From Left to Right – Carlos Altuve, Jefferson Rojas, Adan Sanchez, Josefrailin Alcantara, and Alexis Hernandez

Good morning! It is international free agent signing day and I am here for all the action. In fact, it will probably be over within minutes after it begins.

Unlike previous years, we only have a decent idea about who the Cubs are going to sign today. We do know that three top 50 guys will sign as catcher Adan Sanchez along with shortstops Alexis Hernandez and Jefferson Rojas have all agreed to prearranged deals. What we can tell you about the aforementioned top three guys is they all made Baseball America’s top 50 International free agent list while Sanchez and Hernandez made MLB Pipeline’s top 50. Hernandez was ranked at 18 by Pipeline while Sanchez was at 22 for Baseball America. Rojas came in at 36 over at Baseball America.

In addition, the Cubs are attached to Catcher Carlos Altuve and OF Josefrailin Alcantara. Covid and travel regulations have taken their toll on finding out a lot information. Publications have not been able to travel down to the Dominican, Venezuela, Colombia, and other Caribbean hotbeds to get the finer details on who is going where.

Here is some video on Alcantara and Altuve. The news of these two signing broke yesterday.

With $5.1 million in their pool, the Cubs have plenty to spend as the top 3 are slated to go for close to $1 million apiece, maybe a tad more. That still leaves plenty of money to drain the pool, even if the Cubs do plan on signing a top tier top free agent which would move the pool down $500,000 to $4.6 million.

North Side Bound is going to basically do a short live blog this morning starting at about ten and we will see what kind of “Official” information we can get via Twitter and the Cubs own website. We will have some data, pics, and more video down below at that time.

I’ll begin to break down who all the Cubs signed later and I’ll hopefully be able to find some tweets, video, report, and pictures of the guys beyond the top 5.


UPDATE 10 :20 AM Central

Not much new to report since early this morning except for the amounts the Cubs’ top 3 signees went for. I was a little stunned to see Sanchez go for $1.5 million but $1.3 million seems like a pretty good deal. Regardless of my opinion, the Cubs still have $1.3 million left to spend.

Not all free agents have to sign today. North Side Bound’s very own Greg Zumach was able to clarify that if the Cubs sign a MLB free agent who turned down a qualifying offer, that $500,000 penalty would come out of next year’s pool. Good to know!

I am checking Instagram regularly for some signing pictures. I haven’t seen any yet. I will post them here when I do.

I am still looking for a pic of Jefferson Rojas. I have yet to see one on any social media account. I have every body else ready to go!

After today, you can still visit our signing database to see the latest in signings!

I will be back around 11 with some more information!

11:15 AM UPDATED

I started watching Josefrailin Alcantara’s live video feed of his signing on Instagram until he put his phone in his pocket and forgot to turn it off. We got a nice view of the pocket for about 15 minutes. Luckily, someone took a pic for us.

11:41 PM UPDATED

I finally was able to track down a pic of Rojas via Bryan Smith but I also saw this video of Rojas by Steven@GoCubs49 on Twitter. I like his footwork and swing. Very cool.

12:00 PM UPDATED

Ben Badler of Baseball America just posted a groups shot of the newest Cubs, some not reported. They include 4 new names we haven’t heard yet. So, the Cubs are up to nine names today!

Here is some Ramirez video


3:24 PM – UPDATED

Jesse Sanchez of MLB Pipeline posted this pic of Jefferson and 3 more players