20
2012
The Mets Have $7.2 Million to Spend on the Draft
An article by Former Writers
If scouts didn’t already think their job was hard enough, thanks to the new CBA it just got harder and the days of snagging prospects like Phillip Evans in the 15th round are coming to an end.
The new rules assign teams with a “bonus pool” that they are allowed to use on their draft picks. Should they exceed that pool by up to 5% then they have to pay a 75% tax on the overage. If they exceed the pool by 5-10% then they have to pay the 75% tax and forfeit a first round pick. For 10-15% over the pool they pay a 100% tax and lose a first and second round pick. Finally if a team exceeds the pool by more than 15% they pay a 100% tax and lose two first round picks.
This is a very steep price to pay and will prevent those late round bonuses that teams love to use to rejuvenate their system. It also adds a heavier emphasis on scouting by forcing scouts to find even more “hidden gems” to sign for low bonuses since their teams will not be able to draft high bonus prospects in volume anymore.
Jim Callis put together a listing of each team’s draft pool for the 2012 draft and the Mets have $7,151,400 million to spend. It is the ninth highest allotted mount to be spend.
The Mets spend $6,782,500 on the draft last year, but have an additional pick in the top 10 rounds—2nd round as compensation for Jose Reyes—that will require a decent bonus.
It will be fun to see how this new system plays out.
About the Author: Former Writers
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I’m interested to see how teams handle this. Will they put more into the first 2 or 3 rounds and use the difference on the next 7? Will they spread it out evenly? Will they spend less early and try and get those high schoolers with signability questions that drop to later rounds?
I would try to spend big early. Guys in the 5th round and beyond are always surprises. No one is certain their 7th round pick will be an All Star. Go get the guys with the highest ceiling and play the lottery later.
You may be right. This draft isn’t nearly as deep as last years.
That is one way. That would seem the safer bet.
Or, you can do what the Phillies have done and spend big money later on to get the toolsy high school players who have signability issues and drop.
That’s the thing. I wouldn’t let the signability issues scare me off. Maybe that would be worrisome in years past, but not under the new CBA. Don’t let that kid fall. Spend early and buy him out of his commitment.
But you are capped now. Spending big early takes money away from the next few rounds.
You know someone is going to try something crazy or weird for no other reason than doing the exact same thing as the other 29 teams is just dumb.
We’ll see how it all plays out, but I’d rather spend an extra half a mil on signing the first round pick than draft a player with a lower ceiling just so I have a little cash left for my 10th round pick.
We’ll probably see a little bit of both. Granted, my idea relies a little more on luck\inside info. Yours will definitely be the safer and more conventional route for teams that actually want to spend on drafting.
Most high school kids will be going to college now to get a bigger bonus later. The less confident one’s may take what they can get and some who aren’t interested in school will too but their will be many picks wasted on HS kids and soon afterwards they’ll be fewer and fewer taken every year.
Bet the Braves are pissed.
I agree on the curiosity to see how this all plays out but I am even more curios to see how the signing bonus pool for the International Draft plays out.
Thanks??????
I can see teams not drafting (or not offering contracts to) guys int he later rounds, and just filling in those spots elsewhere (MiL castoffs say).
or trading for volume.
I say spend $7 million, and save the other $200 thousand to build a statue honoring Tom Seaver at Citi, and painting a No. 8 and No. 17 next to the other numbers on the wall. But that’s just me.
I’m sure they can afford to honor their own, without sacrificing player development!
Nah…they would probably just add some more Jackie Robinson or Sandy Koufax memorabilia at Citifield.
Breaking news, MANNY signs with A’s:
http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7594873/manny-ramirez-agrees-deal-oakland-as?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Ya, saw that. Minor league deal for $500k. How the mighty have fallen.
I think is a good pick up actually.. if there’s one thing he knows how to do is hit, put him as DH and see what happens.. if he burns out, then cut him, wouldn’t hurt for them, they’re gonna suck anyways..
Check out something I tweeted last week:
Bartolo Colon, Manny Ramirez, Jonny Gomes to Oakland? Guess”old & worn” is new market inefficiency for Beane. Cant wait for the sequel.
https://twitter.com/#!/MetsMerized/status/170931803274752000
If me, Metsie, Alex or Bayonne had written that it would have led to full scale war on this post. You know that don’t you? You should look into why that is.
Because Joe meant it as a joke and doesn’t have a history of attacking people?
i missed the class, but what’s the rationale for the new limits on draft signings? Wasn’t the draft system the last and best hope of the smaller teams to rebound from the backwoods of MLB?
