Zach Buchanan

zbuchanan@enquirer.com

Teams can begin to sign international amateur free agents beginning July 2, and the Cincinnati Reds are poised to make a big splash. The Reds have the second highest bonus pool in baseball, and can spend $5,163,400 on players without penalty.

All of that and more is likely to go to 22-year-old Cuban shortstop Alfredo Rodriguez, whom the team expects to sign for about $7 million, a number that includes the overage tax the team would face for exceeding its pool allotment.

There is certainly diversity of opinion when it comes to Rodriguez, who was said to have agreed to a deal with the team last signing period before being held over for the upcoming round of signings. MLB.com ranks Rodriguez as the sixth-best international prospect available this summer, while Baseball America rated him as equivalent to a player taken between the third and sixth rounds of the draft.

Rodriguez won Rookie of the Year honors in Cuba’s professional league during the 2014-15 season, and his defensive prowess has drawn praise. His detractors question whether his bat will progress enough to hit major-league pitching at a meaningful level.

Adding to those qualms has been the decline in effectiveness of recent Cuban imports. The Boston Red Sox recently designated for assignment outfielder Rusney Castillo, whom the team signed for more than a $72 million bonus a few years ago. The Los Angeles Dodgers have recently cut bait on several Cuban players who commanded multi-year, multi-million-dollar deals.

The small-market Reds can’t make splashes that big and that often, and have received good return-on-investment from their other Cuban signees, Aroldis Chapman and Raisel Iglesias. They haven’t gotten cold feet about Cuban players because they’ve always been skeptical of them.

“We’ve always been very prudent in our approach to Cuba,” said general manager Dick Williams, who declined to speak about Rodriguez specifically. “You can’t dabble in the Cuban market. If you’re going to go after Cuban players, I think you need to be very thorough in your scouting so that you see them all and you understand the market. We made a very concerted effort many years ago to say when the Cuban team appeared outside its borders we would have a Reds scout there. We were able to gather a lot of information about them over time.”

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The Reds are aware of the industry skepticism about Rodriguez, but club officials are confident that the shortstop will be better than many predict. The Reds would have rated him as the best shortstop available if he were in this year’s amateur draft.

If taken in last year’s shortstop-rich draft crop, the team would have slotted Rodriguez behind likes of Dansby Swanson and Alex Bregman at the position. That pair went first and second overall, respectively.

The Reds have garnered some criticism for seemingly committing their entire pool allotment to a player some in the industry deem not a top talent, but Cincinnati officials are unconcerned about the penalties the signing might incur.

Teams that exceed their bonus pool allotments by 0 to 5 percent have to pay a 100 percent tax on their overage. Exceeding the pool by 5 to 10 percent comes with a limit on signing players for more than $500,000 in the next signing period, a ceiling that lowers to $300,000 if overspending by 10 to 15 percent. Overspending by more than 15 percent limits teams to players worth $300,000 or less the next two signing periods.

Each team’s bonus pool is broken up into specifically-sized trade-able chunks, allowing teams to augment their pool or deal any surplus. The Reds could theoretically acquire enough bonus slots to sign Rodriguez and the rest of their international free agents without significant penalties, although finding such wiggle room can’t be assumed.

Other teams have decided that if they’re going to go over their allotment, it’s best to go as far over as possible. If signing limitations for upcoming years are going to be triggered anyway, might as well max out the impact signings in the current period.

The Reds might consider that option if they can’t increase their pool enough through trades, allowing them to sign a few more players with price tags of $1-2 million.

Last year, the Reds had a bonus pool just shy of $3 million, using $1 million of that to sign outfielder Cristian Olivo out of the Dominican Republic.