by Mike 75 Comments
Via Jim Callis, the Yankees have signed Slade Heathcott, their first round pick, to a $2.2M bonus. Slot money for his pick (#29 overall) was roughly $1.1M, so he received double that. Good for him, that’s pretty much 7th overall pick money. My guesstimate of $1.5-1.7M was obviously way off. Shows what I know. You can learn all about the high school outfielder here.
Lane Meyer at NoMaas had the news earlier today.
by Mike 103 Comments
Via Jim Callis, the Yankees have signed fifth rounder Caleb Cotham to $675,000 bonus, considerably overslot. The draft eligible sophomore out of Vanderbilt struck out 84 in 79 IP last year, and put up a nice and clean 0.00 ERA in 13 IP in the Cape Cod League this summer.
Use this thread throughout the day to talk about draft signings and what not. I’ll post more updates as players sign.
by Mike 9 Comments
Lane Meyer over at NoMaas spoke to Yanks scouting director Damon Oppenheimer last night, and was able to squeeze some info out of him about what we could expect to happen before Monday’s midnight deadline. Obviously Opp couldn’t go into too much detail, but it sounds like most of the higher profile signings will go down to the wire and will be announced Monday. He also spoke briefly about some of the guys who have signed and are performing well, in particular Adam Warren. Make sure you check it out, it’s a quick but informing read.
Oh, and Ken Davidoff says that we “should be optimistic that #1 draft pick Slade Heathcott will sign.” He says the bonus will likely be over $2M, I’m thinking more like $1.7M. But what do I know?
by Mike 83 Comments
Jim Callis of Baseball America updated the statuses of the twenty unsigned first round picks, mentioning that Yanks’ top pick Slade Heathcott is seeking “upwards of $2 million.” After MLB reduced their recommendations by 10% this year, slot money for the 29th overall pick became $1.107M. For all intents and purposes Heathcott and his agent are looking for 8th overall pick money even though he’s not that kind of talent.
Camp Heathcott isn’t stupid, they know the Yanks can’t afford to not to sign him and are asking for the moon. Can’t blame them.
by Mike 19 Comments
Dennis Grall of The Daily Press caught up with Yankees’ first round pick Slade Heathcott yesterday, who at the moment is just kickin’ it with his girlfriend and playing some golf. Committed to LSU, Heathcott didn’t mention anything about how close the two sides are to coming to an agreement or anything like that. All he said was “The Yankees have the ball in their court. I’m probably putting more pressure on the Yankees than they are putting on me.”
Slot money for the 29th overall pick is around $1.1M, but I suspect Heathcott will get a little more than that, perhaps as much as $1.5M. They’re going to sign him, don’t worry. It just won’t happen until the August 17th deadline nears.
by Mike 8 Comments
Lane Meyer at the wonder NoMaas Draft Blog interviewed Yanks scouting director Damon Oppenheimer about all sorts of post-draft topics. They talked about Slade Heathcott, Graham Stoneburner, Brett Gerritse, plus a whole bunch of the other tough signs. Make sure you head over and give it a read. Great stuff.
by Mike 18 Comments
We always hear that trying to predict the Major League Baseball draft is nothing more than guesswork, especially anytime before June 1st. However, once you get down to draft day, trying to project picks isn’t a totally futile exercise since we then know which teams are onto which players. Plus there’s all that stuff about knowing who’s healthy, who has performed well, who has slumped and so on.
I figured I’d take a look at the final mock drafts put out there by some of the most notable analysts on draft day to see who did the best job of predicting the picks. Here are the results, with the overall pick number is in parenthesis:
Jim Callis, Baseball America [link and link]
Total Correct Picks: 10
Correct Picks: Stephen Strasburg (1), Dustin Ackley (2), Donovan Tate (3), Tony Sanchez (4), Drew Storen (10), Chad James (18) Jiovanni Mier (21), Slade Heathcott (29), Brett Jackson (31), Tim Wheeler (32)
Kevin Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus [link]
Total Correct Picks: 6
Correct Picks: Strasburg (1), Ackley (2), Tate (3), Zack Wheeler (6), Bobby Borchering (16), Heathcott (29)
Keith Law, ESPN [link]
Total Correct Picks: 12
Correct Picks: Strasburg (1), Ackley (2), Tate (3), Tony Sanchez (4), Jacob Turner (9), Borchering (16), James (18), Chad Jenkins (20), Mier (21), Mike Trout (25), Heathcott (29), Wheeler (32)
Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com [link]
Total Correct Picks: 8
Correct Picks: Strasburg (1), Ackley (2), Tate (3), Tony Sanchez (4), Mike Minor (7), Storen (10), Grant Green (13), James (18)
Even though Callis didn’t have the Pirates taking Tony Sanchez in his original post, he did update his mock four hours before the draft on BA’s Draft Blog to reflect the move, so I was kind and gave him credit for that. Obviously, Strasburg was a gimme at numbero uno, as was Sanchez at four considering his predraft deal. Florida grabbing Oklahoma prep righty Chad James 18th overall was expected as well, because scouting director Stan Meeks is from Oklahoma, as is staff ace and budding megastar Josh Johnson. James’ talent warranted being drafted at that spot, and all of the other stars aligned perfectly.
As you can see, KLaw had the most correct picks with twelve. However, correctly predicting the most picks doesn’t automatically mean someone had the best mock draft, because correctly calling later picks is way tougher than calling early round picks. So in order to weigh the later right picks better, I assigned a point value to each slot and just tallied up the points everyone got. The scoring system wasn’t anything fancy, one point for the first overall pick, two points for the second, three points for the third, and so on. Arbitrary? Yes. Better than nothing? Also yes. With a 32 picks in the first round, the maximum number of points is 528.
So tallying them all up, here’s what we got:
Heh, so it looks like we know who has the most reliable sources, no? Or at least who lucked out with the most guesses, anyway. KLaw walks away with wins in both the Total Correct Pick and Point Tally categories, therefore we shall crown him the Master of the Mock Draft. Something tells me he’d appreciate that.