Yes,Sosa signed for $3,500 at age 16 and McGwire signed for $145,000 at age 20 the same year….of course, McGwire was also much closer to the Majors and far more likely to make it there…..and from age 16 to 20 Sosa got room, board, salary, education, and health insurance….all of which likely added up to a value far greater than the difference between their signing bonuses.

There are thousands of 16 yr old US players that would LOVE to be able to sign with a team so that they could be paid and provided for while having access to the best available developmental coaches.

I have a few, but mostly it irks me that the writer doesn’t know that Robinson Cano and Alfonso Soriano are/were 2B, not SS, despite being from an area known as “the cradle of shortstops” (what’s the Spanish word, then, for “misnomer”?), and it irritates me more that the author also bemoans that 16 year-olds get smaller signing bonuses than 20 year-olds. He seems to think this is racism and uses only older American players as comps for younger, Dominican players. I say it’s relative and a product of the signing system itself (and that if Americans could sign when they were 16, they’d also get smaller bonuses). It’s amazing to me that someone can write about baseball prospects and miss the fact that older prospects are more projectable (i.e., are worth more guaranteed money) than 16 year-old lottery tickets whose only real claim is that they’re from a baseball hotbed.

But as I said, your thoughts?