2017LHPscrewball posted:Nuke83 posted:HS pitchers have been taken first overall before, just never a RH prep arm. Groome had some questions off the field last year that led to his slip in stock. Moniak barreled up everything he saw during the summer at every high profile event. Has tremendous barrel control and great hands.
Goosegg hits it on the head. If you can sign any one of your top 3-5 with the 1-1 pick, and one of those can save you 1-3 million in slot money that allows you pay over slot later in the draft, you can have a significantly better draft class for the year rather than necessarily getting the one best player.
Consider last year Moniak signed for 6.1 saving the Phillies nearly 3 million of the $9+ slot. Likewise for the Braves signing Dansby in 2015 at 6.5 of an 8.6 million slot. It becomes a combination of finance, talent and need, and when you look at the difference of talent being slim between the top 3 pitchers and top 3 position players, the other factors weigh heavily. Now, when you have an unquestionable 1-1 like Harper, the talent begins to weight much heavier than the other factors, but there hasn't been that clear-cut 1-1 since him.
They really lowered the 1-1 slot value (now $7.8 million) as well as reducing the 1-2 (now $7.2 million) so there will no longer be an opportunity to for anywhere close to $3 million in savings so the strategies have been modified slightly this year - although the assumption is that the #1, #2 and #3 picks will get around the same as those picks got last year. Very interesting what changes were made to the slot values. I agree with the changes at the very top where they have leveled things out a bit, but they seem to have started to nickel and dime folks in the later rounds (why take $25k from the final guy in round #10?). I know this was voted in last year but never saw much discussion about the changes other than how it impacted first round picks - nothing about the cumulative effects on rounds 3-10 when it looks like a 10% across the board cut was put in place.
Correct, and they did this because teams were saving heavily on that 1-1 pick, with only Dansby Swanson the highest bonus paid to 1-1 since the slot system went into effect.
So for 2017, the first two picks actually decreased in slot from 2016, picks below that increased until pick 60, where it decreases again.
I suspect the same thing will occur this year, but for a $1+ million savings vs. $2-$3 mill. While they're tweaking the advantage the top 2-3 teams held in the past by stockpiling that slot money for later picks.
My guess is the 10% haircut you reference is simply owners trying to curb/offset the annual escalation of bonus cost.