@TheCCO: #Cubs just announced the team has acquired LHP Clayton Richard. Richard will start Saturday's game. Donn Roach was optioned to Iowa.
Makes sense. Jed was his GM for a few years. So there is a familiarity. Not against it.
Now it is not about the tax. Just going over by 5% will put it at 100% tax. They are trying to get from 2 year of penalties to 1.
Chicago Cubs $3,230,700 max is 150% of this. They can take on a max of 1,618,500 more cap space.
Since there is no draft, the only importance of the “slot values” is for trading. Teams are allowed to trade for up to an additional 50 percent of their original bonus pool. So a team that starts with a $2 million bonus pool is allowed to obtain an additional $1 million in pool money. However, teams can’t simply trade for $1 million or any other amount in pool space—they have to acquire the specific slot values from another team.
3:12pm: Chicago will receive the 120th slot, which carries $149,700 in spending capacity, Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com tweets.
I'm expecting them to reach max cap so expect a flurry of trades soon. They are only 10% of max.
The rules:
The CBA lays out penalties for teams that exceed their allotted bonus pool amounts:
0-5% overage: MLB taxes the overage at a 100% rate.
5-10% overage: (1) MLB taxes the overage at a 100% rate. (2) The offending club loses the right to sign any player to a bonus exceeding $500,000 during the following international signing period.
10-15% overage: (1) MLB taxes the overage at a 100% rate. (2) The offending club loses the right to sign any player to a bonus exceeding $300,000 during the following international signing period.
15%+ overage: (1) MLB taxes the overage at a 100% rate. (2) The offending club loses the right to sign any player to a bonus exceeding $300,000 during the following two international signing periods.
These penalties have not stopped clubs from spending well over their allotted pools amounts. This practice really took off during the 2014-15 signing period, with the New York Yankees as the biggest culprit. Dustin Palmateer authored a post entitled, "The Yankees and the Toothless International Spending Limits," at Baseball Prospectus that is a thorough examination of the current system and well worth reading. Palmateer shares the tidbit that as of December 4, 2014 (about halfway through the 2015-15 signing period), the Rays overspent their pool by 35%, the Red Sox by 111%, the Angels by 248%, and the Yankees by 610%. It will be interesting to see how many clubs employ such a strategy this time around.
