The Giants landed 23 international amateur prospects on international signing day, highlighted by Dominican Republic outfielder Rayner Arias.
Arias signed for $2.8 million, according to MLB.com reporter Jesse Sanchez. Another report said the signing bonus was $2.7 million. Either way, Arias is the highest-paid signee in the Giants’ class.
MLB Pipeline ranked Arias No. 15 in the international signing class. He projects as a corner bat and has earned comparisons to both Nelson Cruz and Eloy Jimenez.
Arias is the son of a longtime baseball scout and has been lauded for his baseball I.Q.. The 16-year-old’s signing bonus is more than that of top prospect Marco Luciano’s.
The Giants — an organization that has signed Pablo Sandoval, Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda as amateurs — haven’t had much recent success with their international pools. Closer Camilo Doval has been the most successful international signing in the past 10 years, with Luciano still yet to dig into MLB dirt. Lucius Fox, infamously, signed a $6 million bonus and has since been on three other teams.
In addition to Arias, the top of this class also includes Venezuelan shortstop Yosneiker Rivas. According to Marc Delucchi of Giants Baseball Insider, Rivas signed the only other seven-figure deal of the bunch.
Little is publicly known about Rivas, and many other international amateur prospects, but his reported $1 million bonus suggests the Giants are optimistic about his potential. Rivas isn’t included on MLB.com’s Top 50 list.
The Giants also inked Chen-Hsun Lee, a Taiwanese right-handed pitcher, to a reported $650,000 bonus. Lee is known to be the first amateur prospect the Giants have signed out of Asia; they’ve signed several players who have competed at the professional level there.