Braves sign Cuban outfielder Dian Toscano

Yahoo Sports

By Mike Oz 

This is The Stew's running list of trades and signings that happen during baseball's Winter Meetings. We'll keep updating this post as the news happens. For more chatter and rumors, be sure to check out our Winter Meetings tracker.

MONDAY
Braves sign Cuban outfielder Dian Toscano
The Atlanta Braves added another outfielder to their roster in Dian Toscano, a 25-year-old international free agent from Cuba who could be a left field option down the road. Toscano isn't one of the big-name Cuban imports — i.e., he's not the Yasmany Tomas consolulation prize.

Ben Badler at Baseball America has more on Toscano:

Toscano, who is around 5-foot-10, 200 pounds, is a lefthanded hitter with good bat control and strike-zone awareness. He never played on the Cuban national team, so he wasn’t a player scouts saw much of before he left the island.

Playing for Villa Clara in Serie Nacional, Toscano batted .356/.400/.452 in 86 plate appearances with eight walks and eight strikeouts in 2012-13, his last season in Cuba. The year before, Toscano hit .287/.438/.380 with 35 walks and 16 strikeouts. He hit just three home runs that year and never showed much power in Cuba, though he’s in significantly better shape and has increased his strength since leaving Cuba.

BLS Take: Naturally, when you hear "Cuban outfielder" these days, excitement and intrigue are not reactions, but Toscano doesn't have nearly as much hype as the high-profile Cubans we've seen land in MLB the last few years. As Badler writes, less is known about Toscano because he didn't play on the Cuban national team, so there's a chance the Braves found a diamond in the rough. But based on what we know, you shouldn't expect Toscano to be an Opening Day starter or anything.