JUNE 21: The Braves have also agreed to a $1.5MM signing bonus for No. 76 pick Brett Cumberland, MLBTR has learned (Twitter link). Cumberland, a catcher and draft-eligible sophomore out of Cal, receives a bonus that lands $661K over his slot value of $839,100. He ranked in the Top 100 draft prospects from BA, ESPN and MLB.com, with each praising him as one of the more advanced college bats in the draft but questioning his ability to stick behind the plate. Additionally, Callis reported over the weekend that fourth-rounder Bryse Wilson, a high school right-hander our of North Carolina, agreed to a $1.2MM bonus that represented a deal that was $653K over slot (Twitter link).
That means that the Braves’ second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth selections in the draft have combined to receive bonuses that exceed their pool allotments by a total of about $3.9MM. Atlanta also went $300K over slot for 11th-round pick Matt Bowland, as Callis tweeted last week. That’s a total of $4.2MM in excesses, although the Braves did save approximately $2.5MM by agreeing to a reported bonus of “about” $4MM with No. 3 overall pick Ian Anderson. And, as Callis and Jonathan Mayo have been tracking at MLB.com, the Braves have saved $134,600 on fifth-rounder Jeremy Walker, $281,600 on sixth-rounder Matthew Gonzalez and $219,700 on seventh-rounder J.B. Moss. Atlanta also has a string of college seniors at picks 8-10, and college seniors will often sign for about $10K.
The Braves entered this year’s draft with a $13,319,600 pool and bolstered that figure when they acquired a Competitive Balance pick in the Brian Matusz trade, bringing their total allotment to $14,158,500. They’ll be able to exceed that sum by about $797K without going into the penalty bracket that would force them to lose a future first-round pick. With the over-slot deals to their second through sixth picks as well as their 11th-rounder, the Braves have currently agreed to $13,760,000 in total commitments, placing them about $1.1MM shy of the threshold at which they’d lose a future first-round pick.