International signing periods put dollar figures beside teenage names; Ethan Salas made his first Double-A statement by beating a veteran’s fastball. On August 22, 2023, the 17-year-old catcher faced 27-year-old Mitchell Stumpo with a game waiting for someone to finish it. Salas worked through seven pitches. MiLB’s game report described the fastball he drove toward the right-center gap for a double, giving San Antonio an 8–7 win. His helmet came off after he reached second as teammates poured from the dugout.
That plate appearance offered something a signing announcement never could: evidence against an opponent trying to exploit him. Salas had to recognize a hittable pitch, get his barrel there, and deliver under pressure. A scouting department could study those decisions. Nobody could buy them in advance.
One double could not settle his future, either. The distance between those two truths explains the international market. Money tells us how strongly a club believes in a teenager. What should happen to that belief once professional pitchers start finding his weaknesses?
A $5.6 million bet on a teenage catcher
Seven months before that double, San Diego had committed $5.6 million to Salas. His MiLB biography puts the Padres’ original 2023 signing pool at $5,825,500. The catcher consumed about 96 percent of that base allowance, turning one scouting judgment into the defining financial choice of a class. Under the labor agreement, clubs cannot exceed their available pool.
That restriction gives the signature its baseball consequence. San Diego could spend heavily on Salas or preserve more of its original allocation for other prospects. A scout who loved another young hitter still had to consider the dollars remaining. International signing periods force clubs to make those choices before professional competition supplies much of the evidence they want.
Salas signed on January 15, 2023, at 16. The date marked the opening of a window that runs through December 15 under the 2022–26 agreement. MLB’s eligibility rules permit qualifying international players to sign at his age. The Padres could secure his talent that winter; they still had to find out how quickly his bat and receiving would develop.
Even his rankings captured that uncertainty. Salas led MLB Pipeline’s international class, but his MiLB biography lists him 86th overall when he debuted professionally that May. One list compared the available amateurs. The other placed him among developing professionals across baseball, including domestic draft picks. Spending most of a pool on the first group’s best player did not automatically put him atop the second.
By August, the assignment had become much tougher. Salas reached Double-A after only nine High-A games, entering a league whose players averaged 24, according to MiLB’s contemporary promotion coverage. Grading the 17-year-old as though he shared their experience would have been bad scouting. Neither his bonus nor the confidence behind it could make those missing years disappear.
Behind the plate, the work demanded a different evaluation. The Padres’ media guide records Salas catching Robby Snelling’s five hitless innings against Wichita on August 30, with nine strikeouts. Snelling earned those outs. Assessing Salas’s contribution requires watching his receiving, blocking, and coordination with the pitcher.
Every inning Salas caught tested what San Diego had chosen to do with its money. The decision also carried a less visible cost: other prospects the club could have pursued with that money. Two winters later, the Dodgers would put names to that cost while trying to sign Roki Sasaki.
To land Sasaki, the Dodgers had to deal
Sasaki brought professional innings in Japan into the same spending system that governed Salas’s teenage contract. His age, 23, still placed him inside the pool. The rules exempt foreign professionals from the bonus pool only when they reach 25 and complete six qualifying professional seasons.
That classification had an immediate price. MLB.com’s January 2025 coverage, citing The Athletic, put Sasaki’s Dodgers bonus at a reported $6.5 million. Los Angeles had opened the period with $5,146,200 in pool space. Even a club willing to pay the larger amount needed additional spending permission before it could complete the deal within the rules.
The labor agreement allowed the Dodgers to acquire pool space, up to 60 percent of their original allotment. They used that flexibility by trading outfielders Dylan Campbell to Philadelphia and Arnaldo Lantigua to Cincinnati for additional capacity. Those deals expanded the allowance; the Dodgers still had to pay the bonus themselves.
For Campbell and Lantigua, an accounting limit changed their organizations. Los Angeles surrendered developing players to pursue a pitcher who already offered substantial professional evidence. The cost of signing Sasaki therefore extended beyond the check. Evaluating the decision also means considering the prospects the Dodgers gave up to make it possible.
Other young players faced uncertainty before the paperwork reached that stage. AP reported in January 2025 that unofficial international agreements sometimes involved players as young as 14. Its coverage described Latin American teenagers waiting on commitments while Sasaki considered his options.
International signing periods connected those negotiations through a shared budget. A club pursuing Sasaki had to account for what remained available to everyone else. That makes a signing-class bonus list an incomplete guide to scouting judgment: its numbers also reflect timing, competing opportunities, and the room a club managed to acquire.
Made outgrows the scouting report
Milwaukee chose a different level of investment in Jesús Made. His $950,000 bonus in January 2024 came with MLB Pipeline’s No. 23 ranking in that international class. The price secured a promising teenager without placing him among the market’s most expensive names. It could not establish where he would belong after a season of professional at-bats.
Made soon supplied reasons to revisit the forecast. MiLB’s records show 39 walks and 28 strikeouts in 51 Dominican Summer League games during 2024. Those decisions gave evaluators something more useful than another comparison of signing checks. They could study whether his strike-zone judgment would survive better pitching.
