The Italian Baseball League club Montepaschi Grosseto has signed three new players for the upcoming season according to a report by Baseball.it. Former big league infielder Danny Sandoval, DH Clinton Balgera (picture) and outfielder Anthony Coromato will join the roster. Sandoval will be the fourth foreign player on the team besides pitchers John Billy Diaz and Juan Figueroa and catcher Kelly Ramos. They are probably still looking for a second baseman before completing the offseason.
Sandoval was born on April 7th, 1979 in Lara, Venezuela and is supposed to take over as the new shortstop of the squad. The switch hitter signed with the Chicago White Sox in 1996 as an amateur free agent. He moved through their minor league system, playing as high as AAA. He signed as a free agent with the Philadelphia Phillies in November 2003, but stayed there only for a month, as the Colorado Rockies choose him in the rule 5 draft.
Sandoval played a season in AA for the Rox, before signing with the Phillies again one year later. With Philadelphia he mainly played in AAA until 2007, but also got to taste the big leagues a little bit, making 31 MLB appearances (.200/.267/.237) between 2005 and 2006. The past two years he split time with the Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies organizations and York (2009: 31 GP, .191/.212/.218) of the independent Atlantic League. In twelve seasons of Minor League ball, Sandoval was batting .276 (OBP .325/SLG .358) with 45 homeruns, 598 runs, 498 RBI and 212 stolen bases in 1,319 games.
Balgera is no stranger to the IBL. The 34-year-old Australian with Italian passport split time with Parma and Rimini between 2002 and 2006, plus 2008. The left-handed batter has played in a total of 316 games in Italy with a batting average of .276, 14 homeruns, 168 runs and 143 RBI. Coromato is 24 years old and is coming from the Serie A2 club Codogno. He was born in Utica, New York and attended Oswego and Cortland State before going to Italy last winter. He dominated pitching in his first season out of the US, batting .413 (OBP .503/SLG .623) with six triples, 17 doubles, 37 runs and 22 RBI in 35 games as a leadoff hitter. Ron Moshier of the Utica Observer-Dispatch ran a nice story about Coromato back in April.
Photo by FIBS