By pure luck, the team with the best record in the American League also had the No. 1 overall pick in Sunday’s Major League Baseball draft in Fort Worth, Texas. The Cleveland Cavaliers entered the draft lottery in December with a 2% chance at the top pick and came out with seven months to decide who to pick.
He still hasn’t announced his will and among the evaluators, there is no consensus on who deserves to be first. Oregon State’s Travis Bazzana and Georgia’s Charlie Condon are the consensus two best players, but the Guardians may not be going the alternate route.
If the idea of ​​taking anyone other than the top name on the draft board doesn’t make sense, that’s understandable. Here’s what you need to know about why the baseball draft is different from other sports and how it could cause chaos this year.
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So the best players aren’t always at the top of the draft? Why?
The MLB draft is unlike any other major professional sports league in the payment of amateur talent. The league assigns a dollar value to each pick in the first 10 rounds. These values ​​are added to each team’s bonus pool. And from there, each team can spend that money – and up to 5% more than that, taxed at 75% but no penalty chosen – however they like.
How does it work?
Players like Bazzana and Condon may not claim the full slot value of the No. 1 pick, which is $10,570,600. Option No.
On the other hand, players like West Virginia shortstop JJ Wetherholt can be No. 1 overall for a significant in-slot deal, which will reflect where he can be selected otherwise, and then Cleveland can use additional bonus-pool money to convince. High school players are difficult to sign to pass up college later in the draft.
Teams that implement the strategy of promising players are difficult to sign certain bonuses. The player then tells the other team that he won’t sign unless the team gets the bonus – which could easily damage his own pool and prevent him from getting talent later in the draft. The player then drops to a later Pick where he signs a good-through-slot deal.
Even if the bonus money is saved, it must be wisely distributed to guarantee the gambit in the first place. If a team gets money they can’t use, the process fails — and they can’t be rewarded with the ability to take that money and apply it elsewhere.
For teams that pick above, this raises a key question: Would you rather have one superlative prospect or one really good prospect, plus a few even better ones later?
How long has this strategy been there and paid off?
Houston Astros pioneered in 2012, the first year of the slot. Instead of spending the majority of the bonus on the No. 1 player in the class, Byron Buxton, they selected Carlos Correa with the first pick, paid him $4.8 million of the $7.2 million slot and used the remaining money to float right- Hander Lance. McCullers Jr. for the 41st pick, where they snagged him and paid $2.5 million, almost twice the value of the slot, and then chose infielder Rio Ruiz in the fourth round.
The strategy has been used enough since at least to validate it as an option. In 2016, the Philadelphia Phillies signed Mickey Moniak for $6.1 million, although the slot value for No. The Pirates rejected a deal with catcher Henry Davis through 2021 and used the extra money to land three high school seniors — lefty Anthony Solometo, outfielder Lonnie White and right-hander Bubba Chandler, now the top prospects in the system, for at least $1, 5 million each.
Strategy is not reserved for No. 1 Pick. Last year, the Detroit Tigers chose to select high school student Max Clark with the third overall pick over outfielder Wyatt Langford. Detroit used savings to give shortstop Kevin McGonigle more than $500,000 over the slot with the 37th pick.
Clark and McGonigle are both top 50 prospects in all of baseball right now. At the same time, Langford would look great on a big league team in need of offense. The answer in this particular case won’t be known for years. But the idea is good enough to make an intrigue team every year.
Why is this happening in baseball and not other sports?
Football, basketball and hockey have a hard number of slots for draft picks. It doesn’t matter how good the No. 1 overall pick is in any given year; he will get paid a certain amount determined by each league’s collective bargaining agreement.
The baseball system offers flexibility and encourages creativity. While it’s counterintuitive that the best player in the draft might not go to the team with the first pick, baseball recognizes that in an uncapped system, offering teams a choice in how to approach the draft is a valuable proposition — especially in years when there’s no clear pick at the top of the board every time. team.
Who could the Guardians target in the next round if they pick the savings above?
One of the reasons many executives believe Cleveland will pick Bazzana at the end of the day is their relatively weak high school class. Because high school players carry more clout than their college brethren — the mere threat to college, as well as the name, image and money they can now earn there — they can sue. College players, who typically leave for the draft after their junior season, may be advised to return to school if they don’t get the bonus they want. But for what? Parents almost never sign top dollar, and teams call college players’ bluffs every year because of it.
A number of names scouting sources believe that Cleveland can float to the 36th and 48th selection with extra money saved if they choose Wetherholt at No. 1: left-hander Kash Mayfield, right-hander William Schmidt and Ryan Sloan, shortstops Kellon Lindsey and Carter Johnson, and outfielders Slade Caldwell and PJ Morlando.
What does that mean for the team that selects Cleveland in the draft?
Potential chaos. This isn’t the standard draft subterfuge where the team with the No. No one knows who will go where this year because the Guardians can take different paths – and all of them have an effect that can be seen in the selection below, starting with the Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies who need to adjust their strategies quickly. in hours for No. 2 and No. 3, respectively.
If the pick is Bazzana, the draft can break down as much as you want. Otherwise, no one knows — and it could make for an interesting night at Cowtown Coliseum.