for Mark A I’m sure.

[Soupbone]

One week away from the start of the International signing period. I'm looking forward to reading about our new prospects. While I tend to agree that quantity over quality seems to be working for the Brewers I wish we were a bit higher up the "board" with our signees. But just need to trust the process and the next Acuna/Albies can reside in Milwaukee. We need a couple of lower dollar signees to turn out like those two. Maybe we can look back and say this happened with Hedbert.

[Soupbone]

When will we start hearing about the players that have been signed by the Brewers?

[JDBrewCrew]

According to Baseball America the Brewers have signed...

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2020-21-mlb-international-signings-tracker/

 

Milwaukee Brewers | (Signing preview, reports & video)

Jackson Brayan Chourio, ss/of, Venezuela (scouting report)

Gregory Barrios, ss, Venezuela (scouting report)

Daniel Guilarte, ss, Venezuela (scouting report)

Hendry Mendez, of, Dominican Republic

Manuel Vargas, of, Dominican Republic

Jonathan Guzman, ss, Dominican Republic

Jadher Areinamo, ss, Venezuela

Dikember Sanchez, rhp, Venezuela

[Jenkins5]

According to Baseball America the Brewers have signed...

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2020-21-mlb-international-signings-tracker/

 

Milwaukee Brewers | (Signing preview, reports & video)

Jackson Brayan Chourio, ss/of, Venezuela (scouting report)

Gregory Barrios, ss, Venezuela (scouting report)

Daniel Guilarte, ss, Venezuela (scouting report)

Hendry Mendez, of, Dominican Republic

Manuel Vargas, of, Dominican Republic

Jonathan Guzman, ss, Dominican Republic

Jadher Areinamo, ss, Venezuela

Dikember Sanchez, rhp, Venezuela

 

I enjoy that the moved signing date gives these kids the ability to start playing games right away in this season in DSL over them signing then having to wait rest of summer. Excited to see which of these guys names start to pop from both scouts and the Brewers themselves! Nothing better than signing a young kid like Perez and the team just gushing over him and challenging him!

[Soupbone]

IS there a complete list of the Brewers signings along with their bonus $?

[Mass Haas]

IS there a complete list of the Brewers signings along with their bonus $?

 

Go to this post in our Minor League Forum, more bonus info will be posted there once known.

[Soupbone]

Thanks Mass

[Mass Haas]

Looks like in addition to Jackson Chourio's $1.8M from the 2021 pool, these were the other prominent bonuses, had been looking for these $ figures for some time now, somehow had overlooked this Jesse Sanchez mlb.com article.

 

Guilarte yet to debut. Barrios struggled (still so young), but Chourio, Mendez, and Serrano look to be money very well spent after their debut seasons.

 

Daniel Guilarte, SS, Venezuela -- $1,000,000

 

Gregory Barrios, SS, Venezuela -- $1,000,000

 

Hendry Mendez, OF, Dominican Republic -- $735,000

 

Ney Serrano, SS, Dominican Republic -- $360,000