The Pittsburgh Pirates have emerged as the favorites to sign 16-year-old Cuban outfielder Cristian Jauregui once the 2023 international signing period begins on January 15th. Francys Romero broke the news on Twitter and I was able to confirm that they are the favorites. Jauregui was just declared a free agent, along with five other Cuban players. He’s the youngest of the group.
Sources: The Pittsburgh Pirates are the favorites to sign the Cuban OF Cristian Jauregui (16) declared a free agent a few hours ago. This sign will be oficial when a new international signing period opens January 15. pic.twitter.com/12BMIyatvb
— Francys Romero (@francysromeroFR) December 2, 2022
There isn’t much out there for Jauregui, but he’s clear from the video that he has some early power from the left side. A quick scouting report from Romero calls him a contact hitter with speed. I’ll be able to get a better report on him when/of he signs with the Pirates.
The Pirates were recently named as the favorites to sign Dominican outfielder Raymond Mola, who is a top 30 prospect in this draft class.
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
Doesn’t sound like a budding superstar, but I am still shocked. I didn’t think the Pirates knew that Cuba existed….
When a player does this on winter meetings eve, it been brewing for a long time.
Pirates are the best with the under-18 crowd…
Nevermind… 😥
See ya Bryan: https://twitter.com/ByRobertMurray/status/1599102460395945984
I hope him the best of luck and he goes to a winner. He’s given them a fairly solid four years of good baseball while they surrounded him with a shit show from ownership on down and he continued to play hard and not complain.
According to Macky, Reynolds has requested a trade.hmmm
Crap. O’s signed Kyle Gibson.
We have plenty of other guys that can give us an over 5.00 ERA
And Reynolds has officially requested a trade! Not sure how I feel about that or what that may do to his value.
Pinstripes…
They were the favorites to sign a Cuban pitcher and were out bid and lost him. So lets not count the chickens before they hatch.
Teams rarely lose favorites, but it happens. The Cuban pitcher you’re referencing got an offer that they weren’t even willing to come close to, so you’re not going to overspend during a year when your bonus pool has a hard cap. They would have had to break a deal elsewhere to come up with the difference, but I was told that they were already willing to give him top end what they thought of his value and he wasn’t worth losing someone else. The Pirates lost Maikol Escotto after he agreed to a deal, then got him back anyway, which only works out in the sense that they didn’t pay his high bonus, but he doesn’t look like a prospect. The other significant one is Maikol Hernandez and that might work in their favor because he was really bad in the FCL this year in his second season of pro ball (he’s still 19, so there’s time). The Orioles swooped in with a $1.2M bonus that was much more than he originally agreed to more than a year earlier. They overpaid big time to get him to break his deal.
This one is a bit different than the rest because he wasn’t a free agent until yesterday and the signing period starts in 43 days. Most teams already have most of their pool spent, some have already tapped out everything for their January 15th signings. All of the others had a long time between agreeing and signing.
We need talent, hopefully he is a good un
6-8 years away, tho??
That’s just making the majors. There’s other value to be had from international players if they are good earlier in the form of trade value