Taxing situation for the Phillies' front office

READING - It's a complicated time to rebuild a baseball franchise. Take, for instance, the case of a player who, by all accounts, has a very good chance to become the kind of star who can anchor such an effort. According to people who cover amateur baseball for a living, Cuban prospect Yoan Moncada would be in the running to be the top pick in the 2015 draft if he were eligible.

Those same people say he is a 19-year-old infielder with good power, an impressive frame, and plus-plus speed. In other words, he is the kind of prospect who is very rarely available to the highest bidder.

But there is a significant catch. A team will essentially need to pay double the signing bonus that it agrees to pay Moncada. That's because Major League Baseball imposes a 100 percent tax on any overage beyond a team's assigned international signing bonus pool.

The Phillies, for example, are allowed to spend $3.2 million on bonuses in the current international signing period, which runs until June 15. The team with the highest bonus pool is the Astros, at $5.015 million. Furthermore, if a team eclipses its assigned pool by more than 15 percent, it is forbidden from signing any player for more than $300,000 in the next two international signing periods.

When you consider the guaranteed money that No. 1 overall picks used to command before MLB instituted its hard slotting system, it's clear that any Moncada signing will incur the maximum penalty (Stephen Strasburg, for example, signed for $15.1 million guaranteed).

Let's recap: If Moncada commands $40 million, the total price tag for the Phillies would be at least $77 million. If he commands $20 million, the total price tag will be at least $37 million. And so on.

But this isn't just about Moncada. One of the ironies of the Phillies' current position is that they are flush with cash with very few places to spend it. In fact, the international market might be the only place where they can throw their financial weight around.

The Phillies, who have a track record of frugality on the international front, might have signaled a change in philosophy when they replaced fired amateur scouting director Marti Wolever, whose focus was mostly on the draft, with Johnny Almaraz, who was formerly the director of international scouting for the Braves.

"I see us being very aggressive in that market, because we have to find different ways to add as much talent as we possibly can to the system," general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said yesterday before the Phillies' annual banquet in Reading. "We had a very difficult decision to make when we made the change with Marti, because Marti had such a great run of success, but we felt it was important to make a change, and Johnny's done some things that we think are really going to help us moving forward."

There seems to be little doubt in the scouting community that Moncada is not only the biggest prize of this offseason, but also one of the biggest ever to hit the international market. His landing place will be determined more by game theory and economics than by scouting. How much is too much?

The variables are too numerous to detail. What are the odds Moncada becomes an everyday player? A superstar? What are the odds he is a career minor leaguer? How much are the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox willing to pay to find out? How much value does a dollar taxed at 100 percent have on the international market compared with a dollar taxed at zero percent on the free-agent market? Are there any other potential Yoan Moncadas on the horizon for the next couple of signing periods who would make the Phillies regret an inability to offer them more than $300,000?

"I think there are going to be some guys out there who may be worth going over the threshold," Amaro said. "We typically would not do that, but I think that there may be some talent that is out there that may push us to that level. Again, that is a constant assessment, and discussion with [assistant GM] Benny Looper and [international scouting director] Sal Agostinelli and myself and [interim president] Pat Gillick making decisions about what we think is best for the organization moving forward."

We might not find out any of these answers until June. Moncada has yet to be declared a free agent by Major League Baseball, although that is thought to be a formality. The amount of money the Phillies have to spend could depend on the resolutions to the Cole Hamels and Ryan Howard situations. Both Amaro and Gillick said they expect both at spring training at this point.

The offseason is nearly 4 months old, but the decisions that will be the biggest determinants in the length of the rebuilding process have yet to be made.