We are 10 days away from the opening of the 2026 International Free Agency period, when international amateurs – mostly from Latin America – can officially sign professional contracts.
Because the uncomfortable reality of these international operations means that deals are wink-wink in place long before the players turn 16 and are eligible to sign officially, the expected signings are usually reported well in advance of the signing period opening.
To that end, Baseball America has a listing of the 50 players with the largest expected bonuses in the upcoming class (ranked by size of the bonus, which is only a proxy for actual prospect rankings – BA would rank them differently if they were ranking talent, but this is sort of the starting point).
What’s striking about the list is that the Chicago Cubs, who are usually all over these things, are attached to just one prospect, Yadier Muñoz, a shortstop from the Dominican Republic. The brief scouting report is not overly-effusive, and Muñoz is 37th on the list. That means his expected signing bonus is well below $2 million, but above $1 million.
That’s striking because, during the hard-capped IFA bonus pool era, the Cubs typically have near the full bonus pool committed for signings on the very first day the IFA period opens up. As one of the larger-market clubs, the Cubs don’t get one of the larger pools, but at $6,679,200, it’s still a heckuva lot more than what Muñoz, alone, will be getting. Usually, we could add the expected bonuses up for the three-ish prospects on a list like this, and come up to within one or two million of the full pool. Seeing just one prospect on a list like this, and down at number 37, is very atypical for the Cubs.
We’ve talked many times before about the Cubs’ relative lack of success in International Free Agency, particularly on the pitching side, so, hey, maybe the pre-signing situation looking so starkly different than pretty much every other year for a decade isn’t such a bad thing. Moreover, the Cubs clearly left a lot of money uncommitted initially during the 2025 IFA year, which allowed them to pull in multiple notable signings later in the year. Maybe there have been some strategic changes over the past couple years, given the high bust-out rate for most of their big-money commitments over the past five+ periods.
It’s also possible that the Cubs simply didn’t find guys in this class that they felt strongly about enough to commit multiple million dollars years in advance. It hasn’t really happened before since I’ve been doing this, but it’s possible. I don’t want to categorically say that something unusual happening this time around necessarily means something bad is happening. We have no way of knowing that. But I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can say very confidently that this is at least unusual.
What I hope is happening here is that the Cubs have a whole lot of deals lined up that are just off the big-money cut-off – maybe a strategic shift toward more volume? – and/or they have some big deals that aren’t showing up in the reporting just yet, and/or there are specific targets they know are becoming available after the open of the 2026 IFA window, so they’re keeping powder dry. (On that one, I have to concede it’s also possible they were projecting someone being available in this class, years in advance, so they didn’t commit to any of the big names at 13, 14, 15 years old multiple years ago. You would have to do it that way, and the risk is that you’d be wrong about the other big name actually becoming available.)
What I hope is not happening here is that the Cubs are potentially not spending their full pool allotment for 2026. Historically, the Cubs always spend as much as they can in the draft and in IFA. It’s not an area where they’ve looked to save organizational costs, because the return on the investment can be outsized if you do it right. You don’t go cheap on the amateur side just to save a little short-term money, unless something is REALLY wrong on the financial side. So, again, I hope that’s not any part of this story.
My guess is that a lot of this will be answered by January 15, when the new period opens up. There will be a flurry of reported signings, as there always is, and we should be able to do some back-of-the-napkin math on how much pool space the Cubs have or have not committed in advance.
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