Hard not to say, yes. If there's been one consistitent criticism of the Sox farm system under Epstein it's been that the players have been pretty "white bread" due in large part to a near complete inability to sign and develop international players who have succeeded in full season ball (forget the pipe dream of the high minors or, gasp, the majors).

A couple years ago I did long review of the Sox history in the international markets. It was three parts and they're in the Draft Forum if you're interested. Here's the first one anyway:

link

I generally split the Epstein years into three mini-intervals - 2002-03 (the Eljaua Marlins years), 2004-05 (disentegration of the former Marlins dept under Craig Shipley) and 2006 onward (what looked like a re-commitment to international markets with a revamped dept and a return to six figure bonuses).

And at the time I wrote that - Dec 06 - there was precious little success to be found and it wasn't too hard to look at all the players from those first two intervals and figure their wasn't much of a future there. At that point the greatest success achieved by international players signed under since the ownership change were the BA League prospect lists at the end of the 2004 season. In the GCL Luis Soto ranked #1, Christian Lara ranked #9 and Wily Mota ranked #19. Additionally, Lara was ranked #9 in the NYPL that year as well thanks to a mid-season promotion. None of those players achieved any success at all in lo-A and that was that.

I may have mentioned it last winter when Argenis Diaz was added to the 40 man roster. Considering the complete lack of impact by any international players, that was actually pretty big accomplishment for the Sox international efforts. Diaz was somewhat of an out of nowhere prospect and frankly I find "defensive whiz" scouting reports need to be taken with as large a grain of salt as most radar gun readings found in scouting reports. As a result that accomplishment passed without much notice. He did not make the BA SAL Top 20 after 2007, but in retrospect his line - 279/342/380 with apparently very good defense - was pretty good and represented the most successful full season by an international player signed under Epstein. Again, easy to dismiss that accomplishment all things considered, but worth noting.

This year - even just the last week or so - has seen some pretty signficant milestones for the Sox intenational program. Diaz was promoted to AA, the first international prospect to make it to the high minors. Che-Hsuan Lin was named the MVP of the Futures Game. Lin and Chih-Hsian Chiang were named to the Taiwan Olympic team. And now Almanzar was just promoted to the SAL at age 17. Now some of those are one offs of questionable long term importance, but given the shallow, shallow accomplishments to date it does seem to be a pretty big collective step forward.

And now looking at the team stats pages of the lower level minors there are interesting international players at every level.

GCL:

Almanzar hitting 348/414/472 and probably a good chance to be a top 3 prospect in the league at year end (just like Soto!)

Lowell:

Mitch Dening hitting 337/400/484

Stolmy Pimental pitching pretty well after a surprisingly agressive assignment

Greenville

Yamaico Navarro hit 280/341/412 before a promotion to Hi-A

Lin is hitting 248/345/364

Oscar Tejeda has struggled with injury and is just at 241/276/311

Felix Doubront has pitched pretty well with a K/IP although I doubt the end of year scouting reports will be all that good

Lancaster

Along with the just promoted Navarro it had Diaz (charitably) holding his own at 281/330/363. Good enough for a promotion anyway.

Chiang is doing ok at 306/339/470 and pretty hot of late.

Not all of these players are exactly lighting up their leagues or likely to shoot up prospect lists (much less contribute in the majors), but it's a really dramatic improvement from the Luis Soto and his band of guys who can't play in lo-A.

To me this has been the most interesting big picture development in the minors this year. It's great to spend a ton of money in the draft and do that well, but 30% of major leaguers are from the international markets. It's really, really hard to be a consistently very good farm if you can't tap into that 30% and the Sox had not seemed capable of doing that.

It's also an encouraging sign for all the young HS players who have been coming into the system via the last couple of drafts. A lot has been said about how "great" the Sox player development system is, but a lot of the evidence for that is guys like Pedroia, Papelbon and Ellsbury who were relatively "low development" players. That the Sox successfully "developed" Pedroia doesn't really speak to their ability to develop Ryan Dent or Derrick Gibson. In fact, there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence that the Sox are actually good at developing teenage position players. That's partly because they haven't brough a lot of good HS players into the system, but it's not unheard for an organization to be good at developing some kinds of players and not others. The best example of that is probably the Twins who seem to be able to clone successful strike throwing, modest ceiling starters while struggling to turn toolsy position players into anything.

That the Sox have started to get some traction with their raw international players is encouraging for their ability to actually develop some of the toolsy HS players who are now moving into and up the system.

Maybe it's more scouting than development, but don't forget about Engel Beltre, who is starting to look like the real deal, to the extent one can at age 18 in Low-A.

Just wanted to add when some of these guys were actually signed.

