Yankees' new international director voids massive investment in Venezuelan 'prospect'

From the final days of Donny Rowland to the beginning of Mario Garza's tenure as the head of the New York Yankees' international talent operation, the club has suffered a number of high-profile defections. Wandy Asigen was the first domino to fall, breaking off his agreement with New York just a month before he was due to sign.

Since then, youngsters in more far off classes have backed out of the handshake agreements they had with the Yankees. In the meantime, Garza has been hard at work trying to uncover new talent. He made a historic signing, snagging 16-year-old catcher Marko Morua, the first-ever Hungarian prospect to land with a major league club. The new international czar has also reinvigorated the team's focus in Japan and the rest of the Asian markets with new hires Matt Slater and Nao Masamoto.

But while Garza's been hard at work building things back up, he's also begun tearing some stuff down. The Yankees were reportedly set to sign Venezuelan 13-year-old Albert Mejias to a record-setting (under the current bonus pool system) $7 million bonus once he became eligible to sign in 2030, until Garza stepped in and nixed the deal.

New Yankees international scouting director breaks off record-setting agreement with Venezuelan teenager Albert Mejias

This report comes to us from Wilber Sanchez, a formerly little-known presence on Twitter/X who was also one of the first to uncover that Asigen had walked away from the Yankees.

Sanchez claims that Garza and the new regime weren't convinced that the reports regarding Mejia's skills were accurate. Given the allegations that not everything that went on under Rowland's regime was on the up-and-up, it's not impossible that someone juiced the scouting report to make the kid look better than he is.

It's all very hard to tell. There could be other reasons why the Yankees are backing away, too. What we know for sure is that Garza is looking to clean things up and run his shop a different way than his predecessor.

That's a good thing, too. Over the last several years, New York has handed out many seven-figure bonuses with very little return on investment. $4 million for Roderick Arias, anyone?

This mess will buy Garza some time to get the house in order, but not too much. Sooner or later, the international scouting department is going to need to produce some return on all the investment. It'll be several years before we find out if Garza made the right call on Mejias. At that point, this will either be seen as a turning point where the Yankees finally get their act together or a further unraveling of the system. Let's hope it will be the former.