unless the draft now includes the DR or something i’m not exactly sure how this would be a huge blow.

PERIOD.

It seems like such a stupid thing for someone so high up to do. It just doesn’t seem to be worth the risk considering how little more he has to climb to be a GM.

but some people (not me) consider this guy credible because he purports to be a white sox employee. if true, this is a sordid tale.

http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=64771&st=0&#entry1643181

Wilder signed many (MANY!) latin-americans to rather large contracts (+ $100,000) who had no representation in the latin-countries. Now – for anyone who knows and understands latin scouting – there are almost ZERO players without latin representation (meaning – players in these countries are in academies run by agents from these countries who then sell players off to MLB teams to put in their own academies). Now – when a player has no representation – there is generally a reason, i.e., they’re terrible. Now – what happened was this:

Wilder would find these players and sign them for a large amount of money (as mentioned above) and then take their money as their “agent.” Now – he had to get permission to pass these players off & what he was doing was supplying these players with fake birth cerficates taking as many as 5 years off their age & also supplying them with HGH & steroids (even as they were in MiLB). He was then taking this money and putting it into an off-shore account, taking the maximum amount possible at any given time and washing it through a business he opened up in Arizona that rehabs houses.

Now – taking the large amounts of money is one thing. Well – a MAJOR thing to Jerry Reinsdorf and to the Feds.

Now – here is where the Feds do not care & where we as a staff DO care:
At this point, Wilder and “farm director” Alan Reiger (also involved & under investigation from the FBI) had to “sell” their players to the organization. What does that mean? Well for the last few years – and a bit this year, players who did not have ANY BUSINESS in a professional baseball system were shoved up the system to “justify” the amount of money going on. Wilder & Reiger have a great friend who works for BaseballAmerica and thus why they “push” these players in publications & up into the system (again, to “justify” these large signing bonuses they were actually pocketing themselves). NUMEROUS players have been mentioned in these publications & pushed through the system (Wilder & Reiger were in charge of this since 2005 more or less & thus why such a degradated system is currently in place) & it is going to take a LONG time to fully recover.

Certain players (cough, a 16 year old “phenom SS” according to Wilder & Reiger in BaseballAmerica is actually 20.5 years old & not the player Wilder pushed him up as). The list goes on, and on, and on, and on.