None of the college guys, bring me a High Schooler. I'd take Buxton or Correa or Dahl over this year's top college players. It's a whole draft of 6th-pick guys, so I'm not trying to find a #1, I'm trying to find the right #6, and I'm particular in wanting a hitter.
Still, I think there's gonna be some gamesmanship about price and signability. Our entire draft pool this year is smaller than the contracts Hultzen or Ackley got to sign.
Our pool is $8.2 million for all 50 rounds. Last year we spent 9.85 mil on the first 10 rounds (Hultzen got 8.5 over 5 years, with a 6.5 signing bonus, maxing out at 10.6 mil if he hits accelerators for early arrival). We spent 11.3 million total, and were trying to spend more - Cron just wouldn't sign on the dotted line for the seven figures we pushed his way.
Can't do that any more. If you go 10% over (aka, all the way to 9 mil) then you lose a first and second round pick. You lose a first rounder for breaching by just 5%.
Our price is fixed, and nowhere near what the Astros and Twins are getting (11 and 12+ mil respectively).
So there may be bonuses that the teens want that they won't be getting. That shouldn't be a huge problem for us at #3, but it will be a problem when taking tough-signs later. I'm very curious to see how the draft plays out this year.
I do expect to take Correa. He's not A-Rod by ANY means, but he's got talent. Of course, we already paid 3 million (reduced to 1.1) for Martin Peguero to be basically the same sort of player.
I can see us going with an affordable first rounder, because if there are 6 guys who are about the same and one is a million dollars cheaper than the others then we'd have extra money to pick up somebody who drops in the draft for signability (ie, throw at the Younger Seager).
We'll see. It should be interesting.
~G
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