2015 MLB Draft

[MrCrowesGarden]

Woodford's deal is for about 215k over slot.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Hicks signed for 60k over. I thought we would actually save on that one.

[phins]

Woodford's deal is for about 215k over slot.

Not surprising given the Florida commitment. Little surprised we valued his arm as highly as we did, but fastball command is seriously the number one consideration for the Cardinals when it comes to their pitchers and this kid has it already.

I'd expect good initial performance from him for this reason. He'll be going up against other players in his age bracket and he should tear them up with his fastball velocity, command, and movement. Hopefully, he will also be forced to work on his offspeed pitches and his changeup.

[phins]

Hicks signed for 60k over. I thought we would actually save on that one.

It's pretty rare to save on high schoolers. Generally, you're going to know their number ahead of time. I imagine we went slot with Helsley, and will save with our 7th/9th rounders.

There just isn't going to be much money left over to sign the after top-10 round players. We seemed to take a lot of Cardinal fans and hope that helps them take our offers...it was an interesting strategy we employed this year. It'll be fascinating to see how it turns out.

[Jocephus]

picks tour stadium

http://m.mlb.com/video/v166836183/cards ... eam_id=138

picks at BP, workouts

http://m.mlb.com/video/v166150383/cards ... eam_id=138

[MrCrowesGarden]

The combined savings on DeJong, Helsley and Brodbeck works out to about 450k.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Jacob Evans also signed for 87k under.

[Woolkins]

Correa knew the FBI investigation was to come to light soon and expects to lose future draft picks. He drafts accordingly and plans to sign all players to flood the system with high upside.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Correa knew the FBI investigation was to come to light soon and expects to lose future draft picks. He drafts accordingly and plans to sign all players to flood the system with high upside.

Part of me thought that too.

[phins]

$7,597,800 without losing a draft pick (which includes the 5% overage and no Kep Brown money in the 10th round).

Plummer for 2.124m, Woodford for 1.8m, Hicks for 600k, DeJong for 200k, Helsley for 225k (more than I expected), Evans for 150k, Jenner for 20k (reportedly), Brodbek for 5k.

We've used 5.124m with signing the guys above. That leaves us $2.488m to sign Denton, Bader, and Oxnevad. Remember, these numbers change if we don't sign one of them (such as the case with Kep Brown).

I'd expect Denton to cost us $1.5m to sign him, which would put us at 988k left to spend. I'd expect Bader to sign for close to slot (500k). I figured up the average bonuses for college juniors out of the 3rd round over the 2013 and 2014 drafts and the average came to 579k, with all but one draftee being in the BA top-500, so there weren't any overdraft types in that range. One player got a million dollars to sign, so if you take that outlier out, it falls much closer to the 500k mark predicted.

That gives us 488 k to sign Oxnevad. I'd suspect that he signs for around 200k due to the fact I researched all of the 8th/9th round picks from the 2012/2013/2014 drafts and evaluated who signed from the HS ranks, and for how much. The average of those picks was 208k, with a few guys signing for 450/500k skewing the numbers up a touch.

That leaves 288k, plus the 100k "free" amount for after top-10 round picks. I would suspect that Salazar signs for 150k, Schlesener signs for around 175k, which reduces the amount remaining to about 163k. So, the max amount we could offer any remaining player would be 263k. We might be able to get Traver for that amount, or maybe one of the other high school kids with a lower asking price. If we do not sign Traver/Brusa, we might be able to get a couple non-Molnar/Greiner high schoolers to sign.

There is just no way to make the numbers work to sign any of the "top" high school players drafted after round 10.

I do not want to state that taking a college senior and signing him for 5k wouldn't change much, in that we would have 155k or so more to spend and then it comes with some opportunity cost:

1. Kep Brown may not have been there in the 11th round, removing any chance we could sign him.

2. If we did take Brown, there is no guarantee Salazar would be there in the 12th, and even his coach expects him to sign, which costs us that prospect and doesn't gain any pool money.

3. If Salazar did last until the 12th round, there is no guarantee Schlesener makes it to the 13th round, and he's expected to sign with us.

4. Craig Aikin was our 14th, so you can see the trickle down impact of changing a pick.