International Free Agency Thread, 1/15/2026 Class

[CaliforniaRaisin]

MLB Pipeline no longer links players to teams but here are the top 50 prospects for January 15th:

 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

BA posted their top 50 anticipated IFA bonuses. The Cubs are linked to the 37th highest bonus, Dominican SS Yadier Muñoz. He'll probably get a bonus around $1 million based on his ranking.

Francys Romero had a top 50 IFA prospects and the Cubs had one player, ranked 30th: Cuban SS Jaims Martínez (who initially was going to sign with the Cubs 2025 IFA class but got pushed out). Jaims is anticipated to get $900k.

Romero also said the Cubs are linked to quite a few other 6-figure bonus types. They normally sign 2 or 3 players to 7-figure bonuses that take up a majority of their pool space each year so this might be a shift in strategy.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

The Cubs will sign switch hitting Venezuelan CF Eduardo González next week for a $1 million bonus.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

 

[craig]

Cal, I can't quite read that last one.  Is that talking about Cubs signing Cuban pitcher Naikys Piedra?  If so, I thought other sources had reported him signing with the Cubs last July, actually?  He was already 23 as of last summer, so not super young/projectible.  Google AI has us having signed him in July, and references the 96 fastball and hypothetically good curve and change.  

Wondering if that actually happened then?  Or if kind of like Jaims Martinez, an agreement was kinda made, but the actual signing is this January rather than when the agreement was announced?  

[allen6510w]

Thanks. Looks like he'll turn 24 this spring.  I imagine he'll be given an opportunity to make the low-A or high-A teams as a reliever.  

[allen6510w]

3 minutes ago, craig said:

Cal, I can't quite read that last one.  Is that talking about Cubs signing Cuban pitcher Naikys Piedra?  If so, I thought other sources had reported him signing with the Cubs last July, actually?  He was already 23 as of last summer, so not super young/projectible.  Google AI has us having signed him in July, and references the 96 fastball and hypothetically good curve and change.  

Wondering if that actually happened then?  Or if kind of like Jaims Martinez, an agreement was kinda made, but the actual signing is this January rather than when the agreement was announced?  

Yes, at least one article referring to his signing references last summer.  I read "remarkably" good curve and change (the wonders of translation).   A downside: He averaged more walks than strike outs in the Cuban league. 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

On 1/9/2026 at 11:54 PM, CaliforniaRaisin said:

The Cubs will sign switch hitting Venezuelan CF Eduardo González next week for a $1 million bonus.

BA updated their top 50 to a top 100 that includes González.

58. Yanfri Serrano, SS, DR - $800k

62. Eduardo González, SS, Venezuela - $800k

81. Johan Geraldo, SS, DR - $400k

85. Franyel Almanzar, SS. DR - $500k

This is on top of Yadier Muñoz who is 35th.

 

[mul21]

15 hours ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

BA updated their top 50 to a top 100 that includes González.

58. Yanfri Serrano, SS, DR - $800k

62. Eduardo González, SS, Venezuela - $800k

81. Johan Geraldo, SS, DR - $400k

85. Franyel Almanzar, SS. DR - $500k

This is on top of Yadier Muñoz who is 35th.

 

These are all Cubs signees?

[craig]

16 hours ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

...62. Eduardo González, SS, Venezuela - $800k..

X link had said he was CF?  

[craig]

This is BA's ranking based on their valuation of the players?  Or based on anticipated signing bonuses?  I ask in part because I'm trying to figure Jaims Martinez, the Cuban kid.  I thought he was aligned to Cubs at $800K; so if that's true, he should have been in BA's top-100.  But his name is *not* included in your BA list, which maybe suggests they are trying to do their own valuation?  (Duh, obviously, otherwise #85 at $500K wouldn't be behind $400K #81.). 

If Jaims is not included in BA's top-100, it might mean Cubs over-rate him (we've stunk in IFA, so having faulty valuation would not be unusual....); or that BA underrates him (how can they know very well, after all?); or else that since he kinda agreed with Cubs a year ago, he's probably not appearing in showcases, and other scouts probably aren't talking about him because he's old news...   

[CaliforniaRaisin]

7 hours ago, mul21 said:

These are all Cubs signees?

Yes

[CaliforniaRaisin]

4 hours ago, craig said:

This is BA's ranking based on their valuation of the players?  Or based on anticipated signing bonuses?  I ask in part because I'm trying to figure Jaims Martinez, the Cuban kid.  I thought he was aligned to Cubs at $800K; so if that's true, he should have been in BA's top-100.  But his name is *not* included in your BA list, which maybe suggests they are trying to do their own valuation?  (Duh, obviously, otherwise #85 at $500K wouldn't be behind $400K #81.). 

