Break Out The Clogs: Astros Sign Dutch Infielder

Well, the Astros article hiatus sure didn't last long, but this was too good to pass up. As you're no doubt familiar, Major League Baseball has a player development in Europe, grooming the European baseball stars of tomorrow, today. (No, real grooming, not metaphorical. Like position-specific haircuts and the finer points of growing a playoff beard.) Anyway, the Astros signed a Dutch shortstop yesterday from the MLB European Academy.

His name is Jan Baldee, he's been playing for the Rotterdam Unicorns, and he's 16 years old; . If that sounds a little on the young side to you, consider that it's been common practice for teams to sign players this age and even younger in some cases from their Central and South American developmental teams. Which is not to say that the transition from wooden shoes and good beer to cleats and Budweiser won't be difficult for Jan; since MLB started the Academy in 2005, none of the players developed who've signed contracts have made it to the majors. Still, there's a first for everything, and Jan might be the man in that regard.

He's considered a defensive whiz and will be at spring training in 2008. Since Jan is expected to be a long-term project, he won't be challenging Adam Everett's supremacy at short any time soon. It will be interesting to watch the progress of Baldee and the other players discovered through this Academy; it's easy to imagine that most Euro countries will take to baseball about as well as the U.S. has embraced soccer.

The free agent market will begin in earnest after the World Series. The Astros roster has plenty of leaks, and it'll take more than one Dutch teenager to plug the dike. This concludes Houstonist's "Obvious Jokes of the Day" entry.