Minnesota Twins: How should the Twins spend international money?

The Minnesota Twins have a significant chunk of international money to spend. Where should they direct those funds?

The Minnesota Twins have one of the largest amounts of international pool money available to sign young international players, ranking 3rd behind just the New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers. So how could the Twins spend that money?

First, let’s get a bit of a grip on where that budget comes from….

IFA money rules

Under the new rules in the international market from the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Minnesota Twins will open their international free agent periods with $5.25 million to spend.

Under the new rules, a team can acquire up to 75% of it’s original pool in additional funds. For the Twins, that’s $3,937,500. Since the funds are only able to be traded in increments of $250,000, the team is assumed to have $3.9 million of extra room to add.

The Twins acquired %500K in international money from the Washington Nationals in the Brandon Kintzler, and thus far, that is all they have required, so if the team wanted to, they could trade for another $3.4 million in signing bonus money if they found a trading partner.

Currently, the Twins have $3.245 million available, which is behind the New York Yankees ($4 million) and Texas Rangers ($3.535 million) for the most available funds in the entire market. After trades this past Monday, only two other teams have over $1 million available.

Now, let’s look at the ways the Twins could spend that money…