A top New York Yankees prospect is not who he claims to be, sources tell SI.com. Two weeks ago, the Yankees signed a shortstop purporting to be 16-year-old Damian Arredondo from the Dominican Republic to an $850,000 bonus. Now Major League Baseball's Department of Investigations has determined that Arredondo is not the player's real name and that he is older than 16.The Yanks will not lose any money in this because the signing bonus was was contingent on the outcome of this investigation.
The Yankees signed the player they thought was Arredondo on July 2, the first day that major league teams are permitted to sign international free agents as young as 16. The Yankees were impressed with the switch-hitter's strong arm and speed -- he reportedly ran a 60-yard-dash in 6.4 seconds.
According to a new Major League Baseball rule, a player found to have used a fraudulent identity or to have misrepresented his age cannot sign with another club for one year. Major League Baseball has recently increased its efforts to deter identity fraud in Latin America by hiring new investigators and dispatching other investigators from its New York City office to oversee the process.
In general, sources say that MLB will be working with authorities in the Dominican Republic to bring criminal charges against the orchestrators of fraud -- often the trainers and agents who stand to make large percentages of the prospects' signing bonuses.
Is it just me or should the Yankees be blamed for doing a crap job in figuring out exactly who they were signing? How do you sign someone who isn't who they say they are? I know things get a little confusing with names and ages in these places, but come on, you have to do a better job than this.
Another question; let's say the kid they thought was Arredondo is actually 17 or 18 years old and has all the talent they thought he had. Can they still sign him?
5 Comments:
1) They didn't "draft" him. There was no risk, no loss whatsoever in this. It's an international free agent, and there's no limit on how many of those you can sign, nor does it cost us anything like in the case of the MLB draft.
2) Who cares? They signed him on the contingency that he was who he said he was. Now that they found out, there's no loss to them. What's the big deal? It's not like this precluded them from making any other moves, signings, etc. There's absolutely no negative impact from it. To NOT have tried to sign him would have been the mistake here, because if he had panned out to be who he said he was, and some other team struck a goldmine with the guy, the Yankees would lose out.
It's also quite possible that the Yankees knew this all along, and were hoping MLB never found out. Perhaps that was their goal all along, that despite them knowing he was older than he said, the talent was good enough that they didn't care.
Anon, what are you, this blogs anal editor? Draft, sign, what's the damn difference? You obviously know what I meant.
Are you the same person who corrected Mike with "their" and "there"?
Either way, no where in the post did I say it cost the Yankees anything. In fact, I said it didn't cost them anything, specifically the signing bonus.
Who cares?
You cared enough to post a comment.
I don't think you can really blame the Yankees for this. Yeah, they should pay a bit more attention maybe, but its so hard with these foreign players to know for sure. I mean the Athletics started scouting Miguel Tejada when he was 'thirteen' and we didn't know until a couple years ago he was really two years older. Same with Vlad, he ended up admitting he was a year older this past spring.
These guys find a way to make it extremely difficult to get their legit birth certificate, if there even is one. I do agree with the MLB investigating all of these guys, it better for these teams investing all this money. Hopefully the teams are more careful with these signings. But its kind of difficult to blame the Yankees on this one.
Dollars to doughnuts it was Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez trying to pull a fast one & get back into the majors.
They can sign him still, but they have to wait for the suspension to end.
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