Braves trade infielder Tommy La Stella to Cubs, teams swap bonus pool slots
The Chicago Cubs acquired second baseman Tommy La Stella from the Atlanta Braves on Sunday in exchange for former top pitching prospect Arodys Vizcaino.
Atlanta also bolstered its efforts to sign international players, receiving Chicago's No. 2, 3, and 4 bonus slots in return for the Braves' No. 4 slot, the teams announced.
The trade nets Atlanta approximately $830,000 in international bonus pool funds to be used for the current 2014-15 signing period, according to Baseball America's Ben Badler.
Badler offered a quick primer prior to last season on how bonus slots work:
Bonus pools are determined based on reverse order of major league winning percentage.
The main number that matters for a team is its total signing bonus pool, which it is free to spend however it wants, with penalties in place for going over. Major League Baseball arrives at the bonus pools by giving each team a $700,000 base along with four “slot values,” which are tiered from No. 1 ($3,300,900) through No. 120 ($137,600).
La Stella, 25, assumed the starting second base job from Dan Uggla in May and hit .251/.328/.317 in 93 games as a rookie. The left-handed hitting La Stella paced all National League rookies with 36 walks.
He'll join a Cubs middle infield flush with high-end prospects, including Javier Baez and Addison Russell.
The Braves, meanwhile, re-acquire the once-heralded Vizcaino, whose elbow problems have limited him to just 82 innings since 2011. It's the second time Vizcaino has been involved in a trade between these two clubs - the right-hander was previously with the Braves before they shipped him to the Cubs as part of the Paul Maholm deal in 2012.
Vizcaino, 24, appeared in just five games for Chicago in 2014 after missing the previous two seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery.