Earlier in the week we heard that the Pirates are not likely to award a record bonus to 16-year-old Dominican prospect Miguel Angel Sano. Kiley McDaniel of Baseball Prospectus reports that Pittsburgh would be willing to approach the $4.25MM the A's awarded to Michael Ynoa. BP's sources suggest the Pirates have a "bid ceiling" of $4MM, but that may not be a hard ceiling.
As McDaniel says, the Pirates can afford to award Sano a large bonus, but they cannot afford to bid against themselves. Apparently "nearly every Latin insider" believes the Pirates will land Sano, so they need to avoid hyping him up too much even though they believe he's "better than any player" they'll pick in the draft. Pirates president Frank Coonelly sounded interested but restrained when discussing the prospect yesterday.
