With less than two months until the 2019 amateur draft, analysis of this year’s class is hitting full stride. Baseball America just produced its ranking of 300 prospects; Fangraphs has updated its prospect board; ESPN.com’s Keith Law released rankings not long ago (Insider link).
[RELATED: 2019-20 International Bonus Pools]
As always, spending power is key. Jim Callis of MLB.com recently broke down all the key financial info for this year’s festivities. While the outcome of the still-pending free agencies of Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel could still shift things around, the situation is mostly set at this point. (Click to find out what selections teams would lose by signing one of those players before the draft and what picks their former teams could stand to gain.)
More than any team in the league, the Diamondbacks are in a power position in the draft. Though they won’t pick until the 16th slot, the club has accumulated a variety of lofty selections via compensation picks for A.J. Pollock and Patrick Corbin as well as the acquisition of a Competitive Balance pick in the Paul Goldschmidt trade. Arizona has over $2MM more to work with than any other club in the Majors.
You can find the slot bonus allocation and pick basis (compensation, competitive balance, etc) for every single selection in the draft at the above BA link. We’ll just run through the total bonus pools for every team here:
- Diamondbacks: $16,093,700
- Orioles: $13,821,300
- Royals: $13,108,000
- Marlins: $13,045,000
- White Sox: $11,565,500
- Braves: $11,532,200
- Rangers: $11,023,100
- Padres: $10,758,900
- Tigers: $10,402,500
- Rays: $10,333,800
- Pirates: $9,944,000
- Twins: $9,905,800
- Reds: $9,528,600
- Giants: $8,714,500
- Blue Jays: $8,463,300
- Mets: $8,224,600
- Dodgers: $8,069,100
- Angels: $7,608,700
- Mariners: $7,559,000
- Yankees: $7,455,300
- Rockies: $7,092,300
- Cardinals: $6,903,500
- Phillies: $6,475,800
- Indians: $6,148,100
- Nationals: $5,979,600
- Cubs: $5,826,900
- Athletics: $5,605,900
- Astros: $5,355,100
- Brewers: $5,148,200
- Red Sox: $4,788,100
The difference in pool size between the D’Backs and the Sox is staggering. They should really be able to go out and get some good talent. Can offer enough to get some of those high school kids out of their college commitments.
Even the difference between them and the Orioles is massive. This could be a huge draft for them when you look back at it several years from now; even if 2 or 3 of all their early selections pan out, it could do a lot for them.
When you lose your 3 best players and didn’t sign your 1st round pick last season you will get a decent amount of picks early
Eeeexactly
The cause of it is irrelevant. It’s a big time advantage and they should be able to stockpile a good deal of talent in this years draft.
Its not an advantage. They have 7 early picks to sign. A team like the Red Sox can take the best player available and not worry. Dbacks have to be economical about their picks
@kenleyfornia I think it’s the reverse. While the slot system requires every team to be selective about how they dish out their money, The Red Sox have to be the most selective given their limited funds.
It’s honestly fun to follow and try to figure out the strategy teams use with their pool and picks.
That makes literally no sense. Anyway you want to slice it they have over 3x the amount of money. To suggest having 16 million isn’t an advantage is pretty crazy. The D’Backs are your division rival I’m going to assume that’s coming from a biased position. The Red Sox will have to balance overslot guys with underslot guys as well. The only and Huge advantage is that the D’Backs have 3x the cash to spend.
You must not be familiar with how it works. They have that much money because of the crazy amount of early picks. 4 in the top 34. If they sign to the value of the slot thats about 10 million of their budget right there. Sure they will get to go overslot on some lower guys as a reward but to act like they have some major advantage is just fale.
It’s an inherent advantage to have 4 of the top 34 picks as well. They can choose to go under slot value on those top picks if they want to try and pry away more HS talent later in the draft as well. It’s a significant advantage. I’m very familiar with the system.
I think you may not understand how the system works or you’re talking from a position of bias as I said. The D’backs Are in no way obligated to pay slot value for any of those top picks. They could go under slot for all of them if they chose. That would flush your argument right down the toilet that they “have to spend 10MM on those picks”. To suggest it isn’t advantage to have 16MM v 5 is completely foolish and not based in reality whatsoever.
Its not actually an advantage.
The advantage is that with that many picks, and that high of a pool, the d backs can easily afford to sacrifice one early pick with a far below slot signing, then use the proceeds to pay over slot on 3 or 5 other guys. Other teams couldn’t keep up with that.
Or, to look at it differently,
Normal team top 5
6 picks:
A,B,B,F,F,D where the c pick is improved by tanking another 2 in the 4th and 5th.
D Backs 2019:
A,C,A,A,B,B where one 1st round pick takes 3rd round talent, but the pool savings sign 1st round talent in the 2nd, and 2nd round talent in the 3rd and 4th.
They have the inherent ability to cheap out on a pick they otherwise don’t even have to begin with, then use that savings to take far superior talent than other teams can afford to.
BIG advantage D Backs.
What you are saying is their choice is to miss out on 1 top tier talent and get a bunch of mid to upper tier talent?
This pretty much sounds like free agency to me. Go out and get one ace pitcher one mid tier pitcher and a back of rotation guy or go out and get 3 middle to upper tier guys. Only difference is this is draft style which limits the advantage bigger market teams have. I would say this balances out in the end.
I dont give a F about the Dbacks in any way. Is 16 million better than 5? Of course. But fawning over thw Dbacks situation is a reach. People said the exact same thing about the Rays in 2011 and they ended up with 1 good player.
Whether or not the guys pan out is irrelevant it’s a huge advantage at the time. You can draft 50 busts a year and a guy with 10 picks and a small bonus pool could draft mike trout but that doesn’t mean you didn’t have a gigantic advantage over him.
