2024 Draft - Part 36 - What Happens If Draft Disaster Strkes?

 Ok, you are the Cleveland Guardians.  

• You have the largest draft pool EVER for a ML draft.
• You have signed your #1 pick to a savings of $1,620,000 under slot. AND you got the guy you wanted.  
• In addition, you have an additional $914,000+ in your 5% overage (something you have done every year since this system was initiated) that you can spend without losing a draft pick.  
• You also lowballed a number of college players who you might save an additional $500,000 on, all told.

With this excess in mind, the Guardians' draft is set up for them to make a run at 4 high profile HS pitchers they selected in the first 10 rounds.  Those 4, Braylon Doughty (#36 ranked draft prospect), Joey Oakie (#46), Chase Mobley (#80) and Cameron Sullivan (#118) will not come cheap and, by my calculations, could all be signed if their bonus requirements are reasonable.

My estimates have Doughty ($100,000 over his slot value), Oakie ($1.1 million over slot), Sullivan ($575,000 over slot) and Mobley ($1.1 million over slot).  I have projected that they will have enough bonus money, at these amounts, to sign all 4 of these HS pitchers.

But what happens if the worst happens: One (or more) of those top HS players don't sign?  The Guardians will be left with a whole bunch of bonus + 5% overage excess money that they really can't spend on their remaining draft choices.

Why?  Because the rest of the draft is made up of college seniors, juniors and 1 HS pitcher, none of whom, except for Jacob Remily, a HS pitcher drafted in the 16th round, are likely to require overslot bonuses.

But, you could have all this bonus pool money left.  What do you do with it?

Before we get into that, there are a couple things about the draft and bonus pool money:

1. You can't take it with you.  Any money you don't spend is just lost.  You can't use it for international signings or bank it for next year.  It has to be used on signing draft-eligible guys and it has to be used by August 1st of this year.
2. If you go over your draft budget you pay a penalty.  The Guardians, since this penalty was instituted, have always gone right up to the limit of losing a draft choice and not worried about the penalty.
3. Any player who was draft eligible for the 2024 draft but who was NOT drafted, is eligible to be signed (no draft-and-follows).  These players are referred to as non-drafted free agents or NDFAs
4. NDFAs can sign for up to $150,000 without counting against the draft bonus pool.
5. And, finally, you can't trade slot money to another team in exchange for players or future draft picks.

So, the only choice, if disaster strikes with the HS pitchers above,  if you want to use your entire draft budget and overage, is to sign draft eligible guys who were not drafted, like Cade Smith from the 2020 draft.  Here are some thoughts about who you might sign who could require larger than $150,000 bonuses to sign:

1. In my mock draft I had the Guardians picking Mason Koch (11th), John Bay (9th), Pierce Coppola (10th), Matt Willadsen (19th) and Owen Boeresma (7th).  None of these guys were drafted so they are still eligible to be signed.  You could likely sign a number of these guys for the overslot money you wouldn't spend if one of the top 4 didn't sign.

2. In the MLB Pipeline draft rankings there are always highly-ranked HS seniors who were not drafted due to some combination of a strong college commitment and high bonus demands.  The top 15 remaining prospects from those rankings are HS players.  It is possible that one of those players could be enticed to forego their college commitment if they were offered enough although each of them has likely already been offered large amounts (likely >$1 million) already and turned it down so the odds of this happening are very low.

3. There are a number of MLB Pipeline-ranked college players who weren't drafted.  Given the Ryan Prager situation this year (Angels 3rd round, turned down being signed to return to school), a number of these guys, like Prager, are betting on themselves having good years in college next year and being drafted very high next year.  To soften the blow of losing that professional bonus this year, those guys are likely to make a lot of NIL money in college next season and likely have prime roles on their college teams.  Nevertheless, guys like Jalin Flores (116), Jared Jones (119), Harrison Didawick (125), Zach Stewart (134) and Anthony Silva (137) are college sophomores who went undrafted as did college juniors Hunter Hines (174), Jonathon Vastine (188), Bobby Boser (235) and Jay Woolfolk (250).

4. There are also many summer leagues both for college players (e.g., the Cape Cod Baseball League) and even some HS players sprinkled through other notable college summer leagues around the country.  Players have been signed as NDFAs from those leagues in the past.

It also should be noted that using a large bonus excess on multiple players might cause more minor leaguers to be released as the Guardians were likely keeping spaces open ONLY for their draft choices and any NDFAs they have already signed.

Looking at Baseball America, it is interesting that no NDFAs for the Guardians are listed yet.  That could be because, just like last year, they will have a draft signing ceremony in Goodyear tomorrow and any NDFAs will be part of that ceremony.  It could also be because of the new cap on US minor league players they don't have room for any NDFAs this year.  

I guess we will find on this Sunday.

We will also find out at that time whether they were able to sign all their draft picks.  If not, the time between then and August 1st could be very interesting for the Guardians as they could possibly be the team with the largest draft bonus pool ever who had the largest amount of bonus pool money left over at the end of the signing period.

The Guardians are really good at drafting signable players and using their who budget.  Let's hope they do both this time and maybe surprise us with a couple of quality NDFAs, as well.