Prospects for nothing

The Twins got busy Wednesday night:

#MNTwins take advantage of having third-most money available in international bonus pool. Acquire Mariners No. 10 prospect C David Banuelos and Angels No. 5 prospect OF Jacob Pearson for international pool $$.

— Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) December 7, 2017

A reference like "$1 million in international pool money" -- which is what the Twins traded in each of these deals -- isn't actual dollars. What they traded is cap space, the right to spend $1 million on international free agents. So the Twins landed a pair of reasonable prospects without paying anything. Cue Dire Straits: "Prospects for nothing."

The Angels and Mariners paid $1.3 million in draft bonuses this year to Pearson and Banuelos. The Twins got them for Shohei Ohtani ammunition. They still have more than $1 million in international pool space available, and four of the finalists for the Japanese phenom are tapped out and unable to offer Ohtani more than $300,000, so another such deal might be ahead. Or they might re-sign Jefry Marte for a fraction of his original deal -- the Twins negated his $3 million deal when he failed his physical.

The prospect rankings cited by Bollinger are from MLB.com's list. Baseball America's list isn't quite so high:

For those interested, Jacob Pearson and David Banuelos would have ranked in the Nos. 15-20 prospect range in the #Angels and #Mariners systems, respectively. Now, they will slot in to the #Twins system

— Kyle Glaser (@KyleAGlaser) December 7, 2017