2003

Argenis Diaz, Ven, no bonus reported, signed by former Marlins scouts Miguel Garcia and German Robles. They left in the 04/05 shakeup and are back working for Dombrowski in Detroit I believe.

2004

Felix Doubront, Ven, 150k, signed by Miguel Garcia

Luis Sumozo (didn't mention him, but didn't want Temple to feel bad), Ven, 200k, signed by German Robles

2005

Chih-Hsian Chiang, Taiwin, 375k, Jon Deeble still the Sox head of Pacific Rim scouting

Mitch Dening, Australia, no bonus reported, Jon Deeble

Yamaico Navarro, DR, 20,000, signed by Pablo Lantigua one of the last Marlins scouts still with the Sox. Oh, and Deeble is another.

2006

Stolmy Pimentol, DR, no bonus, signed by Luis Scheker who worked with the Sox from 2005-2007

Oscar Tejeda, DR, 525k, also signed by Scheker

Just for completeness sake, Engel Beltre was signed in 2006 as well by Lantigua.

2007

Chih-Hsian Lin, Taiwan, 400k, signed by Deeble

Michael Almanzar, DR, 1.5M, signed by Lantigua

Interesting that so many of these guys were signed by the ex-Marlins scouts Deeble, Lantigua, Garcia and Robles.

I was working on it...

I don't think outsiders are ever going to separate scouting from development, but interesting to speculate about.

Might want to add the two six-figure signs from early 2008 in Espinoza and Garcia. Garcia is holding his own in the GCL while Espinoza is treading water but with a great OBP in the DSL at age 17.

And you're the wet blanket over at sp.com.

Mon dieu, I forgot the guy with the good OBP in the DSL!

Was trying to focus more on the guys getting up into the full season ball moreso than being complete. Lord knows, there's always 80 billion guys putting up the big OBPs in the DSL and looking good.

How many of those were signed for $250,000 and are not out of their element at age 17?

I have no idea. I just about never look at DSL stats. I have no mental framework to judge them so I don't bother. And if GCL stats are largely meaningless (and they are) and DSL stats are worth much less than GCL stats (probably are) I doubt there's much to be gleaned from them.

It may be that with cleaned up ages for those players that they are now a little bit more substantive, but still hard to build up a body of relevent comparaotrs if you exclude every prior to the post 9-11 age-gate.

I will say that the 250k bonus is - historically - not much of a positive indicator. For whatever reason it is very difficult to fine high quality international major leaguers who signed for low to mid six figure bonuses. Just about every notable major leaguer signed for a high six or seven figure bonus or a next to nothing five figure bonus.

Unlike the draft where there is a continuum down the bonus scale - 2M players>1M>750k>500k>250k, etc - the international market has tended to have an extreme all or nothing split. Great players either come from the small group who signed for a lot or from the huge group who signed for next to nothing.

I assume that will change some as there's more money and attention in the international market, but given the risk and projection difficulties inherent in the market it will likely persist to some extent.

But historically, you'd much rather have 25 guys who signed for 10k than 1 guy who signed for 250k in the international market. The attention given to low six figure international players as "exciting bonus babies to watch" isn't really supported by the historical record.

Just noticed that Pablo Lantigua signed both Almanzar, Navarro, and Beltre. That's pretty impressive. From the internet, he also signed (with Eljaua) Denny Bautista and a bunch of others including Eddie Lora.

Seems to be pretty successful, at least recently.

Hey Philly - I was surfing around the internet for Lantigua and stumbled upon the 2007 Sox player development media guide. For some reason, it's on the Cardinals website. Don't know if you have it, if not, it's here:player development pamphlet.

Seems to have info on stats signings (etc.) for every player in the Sox system in 2006.

That's a PDF of the 2007 Media Guide. I get a big chunk of my signing scouts stuff from media guides. Odd that it would be on a Cards site, but those PDF guides are at MLB.com so they do float around the net.

Lantigua also signed Claudio Vargas, who at least made the majors, while with the Marlins.

Minor but offtopic: It's on the Cardinals' site because the Cardinals' site is the Red Sox site. It's the same site with a different subdomain; the same document in the exact same place can be reached at:

http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/pressbox/down.../player_dev.pdf

From KG's latest chat at BP -

BrowningNagle (Louisville, KY): What is the ultimate ceiling of Engel Beltre? He is absolutely murdering right handers. Is he along the mold of a Grady Sizemore (less some power)?

Kevin Goldstein: Wow -- long time no see Browning. Beltre's ultimate ceiling is off the charts. I haven't seen a player in the Midwest League who can match him on a pure tools level. That said, he has about 2% of Grady Sizemore's approach, and that has to change -- luckily he's get plenty of time.

Sad development on Lantigua:


Full Article - It's not just hitters taking cuts