The Braves will lose a dozen international players signed within the last two years and suffer other sanctions after Major League Baseball on Tuesday handed down its penalties in the international signing scandal that cost general manager John Coppolella his job — and now his career.
The sanctions deal a significant blow to a farm system considered by many the best in baseball. The headliner among the prospects who will now become free agents is Venezuelan shortstop Kevin Maitan, who signed for $4.25 million after being rated by Baseball America as the top player in the 2016 international class. Catcher Abrahan Gutierrez ($3.53 million bonus) and second baseman Yunior Severino ($1.9 million) also were ranked among BA's top 15 international players available that year and will now hit the open market again.
Those three players are now free to sign with any team, along with fellow 2016 prospects Juan Contreras, Yefri del Rosario, Juan Carlos Negret, Yenci Peña, Livan Soto and Guillermo Zuniga and 2017 signees Brandol Mezquita, Angel Rojas and Antonio Sucre.
MLB additionally declared that the Braves will be ineligible to sign 2019-20 prospect Robert Puason, whose agent represented six players signed by the Braves in return for a pledge that Puason would sign with Atlanta when eligible, and voided the Braves' deal with Korean prospect Ji-Hwan Bae, who signed in September but whose contract had not yet become official.
“While the remedies discussed above will deprive the Braves of the benefits of their circumvention, I believe that additional sanctions are warranted to penalize the club for the violations committed by its employees," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
Those measures include the Braves being limited to offering no more than a $10,000 bonus to any player in the 2019-20 signing class and losing half of their international signing bonus pool for the 2020-21 class. They also will lose their third-round pick in the 2018 MLB Draft for offering under-the-table inducements to a 2017 draft pick.
Coppolella and Gordon Blakeley, the Braves' top international scout, resigned the day after the regular season ended as MLB's investigation became public knowledge. John Hart, who as president of baseball operations served as Coppolella's boss, resigned from the organization last Friday after being moved out of the baseball operations department earlier in the week with the hire of new GM Alex Anthopoulos.
MLB announced Coppolella has been placed on the permanently ineligible list, effectively ending his baseball career, and Blakeley has been suspended from baseball for a year. Manfred also said MLB intends to discipline other members of the Braves' front office and explore "appropriate consequences" for the player representatives involved in the scheme.
The Braves said in a statement after MLB's announcement that they cooperated fully with the investigation and "understand and accept" the penalties.
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) November 21, 2017
