Albert Guaimaro was a high-profile signing by the Red Sox last summer.
Major League Baseball has banned the Boston Red Sox from signing any international players during next year’s signing period following an investigation which showed they circumvented signing-bonus rules last year.
They’ve also had five of their teenage prospects, all signed over the past year, declared free agents
During last year’s international signing period, the Red Sox were limited to spending a maximum of $300,000 on any individual prospect due to the team exceeding it’s spending limit the prior year.
What happened was, the Red Sox would sign a major prospect as well as a number of insignificant prospects each at their limit of 300K. The lesser prospects would funnel the majority of the money they signed for to the more serious prospect. Effectively those players were paid a little bit of money to function as middle-men in this obvious abuse of the international signing rules.
Here are the five players who have been declared free agents:
They will now be free to sign with any team starting Saturday, which is the start of the new international signing period. Interestingly, the first $300,000 of their new bonuses will not count against teams’ bonus pool limits as the players will be keeping their original signing bonuses from Boston.
Albert Guaimaro is considered to be the best player of the bunch.
Each of the players will also be required to hire new agents before signing with major league clubs.