If Jaims is not included in BA's top-100, it might mean Cubs over-rate him (we've stunk in IFA, so having faulty valuation would not be unusual....); or that BA underrates him (how can they know very well, after all?); or else that since he kinda agreed with Cubs a year ago, he's probably not appearing in showcases, and other scouts probably aren't talking about him because he's old news...   

The rankings are from BA. BA ranks based on bonus amounts. 

The bonus amounts are actually from Francys Romero because BA doesn't list bonus amounts anymore (when they stopped listing bonuses a few years ago, they said it was for security reasons for Venezuelan prospects).

[craig]

Interesting, cal, that they are trying to rank by bonus, yet Francy's bonus values differ.  Our guys in the 80-85 range, listing is $400-500.  Jaims I thought was reported for $900, but is not on BA's list.  

Maybe a reminder that info on bonuses, and on scouting accuracy on player evals, is variably iffy for international kids.  Will be interesting to see what info we get next week.  Either way, sure would be great if the Cubs could hit on some volume of these guys.

[craig]

Not to belabor, but we've got a lot of vet contracts now; very few close-to-majors good prospects or highly ranked prospects.  And we've got a lot of youngish players who are going to be inflating up the arbitration path over the upcoming years, so we should have a LOT of built-in inflation just to keep our own guys, much less add good players from outside.  

So going to be super critical that D+D is going to be effective.  Last year's draft class, and this upcoming draft class and IFA guys.  PCA, Caissie, Alcantara, Brown, those were acquired by trade.  Just got to hit on some of our draft and IFA guys so that the upcoming contending window doesn't get abbreviated by inflation, and by the total-failure D+D process under Theo's leadership.    

[Development DL]

Bingo    Well put 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Cubs are 8th in bWAR of internationals signed under the bonus pool system. 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

BA has official signings/bonuses for a few kids:

SS Yadier Muñoz - $1.2 million
SS Jaims Martínez - $900k (Cuba)
SS Johan Geraldo - $800k
OF Yanfri Serrano - $800k 
SS Eduardo González - $800k (Venezuela)
SS Franyel Almanzar - $600k
SS/CF Xavier Cadiz (Venezuela)
SS Luis Tomás

Dominican unless otherwise listed

[craig]

Thanks for all the info, Cal!  Geraldo sounds interesting, who knows?  

Heh heh, I sometimes have the sense that Dansby's contract lasts forever.  But he's got only 4-more seasons.  A kid signing today, if he's 16 or 17, would still only be 20 or 21 the year Dansby is gone.  Would take some super-success stud prodigy to be good enough to directly succeed Dansby.  

Interesting too that the bWar study lists Cubs as 8th.  Obviously a lot of that is long ago, in a different world.  Soler, Eloy, and Torres, all gone in 2017, and they were all added before the IFA cap.  So in some ways, better studies in future will begin with the cap rules in place.  Still, a semi-common view is that the Cubs have been awful in IFA, and this suggests maybe lots of teams don't do any better than we do.  

But yeah, man it would help if Moises ends up generating a bunch of value, and if somehow Rojas progresses, or if Jostin Florentino would somehow stay healthy, mature into another 3-4 mph, and turn out to be a serious big-leaguer.  Hope today's group develops and gives us some value.  

I admit I'm a teensy bit disappointed there aren't any pitchers in that feature list.  Nobody spends much on IFA pitchers, *IF* you hypothetically thought you could ID pitching prospects, don't think they'd cost a zillion to outbid for them.  

[CaliforniaRaisin]

15 minutes ago, craig said:

Thanks for all the info, Cal!  Geraldo sounds interesting, who knows?  

Heh heh, I sometimes have the sense that Dansby's contract lasts forever.  But he's got only 4-more seasons.  A kid signing today, if he's 16 or 17, would still only be 20 or 21 the year Dansby is gone.  Would take some super-success stud prodigy to be good enough to directly succeed Dansby.  

Interesting too that the bWar study lists Cubs as 8th.  Obviously a lot of that is long ago, in a different world.  Soler, Eloy, and Torres, all gone in 2017, and they were all added before the IFA cap.  So in some ways, better studies in future will begin with the cap rules in place.  Still, a semi-common view is that the Cubs have been awful in IFA, and this suggests maybe lots of teams don't do any better than we do.  

But yeah, man it would help if Moises ends up generating a bunch of value, and if somehow Rojas progresses, or if Jostin Florentino would somehow stay healthy, mature into another 3-4 mph, and turn out to be a serious big-leaguer.  Hope today's group develops and gives us some value.  

