Connolly: Its a slow-go but the Orioles are finally on right road internationally

It’s impossible to know whether the Orioles struck gold Sunday, the first day of this year’s international signing period. They did, however, dust off the excavator and dredge for the third consecutive year — which continues to be news in these parts.

Using all but about $500,000 of their allotted $5.8 million for 2023, the Orioles announced the signing of 27 international amateurs, tying a franchise record, including Dominican/New Jersey shortstop Luis Ayden Almeyda.

Baseball America’s 17th-ranked international prospect in the 2023 class agreed to a franchise-record $2.3 million signing bonus.

The Orioles signed 12 others to bonuses worth six figures — none above $500,000 — on Sunday including Dominican shortstop Joshua Liranzo, 16 ($500,000); Dominican second baseman José Mejía, 17 ($400,000); Dominican shortstop Félix Amparo, 16 ($350,000); Venezuelan right-hander Keeler Morfe, 16 ($210,000); Venezuelan shortstop Luis Guevara, 16 ($200,000) and Venezuelan left-hander Francisco Morao, 17 ($200,000).

Any high-level, positive results from this group will take five or more years, but the Orioles’ effort continues to be there recently — which is significant given the organization’s decades-long dismissal of top international talent.

Get to know Luis Almeyda, the highest-paid international signee in club history 🇩🇴 pic.twitter.com/459Ol4cZ5A

— Orioles Player Development (@OsPlayerDev) January 15, 2023

“We’ve been at it here, and signing kids, and they’re starting to get up the line. A couple of the kids have gotten to High A already,” said Orioles senior director of international scouting Koby Perez, who joined the organization in January 2019. “It takes time. It’s like when you’re growing a plant. You plant the seed. You can’t see anything, and then once the flowers start blooming, it becomes real pretty and nice. That’s kind of where I feel like we’re at, where the seed is starting to pop up and come out of the ground, and hopefully, in the near future, it will be a nice, big flower.”

The Orioles have the top-rated farm system in baseball, almost exclusively due to their shrewd amateur drafting in the past few years. As the big-league team improves, however, the Orioles’ draft spot plummets, meaning they need a revitalized international program to keep the system healthy.

Which isn’t easy. Because if MLB’s domestic amateur draft is a crapshoot, the international signing period is a MegaMillions ticket. With the domestic draft, teams are betting on the future of high school and college players, many of whom have played at top institutions.

With international amateurs, the process is even more about hope and projection, and often, scouts must dream on 16-year-olds who have never left their region or had advanced training.

Many of the players signed throughout baseball Sunday will receive six-and-seven-figure bonuses and never see the majors. Some may not rise above Double A.

So, all this should be taken in proper context.

Yet, if you are an Orioles fan, Sunday’s results also should be met with cautious optimism.

It shows the continual progression of the organization’s commitment to its international amateur pipeline, something that basically didn’t exist before Mike Elias was hired as general manager in 2018 and Perez two months later.

That’s not hyperbolic. As I’ve often written, the Orioles have never signed a Venezuelan amateur and developed him through their system and into the majors as an Oriole. Never.

Given the political strife in baseball-rich Venezuela, maybe that failure can be overlooked. But, according to BaltimoreBaseball.com, the Orioles haven’t signed, developed and graduated a Dominican to the Orioles since infielder Pedro Florimón played four games in 2011 and they haven’t originally signed and developed a Dominican pitcher for the Orioles since right-hander Daniel Cabrera, who debuted in 2004 and left the franchise in 2008.

In this era of international baseball superstardom, that is an abject embarrassment.

So, Elias and Perez are working to fix it. On Sunday, the Orioles added 14 players from the Dominican, 11 from Venezuela and one each from Colombia and Cuba. There are nine pitchers. eight infielders, six catchers and four outfielders in the group. Last year, the Orioles initially announced 24 players on the first day of the signing period, which included 12 Dominicans and 10 Venezuelans.

This one is a cadre of both quantity and quality, Perez believes.

And that starts with Almeyda, who grew up in Paterson, N.J., but moved with his family to the Dominican when he was 15 so they could help his maternal grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease.

“My grandma was really sick, and we went to the Dominican Republic to take care of her,” said Almeyda, who is called Ayden by friends and teammates. “And I took it as an advantage. I was looking at it like, ‘OK, we could go here for, you know, a little bit of time, train and then go back and be ready for high school ball.’ But it didn’t work like that.”

The Orioles first watched Almeyda play in a tournament in Mexico and liked what they saw. And they started digging, discovering that he came from a strong family — his father is a retired firefighter and his mother is a banker — and that he was mature for his age.

Perez, who was born in the Dominican but also grew up in New Jersey, said they had several mutual connections in local baseball circles and so Perez gleaned plenty about the 6-foot-2, 180-pounder with a quick bat and a strong arm.

Almeyda also has the advantage that he won’t have to adjust American culture, cuisine, language and training methods the way many foreign players do. That was another reason the Orioles have invested so much in him.

“I think it’s super significant,” Perez said. “Any time we give people significant money like this, we’ve got to check all the boxes and make sure we’re doing it with the right kid and the right family, just to ensure that the kid can continue growing and progressing as a major-league baseball player, which is our goal and the family’s goal.

“And I think it’s very personal to me,” Perez added, “because it’s the highest bonus that we’ve given out. And it just says a lot to our faith and trust in this kid’s ability not only as a player but as a person.”

We have opened the 2022-23 International Signing Period with 27 contract agreements. #RisingTide pic.twitter.com/uGk8eUFkvm

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) January 15, 2023

Spending $2 million-plus on one international player guarantees nothing, of course. The 2015 international class is considered one of the strongest in recent memory, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. signing for $3.9 million with the Toronto Blue Jays, while Juan Soto ($1.5 million with the Washington Nationals) and Fernando Tatis Jr. ($700,000 with the Chicago White Sox) also were part of that year’s non-Cuban contingent.

But the three who received bonuses higher than Guerrero that year — infielder Lucius Fox, outfielder Jhailyn Ortiz and infielder Wander Javier — have combined for 28 big-league plate appearances. Those were all by Fox, who received a $6 million signing bonus from the San Francisco Giants out of the Bahamas in 2015 and has since been traded twice and waived twice, including once by the Orioles. Fox, now 25, hit .080 in 10 games for the Nationals in 2022.

Avoiding the high-risk, high-reward component of international scouting is one of the primary reasons the Orioles under Peter Angelos did not wade heavily into that market, along with the owner’s concerns about dealing with potentially unscrupulous intermediaries who often brokered those deals in foreign countries. When John Angelos took over the operations from his ailing father in 2018, the franchise’s philosophy changed.

Gradually, the Orioles are becoming a player internationally. They are building a new Dominican academy, which Perez said they hope will be up and running at some point in 2023. The organization’s pitch to international players this year included a video that showed what the academy and its grounds will look like.

So, when it comes to the international pipeline, the Orioles are doing the right thing. Sure, it would be nice for them to land a top 10 or top 5 international amateur one of these years. That takes more time and more years to get established in certain countries.

But the Orioles are in this game now. They’ve spent more than a third of their allotted pool this year on a player they have thoroughly vetted, a player who expressed his excitement Sunday for joining the top farm system in baseball.

It got that way on the backs of drafted players.

It will only stay that way if the Orioles can develop some of these international signees in the next few seasons. Sunday was another step toward that goal, something that was inconceivable 10 years ago.

(Photo of Luis Guevara courtesy of the Orioles)

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