The Blue Jays have acquired additional slot money from the Dodgers in a deal that will send Chase De Jong and Tim Locastro back to Los Angeles. Ben Badler of Baseball America first reported that Toronto was acquiring slot money, while ESPN.com’s Keith Law reported the remainder of the swap (via Twitter).
The Jays struck the deal in order to offset some of the $3.9MM that the team just promised to international signee Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The club entered the July 2 period with just $2,324,100 of total pool space, leaving a $1,575,900 gap.
According to Badler, the move will limit the extent to which the Blue Jays have exceeded their pool space, but won’t eliminate it entirely. By spending only 15% or less above the cap, the club can limit its signing limitations to just a single signing period. That, in turn, would require the the team end up with nearly $3.4MM in capacity.
Looking at the individual slots available to each team, the Dodgers’ largest single bonus value was $545,900. The team also possesses $368,700 and $249,000 spending allocations. It seems likely that all three of those are headed to Toronto, as Jon Morosi of FOX Sports tweets that over $1MM will change hands.
It is worth remembering that the move will also cost the Dodgers money since L.A. has already blown well past its original allocation. Every dollar the team sends away will require it to pay an equivalent amount in overage fees.
In some regards, then, this looks to be another cash for prospects deal. In this case, however, Toronto was not looking just to avoid spending (though it did that as well), but also to avoid a lengthier international timeout.
As for the players involved, De Jong is a long, strike throwing righty. The 2012 second-round pick is repeating the Class A level after a rough year last year, but he’s still only 21 and has produced better results this year (3.13 ERA with 8.0 K/9 against 1.9 BB/9). After being rated by Baseball America as the 11th-best Jays prospect in 2014, he dropped to 17th entering this season, but seems to be on the ascent at present and could still have some projection left, per BA.
Locastro, 22, is primarily a second baseman, though he’s also seen a bit of action at short and the corner outfield. He reached the Class A level this year, and has performed quite well. Over 289 turns at bat, Locastro owns a .310/.409/.421 slash with five home runs and a rather impressive thirty stolen bags (being caught eleven times along the way). He’s struck out just 25 times while picking up 21 walks.
I was going to suggest that LA try this approach in my last blog post on J2 prospects. Glad to see they recognized another way to buy prospects by doubling down this IFA period. Sell of the slots that we clearly don’t care about anyway.
off*
looks like dodgers got some solid prospects
DeJong is not a LHP.
He hits left-handed, apparently, and I am unable to decipher a B-Ref page, apparently.
so now MLB has a system that allows the big markets not only to buy the best international prospects… but effectively buy themselves some decent american ones as well.
Brilliant…
Nobody forced the Blue Jays to sell their prospects for slot money.
I’m pretty sure that Rogers made it clear to AA to do just that… this is lunacy, otherwise
pretty sure AA didn’t want to skip the next international free agency, as a jays fan, I’m happy this is the case
$4M for Vlad Jr. Sorry, but that seems like a stretch.
Typical Blue Jays. It’s all about the cash. It has nothing to do about putting a viable product on the field. Sell the prospects which it needs to be said, the Dodgers consider to be valuable at the purchase price and the Jays don’t.
If Rogers is going to continue this approach, why have the team? Just sell them and let an owner who will have winning as a philosophy, purchase them. This is why class free agents or players who have a choice, won’t come here. They know this dirty secret. Rogers just bleeds them as a marketing tool with absolutely no interest in baseball.