The Guardians had a draft budget of $9,980,900 for the 2022 draft.
The Guardians spent, counting the $35,000 overage they paid their 19th round pick Geo Rivera, Jr., the Guardians spent $10,476,200.
That is an overage of $495,300 or 4.96% over their draft budget
They will owe MLB 75% of the overage or $371,475
They should NOT lose a draft choice next year as that penalty would only kick in if they went over 5% above their draft budget.
However, counting the penalty, the Guardians, in total, spent $10,847,675 on this draft.
Analysis:
Look, this draft was considered a weak draft. Their first 3 picks were, a guy considered a high risk pick with lots of red flags (unorthodox swing that required him to sell out to be able to turn on velocity making him susceptible to slow stuff away, poor performance early in the season against Florida St. and a broken foot in April making it impossible to tell if the Florida State series was an aberration or whether it was due to his unorthodox hitting motion), a righty college pitcher with an average, at best, fastball and a left-handed college pitcher with a little bit below average fastball. After that they went with a series of college lefty outfielders without power, more pitchability pitchers and two high school pitchers who you have to consider flyers. Before the two high school flyers (Humphries and Zibin) none of these guys were deep discount guys, meaning their draft status would allow us to gve them a very low bonus for their draft slot. That's good because most of them only got small reductions from what they were slotted to get. That leaves us with Humphries (who got $420,000 above what his draft slot was worth) and Zibin (who got $1,048,000 above his draft slot). They were rated by MLB as the 128th and 131st rated prospects in the draft. That means, in essence, they had 4th round talent. However, their bonuses represented what you would pay 3rd (Humphries) and 2nd (Zibin) round talents.
So, in summary, in a weak draft year, not only did the Guardians not draft the proper guys (in my opinion) they way overpaid for the guys they did draft, costing a small market club to throw $371,475 down the drain in penalties.
The problem with people, anyone actually, who think they know more than the system is that they generally don't. Most people who try to buck the system and go with picks that are way different than what would be expected, usually fail miserably on those picks. When they do all that and don't address the needs of the farm system AND overpay causing their team to lose money in penalties as they are executing their 'strategy', they are actually damaging the farm system that they are being paid to help.
Look, the great thing for these draft gurus is that we won't know for years whether they were right or wrong. By then, they will generally be in new jobs but the team will, potentially, feel the impact of a bad draft for years. Now, as I have said before, this wasn't a terrible draft. Gett Humphries and Zibin makes the draft better simply because more 4th round talent was added. But the Guardians way overpaid for mediocrity in my opinion. And the great thing about my opinion is that it is just that: one person's opinion.
I wish the Guardians luck with this draft as I want it to be successful as that is the only way a small market club can compete. I just think they could have, and should have, done MUCH better and not had them pay nearly the amount that they did!
One final thought. I said I thought that the Guardians were in trouble with their budget when the rumor came out (eventually substantiated) saying they were giving Zibin $1.2 million. But I gave them credit for year after year finding a way to make this all work so they wouldn't go over budget and still sign all their guys. I guess I gave them too much credit because Zibin's bloated bonus almost did them in.
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