Here’s an interesting minor deal for the Chicago Cubs. They’ve sent right-handed pitching prospect Nico Zeglin to the Houston Astros … for International Free Agency Bonus Pool Space. Francys Romero reports that it’s a $250,000 chunk of pool space.
You may recall that, in the IFA system, teams are hard-capped on how much they can spend. The only way to increase your bonus pool is by making a trade like this. With the current period set to close on December 15, the implication of this trade is that the Cubs already know who they are going to sign with this money, and just needed to get enough bonus pool space to be permitted to do it.
Moreover, because of the way the IFA class plays out, what you often see happen over the course of a calendar year is new prospects emerge – either because they’ve been declared eligible, or because they took a big development step forward (these are young players) – that were underrated and unsigned way back in January. So, if you are good on the scouting and have funds available, sometimes you can land a surprisingly excellent prospect or two late in the cycle, even with only a couple hundred thousand dollars available. Because those high-quality prospects don’t always become available late, however, it’s a risk to try to intentionally save bonus pool space for November and December. The Cubs, for example, typically have used up all their funds right out of the gate in January.
So, that is all to say, the fact that the Cubs are making this deal now is pretty intriguing. I look forward to hearing soon about how the Cubs are going to use the funds.
As for Nico Zeglin, he was an undrafted signing for the Cubs early in 2024, dominated as an older/experienced reliever at the lowest levels, and then missed all of 2025. There’s certainly some upside there, and it’s not as if the Cubs are parting with nothing in this deal. But since Zeglin may have had a reliever ceiling (hard to know how to evaluate huge success as an older reliever at the low levels; it rarely pans out), and is now coming back from a lost year, I can understand why the Cubs were willing to make this deal to get the bonus pool space.
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