This is really a simple debate to solve.
Is it an advantage to have that much draft capital?
The answer is so simple I think you’re overthinking it. All you got to do is look at past drafts.
The last time a team really had this much of an advantage was when the Astros had 2 top 5 picks and pick 37 in 2015.
That year the Astros basically got 3 top 5 players when they were able to sign Cameron at 37 since no other team could afford to pay him what he wanted after pick 5 or 6.
There’s your answer… it’s obviously an advantage. Unless you don’t think getting Bregman, Tucker, and Cameron all in 1 draft is a good deal. If that is the case well then you might want to find something new to watch.
Is this a very deep class? Many times only the top few picks are worth anything. How many #15 picks are stars?
Arizona has a huge advantage, are you nuts? 4 picks in the Top 35 is massive; just like the Oakland Raiders with (3) first round picks this year in the draft too. Forget about the money and slot amounts, being able to grab (4) of the most talented 35 prospects is a huge draft advantage….they just need to draft wisely.
What is ridiculous is having more IFA money to spend than Rule 4 draft (Boston). Am all for upping amount of Rule 4 money for many times, somewhat proven amateur talent and if anything? Cutting IFA if they want to offset by like 25%.
Of course.. No cap on rule 4 period would be better as it’s been proven before that nobody spends a fortune on the draft and KC, Pittsburgh I believe had the 2 highest draft totals dollar wise. Capping IFA understand, no more 30-50m players, but the rule 4? That’s just an excuse for poor mouthing teams to not spend.
Stop smoking the rock John. A non capped bonus system in the amateur draft would lead to a similar Wild West system that used to be international free agency. Your gripe should be with luxury tax penalties. In an attempt to level the playing field what they did was disincentivize spending. The cap on signing bonuses isn’t your issue.
It’s generally so easy to prove you wrong jbigz and this time? Same thing. Wrote in above post it’s been proven no team(s) went wild before hard capping and it’s true.. As that famous newsman said.. You can look it up..
Sake of simplicity? look at amount spent by teams on the draft from 2000-2011, last year of no hard cap and those years (many) salary cap was in force.
Big money teams? Boston would spend 8-11m most seasons and that was it. NY didn’t spend, LAD didn’t spend. Pittsburgh? They spent, so did KC, Cardinals spent. TB didn’t spend and a PERFECT example is they had *11* of the top 100 picks in 2011 and 12 total within the 1st 2 rounds. rather than draft any of the “name” players, or “hit” guys, TB instead mostly chose low-mid level players at well under the (then) recommended slot value.
So far, Blake Snell is the only help they have gotten from this what should have been bonanza. It’s criminal
Pick low guys, get low results…..
Aren’t you always complaining about younger players NOT getting paid enough? Seems a bit hypocritical to be in support of the cap…
Why would I want larger bonuses for guys who haven’t made they major leagues? The bust rate on those guys is high enough as it is. Once a player has proven his worth and established his value such as Ozzie albies yes, they ought to get paid better. So no, Kay try again.
I’m certainly not for ownership pissing money away for guys 4-5 years off. I’m not even against extensions. I’m against criminally bad extensions that give up a ton of team control for nothing. IE Ozzie albies. That’s what I’m against and unless you’re an Atlanta Braves fan you should to. But I believe you are so I can understand why it may upset you.
Using Ozzie as an example is counterproductive.
I think it’s just those massive and (to me at least) out of line huge bonuses to the IFA kids like Moncada and a few of the other really young Cuban kids were getting earlier. 31m for a (thought of as) top of the line amateur international talent.
Perspective: moncada signed in March of 2015 for 31.5m + another 31.5m penalty, that’s 63m for 1 player.
1st overall pick that June was Dansby Swanson, who “just” got 6.5m. The next pick was Alex bregman who “only” got 5.9m.
Compared like that and it’s no wonder some of us fans want either IFA players rolled into the draft, or doing away with that ridiculous hard cap on the draft to begin with and keep some type of restraint on the wild IFA spending in place.
And people keep saying the Giants should trade away all their veterans. The D’backs, who finished with a better record, have twice as much purchasing power as the Giants. In other words, tanking doesn’t work.
Tanking worked for Houston…
Well, maybe they should.
If your record is going down the tube regardless, do you A) place 4th or 5th in your division but get 5 highly regarded prospects plus better draft picks and bonus pool, or B) place 4th or 5th in division, no bonus prospects, and not as good picks and pool?
It’s a pretty easy choice, and you can be darn sure that if the red sox are 18 or 20 games back 3 weeks from the deadline I’d clamor for shopping porcello, pearce, moreland, etc and yes, ABSOLUTELY listen on mookie because he’s gonna treat you the same in FA a year later whether you haul in a motherlode return for him now or not.
Do I think it’s likely? No, the team is far better than they played. But if it came to it? Absolutely go for it.
Done right you can reload on the fly – cite to NYY.
Also, your logic is flawed – d backs got what they got largely by having highly talented, in demand FAs walk after a QO declined in the same off season, plus an unsigned 1st rounder. That perfect storm anomaly isn’t likely for SF, and is an aberration
That’s because instead of trading their pending FA major league talent they let it all walk in FA. That’s a pretty piss poor comparison. The orioles likely would’ve led the league or been slightly behind AZ if they didn’t trade machado and Britton.
So does this mean that the Tigers get the 9th best prospect in the international pool? How exactly does this work?
This is the amateur pool. I’m not sure what pick the tigers have in the draft, it may very well be #9 but that’s how much they have to spend on all of their draft picks in the 2019 draft.
Only got the reigning cy young winner. You’re an idiot.