Via Ben Badler: MLB is essentially eliminating $300k from each team’s international spending pool beginning with the 2014-2015 signing period. Since the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement was implemented, each team was given six $50k exemptions (don’t count against their pool) to use for international amateurs, but those exemptions were eliminated. Apparently this was written into the CBA.
Teams have not yet been given their international pool for this summer — that won’t happen until April — but we’ve already heard the Yankees plan to spend over their pool and deal with the penalties, which include a tax and future bonus limitations. The six $50k exemptions don’t sound like much, but they do add up. The Yankees have a knack for finding cheap young players in Latin America — SS Thairo Estrada, who is one of their better prospects, signed for $49k in 2012 — and losing the exemptions means they’ll either have to deal with more penalties and/or toe the signing pool line more carefully in the future.