Olney: Yankees have “serious interest” in Jorge Soler

Via Buster Olney, the Yankees have “serious interest” in 19-year-old Cuban outfielder Jorge Soler. A number of other clubs are in on Soler as well, and reports circulated earlier today that he had agreed to sign with the Cubs for something like $27.5M. Olney confirms that those reports are untrue. It’s worth mentioning that Solar hasn’t been declared a free agent by MLB yet, so it would be illegal for him to have agreed to a deal already. As in a violation federal regulations illegal.

You can read Soler’s scouting report in the final question of this mailbag from two weeks ago. As I’ve said in the past, I prefer Soler to Yoenis Cespedes based on the little we know just because he’s so much younger and can have a more traditional development path rather than be expected to produce at the big league level immediately. Cespedes got $36M across four years from the Athletics, but I really have no idea what it’ll take to sign Soler. That $27.5M talk is scary; we’re talking about a kid several years away from the show.