MLB Investigates Red Sox

Major League Baseball is investigating the Red Sox over their 2015 international signings, focusing on whether the team signed multiple Venezuelan players in “package deals” and whether that would be considered a circumvention of MLB’s international bonus pools, according to multiple international sources.

Several of those players came from the same trainers, a common practice referred to as a package deal that involves signing multiple players from the same program.

During the 2015-16 signing period, which opened on July 2, 2015, the Red Sox were not allowed to sign any player subject to the international bonus pools for more than $300,000, a penalty for exceeding their bonus pool the previous signing period.

According to several sources, MLB officials including Nelson Tejada, the league’s manager of investigations went to the Red Sox academy in the Dominican Republic last week and questioned several of those Venezuelan players individually about their signings.

MLB officials asked the players whether they signed in a package deal, whether they gave part of their signing bonus to another player or received part of another player’s bonus, or why they signed for more or less money than might have been expected.

Furthermore, MLB officials knew last year that the Red Sox were signing several players from the same trainers, and the commissioner’s office approved those contracts.

Some believe MLB might be acting in response to an April 25 story from Baseball America about how teams get around international bonus pools that described how organizations can use package deals to sign Cuban players by overpaying a Cuban player who is exempt from the bonus pools in order to get a lower price on a player who is subject to the pools.