So What? He Can Swing a Bat: The Signing of 20-Year-Old Yoan Moncada to the Boston Red Sox

Talent has a lot to do with sports: either you have it or you don’t. I grew up playing sports so I get it. One of my favorites happens to be softball. In high school, I played left field, then switched to catching, then on to pitching. Yeah, it was crazy. With all that practice you think I could swing away and hit homers. Nope. That wasn’t me. I could throw down to second on my knees and pitch a kind of decent drop ball, but I wasn’t a hitter.

To this day, I’m not a hitter. I am not a collegiate athlete or national athlete either. Now, Yoan Moncada, that’s a different story. He was recently recruited from Cuba to the United States to play ball. To the Red Sox no less! He’s a switch hitter, second baseman and DH. Moncada is one of the top 15 prospects this season. His RBI for a 20 year old is decent -- at 66 for all levels -- and it could be higher for someone in the top 15 (in Cuba and the United States).

Yoan turns 20 this year, and he just got a 31.5 MILLION dollar signing bonus. Yeah. That signing bonus is an amount that I will never see in my lifetime. I am a full time college student, working two jobs and trying to make a living. Moncada plays baseball. His averages are decent, like I said before, and he is no Babe Ruth. He is quite young, so it’s a little too early to tell if he is the next Babe Ruth, but still. He swings a bat for a living. I am not by any means saying that baseball is easy, or unprofessional in any way, but the world shouldn’t be given to someone on a silver platter because they can swing away.

In short, do I think it’s fair that Yoan can swing a bat well enough to make 31.5 million dollars? No. I also don’t think it is fair that the majority of our professional players get paid more than our Veterans, Doctors and Medical Professionals, but that is life, and it is what it is.

You can folow the author of this article on Twitter at @AwkwardAmanda_.