Why are the Twins Leaving Draft Bonus Pool Money on the Table?

[nicksaviking]

2 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

I'd think they could have gotten one of the last two picks for that money....or signed Jenkins earlier to relive all our anxiety. I don't get it. 

While I'm with you and would like to see them spend the money, I can see a couple of near term and long term issues with them doing this. As for the Jenkins situation, that could have been a Catch-22, or perhaps 2 Catch 22s. First, if they'd have gone against their organizational prerogative about not spending it this time, Boras would most certainly make them do it every time they sign one of his clients. And honestly, waiting until the last minute instead of paying more is surely something I'd do. Heck, I'm doing it right now biding my time waiting for some tickets to go down at a later date.

Second, if they'd opened up that can of worms, would have they been able to give that money to the HS kids? Or would Jenkins and Boras said, 'Nah uh, if you're opening up the wallet, I'm going to want it all.'

Not a Boras critique at all, for anyone thinking it was.

[chpettit19]

8 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

While I'm with you and would like to see them spend the money, I can see a couple of near term and long term issues with them doing this. As for the Jenkins situation, that could have been a Catch-22, or perhaps 2 Catch 22s. First, if they'd have gone against their organizational prerogative about not spending it this time, Boras would most certainly make them do it every time they sign one of his clients. And honestly, waiting until the last minute instead of paying more is surely something I'd do. Heck, I'm doing it right now biding my time waiting for some tickets to go down at a later date.

Second, if they'd opened up that can of worms, would have they been able to give that money to the HS kids? Or would Jenkins and Boras said, 'Nah uh, if you're opening up the wallet, I'm going to want it all.'

Not a Boras critique at all, for anyone thinking it was.

Boras is always going to try to get his client the most money. He's always going to tell them they have to go into the overage. He tells them they need to raise their major league budget when they're negotiating contracts for major leaguers. The Twins can still simply say "no." They don't go to him and say "hey, we're going into the overage this year, are you ok with us giving that to the 20th round pick we made?" They still go to Boras and say "we have 7.14 mil for Jenkins, does he want it or is he going to UNC?" 

Doing something once, or even frequently, doesn't mean they need to do it every single year. Boras, or any agent, can try to get them to, that's their job. And it's the Twins FO jobs to make things work within their budget/plan for that particular year. Shying away from spending into the overage ever because big bad Boras is going to make them do it all the time doesn't make a lot of sense to me. He didn't make them pay 300 mil for Correa even though he tried to.

If the FO isn't good enough at negotiating contracts to be able to spend into the overage when they want, but not when they don't, they shouldn't be running a major league organization.

[twinstalker]

Good article.  I'm not sure getting the overage tax from others is worth it, but I wonder if there are any more penalties for going over, like maybe it's one strike toward not being considered a small market team or something like that.

[roger]

31 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

What shot? It's a discussion of whether it is a good idea or not......and it likely is if the only other team not to is the Rockies.....

Article would have had more merit, Mike, if it had shown if any of those high school kids drafted by the Twins and not signed have done anything.  I don’t know the answer and it could change my opinion.

[Mike Sixel]

25 minutes ago, roger said:

Article would have had more merit, Mike, if it had shown if any of those high school kids drafted by the Twins and not signed have done anything.  I don’t know the answer and it could change my opinion.

Just the Twins? There are thousands of HS kids drafted since this rule was put in place, that's a lot of analysis. 

But, I'll bet good money more than a few unsigned HS kinds have gone to college and been great, and drafted again (which is one reason they go to college if they aren't paid A LOT not to).

[chpettit19]

24 minutes ago, roger said:

Article would have had more merit, Mike, if it had shown if any of those high school kids drafted by the Twins and not signed have done anything.  I don’t know the answer and it could change my opinion.

Sam Hilliard, Brent Rooker (we drafted him twice), Matt Wallner (also drafted him twice), Max Meyer, Patrick Bailey, Drew Gilbert were late round picks by the Twins recently that they didn't sign who have had some amount of MLB success, or were top picks later (Gilbert).

[Mike Sixel]

18 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

Sam Hilliard, Brent Rooker (we drafted him twice), Matt Wallner (also drafted him twice), Max Meyer, Patrick Bailey, Drew Gilbert were late round picks by the Twins recently that they didn't sign who have had some amount of MLB success, or were top picks later (Gilbert).

Now multiply that by 30 teams.....that's a lot of unsigned HS guys. And that's only late round guys.....

[PatPfund]

I really can't get too worked up about this. The Twins signed all of their draft picks except the two HS position players they picked last. Who might not have signed anyway, and who both have plenty of time to show they are worth drafting again. Got a chuckle out of spending some of it to close the deal earlier with Jenkins to save us stress. (Now if they'd failed to close that deal, I'd be feeling different, but giving a teenage millionaire a couple hundred K extra to save me stress is money wasted.)

[tony&rodney]

In time the top five players from the 2023 draft will get their opportunity to prove their worth. I'm just glad the Twins didn't try something else (college guy) and picked Walker Jenkins, and then signed him for full slot plus a used VW.