I admit I'm a teensy bit disappointed there aren't any pitchers in that feature list.  Nobody spends much on IFA pitchers, *IF* you hypothetically thought you could ID pitching prospects, don't think they'd cost a zillion to outbid for them.  

FYI - they picked 2012 because that was the first year of the capped era. They used to just go over and then take the penalty and punt the next signing year for a couple classes. (Soler did sneak in before 7/2/12 so he was un-capped.)

[Bertz]

IMO for the Cubs it's a story of eras

2012 - 2015: Incredible.  Just an insane hit rate and I'd be shocked if they're not #1 by a mile

2016 - 2020: Awful.  There's probably some injury luck here (looking at you Brailyn Marquez), but it appears the Cubs are going to get *nothing* out of this five year period except for whatever portion of the Jeimer Candelario trade you can attribute to Kevin Made (which obviously wouldn't show up in an analysis like this)

2021 - present:  Good again?  Still need time for results to come in but it seems promising.  Mo is the goods, I'd guess at least one of Rojas/Hernandez/Ramirez becomes a quality big leaguer.  The IFA team probably gets some partial credit for Alcantara?  The IFA guys at Myrtle mostly performed as well

It's so tough to evaluate this stuff because it's on such a crazy long time horizon.  Like the Cubs' IFA process clearly broke around 2015 and I don't think any of us had any clue until 2018 or 2019?

[craig]

31 minutes ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

FYI - they picked 2012 because that was the first year of the capped era. They used to just go over and then take the penalty and punt the next signing year for a couple classes. (Soler did sneak in before 7/2/12 so he was un-capped.)

Who cares now.  But I wanted to remember:

• Soler was pre-cap.  $30M deal.  
• Gleyber and Eloy were under first-version of cap, but the cap was very different then.  Cubs blew way past it to sign them.  Consequence then was the following year they couldn't sign anybody above $250K.  So the strategy was to super-spend one year, then get restricted the next.  
• But yeah, kinda totally different cap rules than now.  

[CaliforniaRaisin]

2 hours ago, Bertz said:

IMO for the Cubs it's a story of eras

2012 - 2015: Incredible.  Just an insane hit rate and I'd be shocked if they're not #1 by a mile

2016 - 2020: Awful.  There's probably some injury luck here (looking at you Brailyn Marquez), but it appears the Cubs are going to get *nothing* out of this five year period except for whatever portion of the Jeimer Candelario trade you can attribute to Kevin Made (which obviously wouldn't show up in an analysis like this)

2021 - present:  Good again?  Still need time for results to come in but it seems promising.  Mo is the goods, I'd guess at least one of Rojas/Hernandez/Ramirez becomes a quality big leaguer.  The IFA team probably gets some partial credit for Alcantara?  The IFA guys at Myrtle mostly performed as well

It's so tough to evaluate this stuff because it's on such a crazy long time horizon.  Like the Cubs' IFA process clearly broke around 2015 and I don't think any of us had any clue until 2018 or 2019?

Minor point of clarification but Brailyn was part of the 7/2/2015 class (with Amaya, Assad, Morel and Paredes). Albertos was another injury-prone prospect from that 2015 class.

Wanted to add that if the Cubs IFA process broke somewhere between 2015-2018, it could have been due to having to punt 2 years worth of IFA classes (2016 and 2017) and losing some standing or connections during that time.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

2 hours ago, craig said:

Who cares now.  But I wanted to remember:

• Soler was pre-cap.  $30M deal.  
• Gleyber and Eloy were under first-version of cap, but the cap was very different then.  Cubs blew way past it to sign them.  Consequence then was the following year they couldn't sign anybody above $250K.  So the strategy was to super-spend one year, then get restricted the next.  
• But yeah, kinda totally different cap rules than now.  

I think this is right. Eloy Jiménez, Gleyber Torres and Jen-Ho Tseng were the 7/2/2013 class. The Cubs were penalized and couldn't sign anyone big in 2014. Then they did the same thing on 7/2/2015, signing guys like Miguel Amaya, Javier Assad, Christopher Morel and Isaac Paredes. This time, they were penalized for both the 2016 and 2017 classes.

Starting with 7/2/2017, the caps became hard and no team has gone past it since. No one succeeded in from the 7/2/18 or 7/2/19 classes, as Bertz pointed out. 

The 7/2/2020 class was moved to 1/15/2021 due to Covid and that's when things started rebounding, as Bertz pointed out (Ballesteros/C. Hernández/Ramírez in 2021, Rojas in 2022, Cepeda in 2023, Cabada in 2025).