Baseball America: International Reviews: Tampa Bay Rays

As a result, the Rays won’t be able to sign anyone next year for more than $250,000 and probably won’t make any major international splashes until July 2 either because of the tax. Going well beyond the bonus pool is a curious move, but the Rays did pull in a considerable amount of talent, including arguably the two best 16-year-old pitchers on the market. Given that their 90-win season last year will give them one of the lower bonus pools for the 2013-14 signing period, which many scouts believe is shaping up to be a down year for international talent, perhaps it will be a worthwhile gambit.

This is interesting, I had no idea the Rays had been blowing past the international spending cap like this. I believe a primate recently asked why a team wouldn’t spend excessively one year on international free agents to load up on top-end talent and then accept that the next year they would be very limited in what they could do. The Rays haven’t gone massively over budget but it appears they are making use of that suggested strategy.