According to Hudson Belinsky, the Yankees will have a $6.583M bonus pool for the 2017 amateur draft based on the league’s proposed numbers. Those figures are not final, though if they do change, it shouldn’t be substantially. A few bucks here and there, basically.
The new Collective Bargaining Agreement has changed the way draft bonus pool money is distributed. The picks at the very top of the draft are closer together — the first and second picks had $9.015M and $7.76M slot values last year, this year it’s $7.4M and $6.85M — and that’s to discourage tanking. Also, more bonus pool money is tied up in the first and second round.
MLB’s thinking is shifting more money to the top two rounds gives teams less flexibility to sign players to overslot bonuses later in the draft. So I guess that’s another concession MLBPA made during CBA talks. This could push some pretty good athletes to college, or even other sports. MLB should be trying to bring them in, not push them out.
Anyway, the overall bonus pool doesn’t mean much in and of itself. The individual slot values are most important. Here is the breakdown for the Yankees, per Belinsky:
- First Round (16th overall): $3,293,600
- Second Round (54th overall): $1,177,000
- Third Round (92nd overall): $560,600
- Fourth Round (122nd overall): $412,400
- Fifth Round (152nd overall): $308,000
- Sixth Round (182nd overall): $235,800
- Seventh Round (212th overall): $184,500
- Eighth Round (242nd overall): $149,700
- Ninth Round (272nd overall): $134,500
- Tenth Round (302nd overall): $126,900
Last year the Yankees used their seventh through tenth round picks on college seniors and signed them for $10,000 each. They saved $648,900 in bonus pool space by doing that, which was redirected to Blake Rutherford. Based on this year’s proposed slot values, doing the same thing would save the team only $555,600. Like I said, the money has been pushed to the top of the draft.
The 16th overall pick came with a $2,660,800 slot last summer — it was $2,543,300 in 2015, when the Yankees took James Kaprielian with the 16th pick — so this year’s slot is an increase of more than $630,000 from last year’s draft. But again, that’s not because the team has more money to spend. That money was taken from the later rounds. Sucks for the late rounders.
One bit of good news: slot value for every pick after the tenth round is now $125,000, up from $100,000. Anything over $125,000 given to one of those players counts against the bonus pool. Two years ago the Yankees gave 11th rounder Josh Rogers a $485,000 bonus, so $385,000 counted against the bonus pool.
The redistribution of money means the Yankees and every other team will have to be a little more creative when it comes to saving bonus pool space for overslot bonuses. The owners keep trying to push bonuses down and they have more and more success with each new CBA, it seems.
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