Why not limit F/A signings this way?!? No chance there, huh? It stinks since currently, we’re a team trying to kick-start a System revival.
Simple, the Players’ Union doesn’t represent amateurs. They saw money being spent on amateurs as money being diverted from their members (whether or not this is actually true is up for debate).
The small market/big market thing doesn’t really play since teams from all types of markets have had varying degrees of success. It has more to do with who will invest in scouting and farm systems. It seems a few MidWest small and mid market teams won’t do that. Not a coincidence Selig got on board with this plan.
Good points, Donal. It just peeves me that year after year, the Pirates, Royals, Nats (for a long while), Oakland, Tampa, Padres, rigged the game that way, stinking it up every year, not ‘playing the game’ and getting the top draft picks, spending it seemed 90% of their baseball budget on the draft.
Now, that we have more early picks than we’ve had in a long time, it’s too bad the system changed. That’s all.
Oh i mis-read the penalty schedule…i think it kicks in right after the limit with a 75% ‘tax’. Seems like teams could still exceed the limits at not too high a cost…up to 200 – 300K over the limit, etc., and pay a 150 – 200K tax on that ‘crime’ without forfeiting any future draft picks.
It’s not really rigging the game if you aren’t winning. Also, they spent so much in the draft because they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) keep up on free agents. They weren’t purposely failing. They just made the best of a bad situation.
i do not have a charitable view of the small market teams. They milked, and continue to, the system for all its worth and do not invest their $$$’s in the game, other than line up on ‘hog day’ (draft day) every year and pick the best prospects in the game, hoping they get lucky.
I make a distinction between small market teams and small market owners. The Marlins up until recently had no money to spend because Loria wanted to pocket all that revenue sharing. Fortunately for them, they had top notch scouting and player development departments.
The owner was a cheap jerk, but the team worked really hard within the parameters they had no say in.
Typical Mets. Right after the steroid era ended in 2004 we started recruiting outside Sr, Citizens facilities while everyone else was laughing and snickering at “slot selection guidelines.”
Now that we’ve finally made a committment to going over slot, we longer can after just one year and even at that we would have to raise our spending just to max out our draft “pool.”
In addition the smallest market and smallest revenue teams will compete in a weighted lottery for 6 additional end of first round selections and another 6 end of 2nd round selections so we’re pushed back 12 spots from the 3rd round on.
International spending is also going to be capped.
What should be capped is all those expensive overslot selections teams like the Pirates (48 M the last 4 years) NYY’s, Red Sox, Rangers, Nationals and Royals have picked up over the last 5 years whenever/if ever they play us. Tell them those guys can only play 6 innings against us since we were the only one’s actually adhering to those ridiculous “guidelines.”
Just where now can a big market team actually get a competitive advantage from it’s revenue? Just one place and losing a draft pick just means you have more to spread around.
Oh great. The hill just got steeper.
$7,508,970 is the Mets’ ‘limit’ +5%. So, is it that they have $7.5mm to spend before they incur any penalties???
What I don’t get is this: Do you have to spend ALL your allotted dough? I mean take those cheap-ass A’s, if Bean only wants to spend $3 million on the draft again he can right? Even if they allow him $9 million, he doesn’t have to spend that right? And how does what you do spend effect your allowance for the next year? Does anybody know?
Now thats a great Q! i hope any under-age is forfeited, but don’t know.
All I could find Pete is that according to B.A. they note:
“If a team fails to sign a player in the first 10 rounds, its draft cap is reduced by the assigned value of his pick. It can’t reallocate that value to sign other players. However, it can reallocate the difference between a player’s bonus and the value of his choice.”
http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/draft/2011/11/more-draft-details-from-the-cba/
After years and years of the Mets spending the 2nd fewest amount of money on the draft,they finally change their philosophy,thanks to Sandy and now they can’t go overslot without massive ramifications. The Mets just can’t catch a break.
This is gonna be the end of two sport athletes playing baseball. Archie Bradley this past year was a two sport athlete and now that he cant get a massive signing bonus he probably would have went to OU to play football and baseball. Zach Lee (dodgers) and Tate (padres) from the past couple of years are examples of these types of players. Suppose these players go to college and star at a powerhouse football program, they might change their minds about playing baseball over football and go to the NFL over the MLB. The MLB should be worried about the reduction of the talent pool that will be in the MLB.