By September 2025, Biloxi’s promotion announcement listed him fifth overall on MLB Pipeline’s prospect list. He had moved from 23rd within an amateur class to fifth across the professional prospect population. Different competition and fresh evidence had changed the assessment.
International signing periods require clubs to attach prices to projections like Made’s. A useful ranking then has to remain free to outgrow that initial price. Treating a smaller bonus as a permanent ceiling would punish the very development a club hoped to produce.
The next assignments also complicated his strongest early statistic. Across three levels in 2025, Made finished with 67 walks and 108 strikeouts in 115 games, according to MiLB’s record. His earlier excess of walks over strikeouts had disappeared. That shift deserved investigation without automatically canceling the excitement.
The relevant questions concerned the pitching he faced and the decisions he made against it. Had opponents found a weakness he could correct? Did the tougher assignments reveal a lasting limit? His acquisition cost could answer neither question.
Chourio finds power and pays in strikeouts
The Brewers had already watched a young hitter change the meaning of an earlier investment. MiLB’s January 2023 retrospective described Jackson Chourio, who signed for $1.8 million, developing from a contact-oriented amateur into a more aggressive power threat.
Carolina manager Víctor Estévez supplied the telling detail: from third base, he could hear the bat’s “vroom.” Chourio finished 2022 with 20 home runs at 18 and stood tenth on MLB Pipeline’s overall list by season’s end.
The original bonus had secured the opportunity to develop that swing. Greater aggression also brought more misses: MiLB reported a 26.9 percent strikeout rate that season, substantially higher than his earlier DSL mark. A louder bat had created a more valuable prospect and a new problem to monitor.
International signing periods can capture a player before that transformation becomes visible. Rankings earn their credibility by explaining the change afterward. Chourio’s power justified attention; the strikeouts demanded scrutiny. Protecting an old evaluation would have missed both.
De Vries brings back major league arms
San Diego’s investment in Leo De Vries eventually helped it acquire players for an entirely different stage of competition. The Padres signed him for $4.2 million in January 2024. By the following summer, Lansing’s announcement of his arrival identified him as MLB Pipeline’s third-ranked overall prospect.
On July 31, 2025, San Diego sent De Vries, Braden Nett, Henry Baez, and Eduarniel Núñez to the Athletics for Mason Miller and JP Sears. The Padres’ official transaction log records the six-player exchange. An international signing had become the centerpiece of a deal for major league pitching.
That transaction gave San Diego another way to realize value from an early scouting decision. The organization had acquired De Vries, developed him, and found a club willing to exchange established players for his future. A falling farm system ranking could accompany that decision even as the major league roster improved.
The Athletics made the opposite choice. They surrendered major league pitching to acquire developing talent, strengthening their prospect inventory through a trade. Their resulting rankings needed to reflect the new players without awarding their international scouts credit for San Diego’s original signing.
International signing periods can therefore shape a club’s future through players who eventually develop elsewhere. De Vries’s eventual career will matter to any assessment of his signing. So will the pitching San Diego obtained when it decided to trade him.
The two clubs also accepted different risks. San Diego gave up the chance to keep developing an elite young hitter. The Athletics gave up pitchers already capable of helping in the majors. Neither side could settle the exchange by pointing to the bonus De Vries had received as an amateur.
Make the ranking earn its number
The next signing class will arrive with another set of precise prices attached to uncertain baseball futures. Readers should pay attention to those numbers. A club that concentrates most of its pool in one teenager has made a consequential choice about its other opportunities.
International signing periods deserve that scrutiny without turning the largest bonus into a promise of the fastest arrival. Salas’s development required judging a young catcher against difficult assignments. Sasaki’s acquisition required paying for spending room with other prospects. Those decisions shared a financial system while posing very different baseball questions.
The report that follows a signing should keep both sides in view. Explain what the club committed and what it passed up. Then identify the skill that changed the player’s standing once the games began.
A promotion can create the next test without proving that the player has passed it. Better competition might expose a correctable weakness or a more serious limitation. Age, health, role, and the difficulty of the assignment belong in that judgment.
Made’s changing walk-and-strikeout balance deserved another look because his opponents had changed. Chourio’s added power mattered because it changed what his swing could produce. Neither development would have made sense through the signing bonus alone.
A club can announce how much that swing cost. The evaluator still has to explain why it works.
Read More: Why top MLB prospects struggle with off-speed pitches upon promotion
FAQs
When is MLB’s international signing period?
Under the 2022–26 agreement, the window runs from January 15 through December 15.
How much did the Padres pay Ethan Salas?
San Diego signed Salas for $5.6 million, about 96 percent of its original 2023 international bonus pool.
Why did the Dodgers trade prospects to sign Roki Sasaki?
His reported $6.5 million bonus exceeded their original pool. Trading prospects for additional pool space gave Los Angeles room to complete the deal.
Do bigger signing bonuses mean better prospects?
A bonus reflects a club’s early conviction and available budget. Professional performance and development can change a player’s ranking.
Why did Jesús Made climb the prospect rankings?
Made’s plate discipline and performance against stronger competition changed his evaluation. By September 2025, MLB Pipeline ranked him fifth overall.
