Delays, Zoom calls and a record deal: Pirates adapt to strike big in international market

Friday marked the start of the 2021 international signing period. It was originally supposed to start last July. Blame the pandemic for that.

And blame the pandemic for how much more difficult it was to prepare for these signings. The league froze all scouting at the start of the shutdown, and when it eventually started back up, in-person meetings were replaced with Zoom calls and video work.

Director of international scouting Junior Vizcaino believes those challenges helped his scouts get better, but this is the first new class of general manager Ben Cherington’s tenure. The Pirates needed it to be a successful one, and they were forced to adapt, however difficult that was.

"We’re scouts. We like to see it live and be in a ballpark and see guys in whatever situation," Vizcaino said during a Zoom call Friday. "See them [from when they] get off the bus, basically. Through videos, that’s hard to do.”

The saving grace for the Pirates this year is that the scouts had targeted many of these players before the shutdown, so they had information and relationships that they could fall back on.

“We got lucky with this class because some of these kids we’ve seen play early,” Vizcaino said. “But then once we got shut down it was a lot of video work, a lot of trust in our scouts and a lot of Zoom calls and team calls. Really just utilizing any tool that we can use to get know the kid or get to know their abilities.

“The thing that makes it a little bit easier is that everybody’s in the same boat.”

The Pirates opened the signing period by coming to terms with 15 free agents. And what better to continue this year like no other by finalizing a deal like they had never given a position player before?

• The Pirates signed outfielder Shalin Polanco received a $2.35 million bonus, the second-largest in franchise history, only behind the $2.6 million right-hander Luis Heredia received in 2010. The first reports that the Pirates were expected to sign him came in February of last year, so this has been a long time coming.

Baseball America had him ranked as the eighth best prospect in this signing period, praising his “short, fluid” swing, which they will believe will result in power once he puts on some muscle to his 5-foot-11 frame.

“He’s a very projectable kid," Vizcaino said. "Sort of a five-tool player. Can run. We think he’s going to stay in center field. Plus defender. Hopefully hit in the middle of the order. And he has the makeup to be a leader on the team.”

Team leader? That's a pretty big billing for a 16-year-old, perhaps even more so than projecting him to be part of the heart of the order while playing a premium position.

But the Pirates see the work he puts in – he’s an “over-worker,” as Vizcaino put it who had to have scouts intervene when they were told he was diving too much while training. Not because diving was detrimental to his fielding ability, but that he was playing just a bit too hard in what should be a more laid back setting – and think that will rub off on the other people in the Dominican Academy and moving forward.

“He’s going to be somebody that comes in, get dirty and lead by example," Vizcaino said.

• The Polanco deal is the second-largest in franchise history. There haven’t really been any others that came close.

At the start of the 2019-2020 signing period, the Pirates' largest bonus went to right-hander Christopher Cruz, totaling $850,000. Cruz was a highly-regarded prospect and an ok headliner for the year's signees, but the deal fell in line with the Pirates' strategy to spread money around rather than putting more eggs into one basket.

That ideology has not yielded much impact talent in the Majors in recent years, and per Baseball America's most recent top 30 prospect list, only two of the Pirates' top 20 prospects were international signees by the club. One is infielder Ji-Hwan Bae, currently ranked ninth, who originally signed with the Braves in 2017 but had his contract terminated by MLB two months later after the Braves violated international signing rules. By that point the Pirates were one of the few teams that had a significant amount of bonus money remaining and he was quickly rising up prospect charts. They were at the right place at the right time. The next highest-ranked international prospect they signed is corner infielder Alexander Mojica at No. 19.

Since Cherington has taken over as general manager, the Pirates have been more aggressive with larger contracts in this field, signing outfielder Solomon Maguire to a $594,000 deal last February and right-hander Po-Yu Chen for $1.25 million in October. That matches how the Red Sox approached international free agency under Cherington, signing big-ticket free agents like Yoan Moncada and Rafael Devers.

Vizcaino said this change in spending is a product of the market this year, but it’s hard to ignore how radical a departure this is from how the Pirates operated for nearly a decade.

“Last year, we didn’t get an opportunity to go after a player of his [Polanco] caliber,” Vizcaino said. “We made the best of what the market had. This year, we identified him early and we, our scouts in the Dominican, did the work, the early work.”

The signing period will conclude Dec. 15.

• Of the Pirates’ 15 signees, the other reported contracts include a $500,000 bonus for right-hander Darlin Diaz and $450,000 for shortstop John Zorilla.

With those two players and Polanco, over half of the Pirates' bonus pool of nearly $5.9 million has already been spent. It is safe to assume there are some more six-figure contracts among those other 12 free agents since it was the opening day. As a result, the big splashes for the year are most likely done.

And unlike other years, the Pirates can’t add to their pool as the year progresses. With the exception of the Josh Bell trade on Christmas Eve, Cherington acquired international spending room in every trade he made in 2020. That allowed the Pirates to add Maguire and Chen late.

This year, however, the league has frozen the trading of international space.

 Of course, Maguire and Chen emerged later in the signing period, and the possibility of there being another touted prospect later isn’t influencing how the Pirates are spending now.

“This year, there hasn’t been a player that’s popped up yet, under those circumstances. I think we used the money that we had in a smart way. I think we’ve spread it out the way that we’re supposed to.”

• Vizcaino began the call by acknowledging the support the international scouts have received from management. The Pirates landed a top 10 available prospect, and they know they can compete for highly-ranked players going forward.

“There’s no player that comes on the market that as a staff we can’t compete in," Vizcaino said. "If another teams gets a player that we like, it’s not because anyone in the front office that, ‘no, we can’t go after him because of resources,’ it’s just because that sometimes happens in this market.”