Put your GM hat on, and I’ll show you how to optimize your draft dollars and increase the prospects of team success down the road.
The draft in any sport is a beacon of hope, a chance for every franchise to believe they are getting the next Chipper Jones (drafted 1st overall in 1990), Mike Trout (25th overall in 2009), or Mike Piazza (drafted in the 62nd round in 1988).
Two draft strategies make the most sense: get THE player you want and/or get the most value out of the draft. Sometimes both can be achieved, while a team must prioritize other times.
The MLB Draft is the same but different; teams cannot trade most draft picks but still look for ways to find extra value. I had heard about teams drafting under-slot to get multiple high-level players, but it didn’t occur to me how similar it was to trading down in the NFL Draft.
Rewinding one minute, each pick in the first ten rounds of the MLB Draft has an assigned slot value, or money allocated to that team to sign their draft picks. The totality of the slot value of each team’s draft picks adds up to their total allotment to sign their draft picks. Teams can exceed their limit, but it comes with financial and draft pick consequences that get more extreme as the amount increases.
As a visual example, the Baltimore Orioles own the first pick in the draft and have the highest dollar allotment to sign their picks, $16,924,000 total. The first pick is worth $8,842,200; their next pick (#33) is worth $2,313,900; #42 is worth $1,861,000. So on and so forth, the Orioles have that near-$17 million to sign their draft picks in any way they see fit.
Two teams used different strategies in how they drafted and are signing those picks: the Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds. Texas produced the first big surprise of the draft by taking Kumar Rocker third overall, while the Reds took advantage when top-10 prospect Cam Collier fell to number 18.
ESPN draft expert Kiley McDaniel said in his post-draft analysis that he expected Collier to go at 4, 7, or 8, so seeing him fall to the latter half of the first round could be a coup for Cincinnati. McDaniel also noted that it would probably take an above-slot deal to get Collier to sign, as he is an unusual prospect.
Collier got his GED after his sophomore year of high school to attend Chipola College in Florida, and he played for that junior college this year. He is the youngest player in the draft and won’t turn 18 until November. He matured at a young age and was ready to attend Louisville next season if needed.
Cam Collier (photo, Baseball America)
Cincinnati made room for Collier by signing nine of their top 12 picks to below-slot numbers and two others to exactly slot. That is a non-factor now, as Collier and the Reds agreed on a contract with a $5,000,000 signing bonus. That number is important because the allowance for that pick is only $3,659,800, more than a $1.3 difference.
The savings from those under-slot numbers total $1,086,600, leaving just over $250,000 of excess paid to Collier. Teams are able to exceed their signing cap by up to 5% without losing any future draft picks, so the Reds can go $539,985 over their total slot ($10,799,700) while only having to pay a tax. The Reds got the luxury of a top-10 player by under-paying the rest of the draft. There are elements present of an NFL team trading up in the first round and losing a lot of capital later in the draft.
Rocker is on the opposite side of the coin as a 22-year-old prospect who was drafted 10th overall by the Mets last year but did not sign because New York found a late issue in his medical report and dropped their offer to a number that Rocker would not meet. After getting surgery and playing some Independent League a year, Rocker was drafted third overall by the Rangers.
Right away, it looks like Rocker made the right choice, but his bonus came in well below slot at $5.2 million against the $7,591,600 value. There could be several reasons Texas chose to go under-slot, but McDaniel said that fourth-round pick Brock Porter is the main prize from the Rangers’ draft picks. Sure enough, the Rangers signed Porter (who was rated by some as a first-round talent but hard to sign) to a $3,000,000 signing bonus when his slot was only worth $560,200. The Rangers saved $1.5-ish million on Rocker and allocated it to Porter with their next pick, 106 picks later.
Kumar Rocker (photo, The Athletic)
I have a theory: Texas did not have a second- or a third-round pick because of the free agency signings of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, so they signed Rocker to create more of that missed space. See, teams only get the slot values of picks they actually USE and SIGN, so those lost draft picks mean lost money to use on all players. As a result, the Rangers have less than $10 million total to sign their picks, while the Orioles and Diamondbacks, who picked right before Texas, both have over $15 million.
When an NFL team misses picks in the draft due to trades and other factors, they often make up that value by trading back and adding more draft picks in later rounds. The Rangers created surplus value by taking a player seen as a top prospect last year but paying him more like the 10th player selected, which is where he went last year. In the same way, the selection of Rocker was like trading back in the first round to pick up more money to use later.
These teams took two different paths in the draft, but I think both front offices should be happy with the outcomes of the draft. It will be five or more years before we can say whether any of these were the right picks, but the draft is less about hitting every pick and more about increasing the chance of finding big leaguers. The Reds found a potential star who will likely settle in as an everyday player, while the Rangers got two chances instead of one of finding a star pitcher. The draft is a lot of fun!
Wow, there is a lot more strategy in making picks and trades. It is amazing how many trades have good outcomes when so much can go wrong. Good insight.