North Shore Nine

Monday marked the beginning of this year’s international signing period. The Pirates have already made a slew of acquisitions as they look to add as much talent to the lower levels of the organization that they can.

The way Major League Baseball is set up, international free agents is perhaps the most efficient way to find high-impact ballplayers for pennies on the dollar. We can get into ethics behind signing 16-year olds to full time jobs at another time, but this is where players like Julio Rodriguez, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Juan Soto officially start their pro careers and the cost for acquiring a talent like this is simply a drop in the bucket of a team’s budget.

This is where the Pirates found two essential parts to their playoff teams from the 2010’s in Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco for $85,000 and $175,000, respectively. It’s also where they have invested heavily into their facilities to make sure the teenagers they bring in have as much support to reach the majors as they can. Or so we’ve been told.

Since 2010, which is the year after the Pirates inked Gregory Polanco, the Pirates haven’t produced a single player from their international classes with a career Fangraphs WAR of 3.0. Harold Ramirez and his 2.8 WAR lead the pack among the over 200 players who have been signed in that period. Another problem with the 2.8 WAR accumulated by Ramirez is that none of that came while in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform, as he was shipped to Toronto at age 21, along with Reese McGuire, to rid themselves of Francisco Liriano in 2016.

Outside Ramirez, the Pirates have been unable to identify and develop a worthwhile Major Leaguer in this timeframe.

The jury is still mostly out on anything this regime has done in this space. Yordany De Los Santos and Jun-Seok Shim seem to offer the most promise, but neither are considered consensus Top 10 prospects in the organization just yet. 19 year old OF Shalin Polanco was inked to the 2nd largest international deal in franchise history, and has shown glimpses of why, but has yet to fully put things together.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be excited about some of the new faces that will appear in the Dominican Summer League this year. But at some point, the Pirates need to figure out how to produce some impact talent from this crop of players.