2023 Amateur Draft - Signing Update - July 22, 2023 - A look At the Numbers

 Here are the numbers from the Guardians 2023 Draft

• 19 of 21 draft picks signed.  Only 2 not signed (Heuer and Marohn) were the toughest signings, 2 HS draftees taken in the late rounds after all the excess bonus pool had already been spent, limiting them to a $150,000 bonus if they wanted to sign.  Definition of 'flyer' picks in case other over-slot bonus signings did not happen.

• Total draft budget alloted before draft: $8,743,800

• Total money (first 10 rds plus overage in rds 11-20) spent on bonuses:   $9,178,375,000

• Total amount spent over draft budget: $434,575

• Penalties on amount spent over draft budget: $326,000

• Total draft spending (budget + overage + penalties) - $9,504,575

Just for comparison sake here are a couple of other numbers:

• Total expected spend (first 10 plus overage 11-20) based on slot for prospect's rank): $6,999,000

• My projected spend on for these draft picks: $8,695,300

Once the deadline for signing players has past and all the data is in, I will post what my spend would have been picking from my mock draft

Analysis - There are two premises to consider.  Was this a good draft?  Was this draft worth the money we spent on it?  Let's look at each of these:

• My opinion is well-known.  I think this was a terrible draft.

• As far as whether the draft funding was appropriate for the players drafted, based solely on their MLB Pipeline pre-draft rankings we should have spent $7 M on this draft.  With the bonuses and penalties, we spent $9.5 M on this draft.  

Now, people will always say that you can't judge a draft so early.  I disagree with that, based on the type and ranking of the players we drafted.   But even if you want to give the Guardians the benefit of the doubt that their scouts are so much better than the rest of baseball, this draft should have cost us, solely based on player rankings, $2.5 M less than it actually cost us, all things considered.  If we paid what the players were worth, included in those savings would have been not having to pay a penalty of $326,000 for the privilege of signing these players.

Time will tell if I am right or I am wrong about these players and how my mock draft players develop compared to the Guardians' actual draftees but one thing is certain: we way overpaid for these draftees compared to what their talent is.  By about $2.5 million.  That money could have been used to draft and sign a couple of HS flyers like they did last year.  Not saying that would have gone well but we at least would have had that money to play with for flyer picks.

Again, time will tell but if this draft ends up sucking, based on what we have seen with the 2022 draftees so far, these two drafts could have huge negative impact on the strength of our farm system for years to come.