Whew. Did you catch everything?
Today the Chicago Cubs, in addition to trading Carlos Marmol to the Dodgers, and trading Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger to the Orioles, sent AA second base prospect Ronald Torreyes to the Houston Astros for the Astros’ second and third international bonus pool slots, which amount to just shy of $800,000.
Torreyes, 20, was something of a favored prospect around these parts since the Cubs acquired him as part of the Sean Marshall trade a year and a half ago. He’s a small second baseman could do one thing exceptionally well: hit. He struggled in the first half at High-A last year (where he was exceedingly young for the level), and was struggling again in the first half this year at AA (again, young for the level). His stock had probably fallen, and he was running into a serious positional crunch as he moved up the Cubs’ organizational ladder.
It’s sad to lose an intriguing prospect, but I suspect that now the Cubs have plenty of money to go as nuts in the international market as they’ve apparently wanted to go. Having already spent big bucks on Jefferson Mejia and Gleyber Torres, I think Eloy Jimenez is probably coming later this week.