A relative scandal in the international free agent world, a San Diego Padres prospect has rescinded his verbal agreement after MLB discovered he was five years older than he claimed to be.

Jorge Castillo and Alden Gonzalez’s report:

A pre-arranged $4 million bonus for the prospect means he was viewed by the Padres as a huge talent… perhaps in large part because he was actually 19 years old, instead of the 14 years old they thought he was. He was supposed to sign with the Padres in January 2027 (!), but now that deal is off the table.

Remember, players cannot sign in international free agency until they are at least 16 years old, but in pre-arranged deals the players (and their coaches) have committed years in advance. It’s clearly against the rules, but it’s been the openly tolerated system for decades. Apparently so openly tolerated that MLB can be the agency that finds out a prospect is five years older than claimed, and the deal is pulled by the MLB team that theoretically should never have made a permanent deal. It’s still an ugly thing, but it’s one that the MLB Players Association fought to keep alive during the latest collective bargaining negotiations, because it basically allows players to choose their own organization and gives them more money can make than a bill of exchange. Basically. How much choice a 13-year-old player actually has in this regard, or how much of the money he actually gets, likely varies wildly from case to case. More about how corrupt the system can be, and how age falsification is on the rise, can be found in the ESPN report.

I guess the potential takeaways for the entire league are here…

1.) Despite things being much, much better than they were a few decades ago, age-related gimmicks in the international marketplace are still a factor in signings;

2.) “Deals” years in advance with players under actual signing age are still treated as offers by MLB teams, and there’s still no movement to expose these kinds of winking agreements (Other than that one lawsuit that…did that ever go anywhere? I never heard anything and certainly no changes to the system); And

3.) The MLB can cite yet another example in its attempt to implement an international draft in the next CBA.

(I felt like I couldn’t forget the Padres’ success in recent years, with exceptionally precocious young international prospects Ethan Salas and Leodalis De Vries each reaching full-season ball at just 17 (!) years old. But I should also be clear that there is no evidence of age issues, nor am I suggesting anything of the sort. It just felt tone-deaf to write about a Padres issue like this and not mention two such extreme outliers in the same organization. So there’s going to be a parenthesis here at the end.)