"there's no hint or allegation I know of" then bringing it up is essentially making one. And again, unfounded believes or accusations about Pujols are certainly not precedent. Soto was also born in the capital where presumably records are better kept. Of course, the incentives are there to lie, but if there's fault, it's with the Washington Nationals, not Soto. The way to go with this line of reasoning is all the extremely exploitive and sketchy stuff teams are getting up to. The Nats essentially swooped in and grabbed Soto at 16. So sure, maybe the Nationals are like "pretend you're 16 already we'll make it work" but it seems extremely unlikely especially as there were other teams also looking to sign him. Meaning he was vetted by multiple people and there was probably incentives by the other clubs to find a reason to say he was 15 and nullify the Nats pick.Frayed Knot wrote: ↑Tue Dec 10, 2024 7:11 am I don't remember the source of the article (which may have said "widely believed" rather than widely accepted) but it was from earlier this year and was in connection with Soto's pending FA-gency saying essentially that what the signing team doesn't want to experience is what happened with the Angels and Pujols where it is now widely believe/accepted within the game that Albert was then several years older than his listed age.
There's no hint or allegations I know of that this is the case with Soto (which I already stated) and it would be harder to do in this era (which I also said) but let's also not pretend that it's never happened before: El Duque, Rey Ordonez, Raffy Furcal, Adrian Beltre, others. The Yanx wound up taking legal action of some young foreign players who fudged their ages but only against the ones who turned out to not be as good as the team thought they were going to be because to take no action was to admit that they mis-judged their talent. They let things slide on the good players.
I was merely pointing out, in the wake of overnight news, that what one doesn't want to occur following the long-term signing of the uber-FA is either a succession of injuries which rob the player of what he once was [see Griffey, Ken Jr., the Cincinnati years] or a questionable age discrepancy [Pujols, Albert: the Disney era].
Speaking of sketchy international drafting and the Mets, enter Roki Sasaki. Whoever signs Sasaki is likely going to reneg on 'commitments' to other international free agents.
