When Shohei Ohtani announced his intention to come to the United States in 2017, the Yankees and many teams around baseball paused their planned international signings in order to pursue the two-way phenom with as much of their international bonus pool as possible. Ohtani chose the Angels in December of that year, and the Yankees quickly used their bonus pool allocation that they hoped to use on Ohtani to finalize the signing of two talented international free agent outfielders: Raimfer Salinas and Antonio Cabello.
Salinas was ranked side-by-side with Everson Pereira as the Yankees’ top prospects from that signing class.