The MLB draft has always been a big gamble and the money keeps moving upward. The Twins are fine to keep to budget as long as they keep picking the best players in the first few rounds. The number of impact players from later rounds is decreasing with the increased visibility of the players, even though we know there will always be a few low draft choices who climb the ladder to become stars.

[jmlease1]

4 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

What shot? It's a discussion of whether it is a good idea or not......and it likely is if the only other team not to is the Rockies.....

well, one of the first comments on this topic (which is an interesting one) was to fire off a shot at the Pohlad family for being cheap, so...while you might not be taking the shot, one was still fired.

[Lefty61]

To better understand the Twins approach to investing in prospects, looking at what they did at the 2023 International Signing day is particularly instructive when they signed three of the top 50 MLB prospects, handing out,   $2.4 MM to #11 Prospect Ariel Castro of Cuba, $1.1 MM to #31 Prospect Carlos Silva of Ven., and $2.1 MM to #38 Hendry Chivilla of the DR,  a very impressive prospect haul given the highest other prospect signed in the division was Cleveland getting prospect #28 for $1.375 MM.  

If an agent accuses the Twins of underspending in the draft, they can point to their significant investment here.  I really like what they've done this year in bringing in new high level talent,  bodes well for the future! 

[old nurse]

5 hours ago, LyleCole said:

I did some analysis over the past 15 years of Twins draft choices that received outsized signing bonus over the past 15 years.  

2008   BJ Hermsen   6th round   $650,000

2008  Michael Tonkin  30th round   $270,000

2009  Steve Liddle  15th  $200,000

2010  Dallas Gallant  23rd round  $122,500

2010   Kelly Cross  26th round  $100,000

2011  Austin Malinowski  16th round  $175,000

2011  Trent Higginbotham  26th round  $195,000

2012  Zack Larson  20th round  $190,000

2018  Laron Smith   25th round  $125,000

2019  Edouard Julien  18th round  $493,000

 

Only 2 of those players ever reached the major league level:  Michael Tonkin (who is back in the majors with Atlanta after several years of exile) and Julien of course.  

The success rate of major league draft picks is marginal at best and most of this money allocated to signing these mostly high school players seems to be money down the drain.  The Twins could perhaps adjust their draft strategy to target the higher ranked college bound high school players,   The top undrafted player on MLB.com draft prospects was Roch Cholowsky, ranked 44th with a UCLA commitment.   Do you utilize a pick of one of the college pitchers they drafted in the 15th - 18th rounds and take a shot at him or a similar prospect?

The Twins went far above draft slot to sign 3rd round pick Brandon Winokur ($1.5 million bonus vs. $859,700 slot value) and a bit over slot to sign Dylan Questad.   So they already have significant bonus pool money committed to these two signings.

However, I question the new trend to give out 6 figure signing bonuses to the college players they drafted in the later rounds, including a couple of draft picks who were college seniors like 17th round pick Kade Bragg.   Nothing against Kade, but he was a college senior that really had limited leverage in his signing.  

In the end, the data suggests that these flyers are probably big wastes of money.  The utilization of this money, especially if it is over pool and taxed at 75% is something an organization should do seldom, if at all.

 

Bonus pools started about 2012

the Twins have gone over slot value on a lot of players.

[old nurse]

If spending into the tax money works where is the proof?  

[Steve Lein]

12 hours ago, old nurse said:

If spending into the tax money works where is the proof?  

I'd look specifically at the Dodgers, without knowing if there's actually any success stories there off the top of my head. Despite all their winning (means not having high draft picks) and free-agent spending (meaning they also have been losing a lot of high draft picks, didn't pick until #36 this year), they consistently year-in and year-out still have one of the top farm systems (they also do really well internationally).

Examples of what they did this year, as relevant to the discussion:

Pick 190, SS Bryan Gonzalez from Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy (HS), overslot by ~$100K 

Pick 250, OF Jaron Elkins, Goodpasture Christian School (HS), overslot by ~$210K

Pick 550, LHP Sterling Patrick, South Hills HS, over"slot" by ~$200K

For me, all of these guys are comparable to the two high-schoolers the Twins took with their last picks, in that they don't show up in any draft rankings, but are obviously liked by internal scouting departments. Even $400K can get these types to sign if you know your targets well enough.

[Mike Sixel]

16 hours ago, old nurse said:

If spending into the tax money works where is the proof?  

If not spending into the tax works, where is the proof?

Every team but Mn and CO has done it, do you think the other 28 teams are wrong, and CO is right?

I have no idea....but I'd guess MN would love to have a few more guys like Winkour in their system right now.

[old nurse]

7 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

I'd look specifically at the Dodgers, without knowing if there's actually any success stories there off the top of my head. Despite all their winning (means not having high draft picks) and free-agent spending (meaning they also have been losing a lot of high draft picks, didn't pick until #36 this year), they consistently year-in and year-out still have one of the top farm systems (they also do really well internationally).

Examples of what they did this year, as relevant to the discussion:

Pick 190, SS Bryan Gonzalez from Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy (HS), overslot by ~$100K 

Pick 250, OF Jaron Elkins, Goodpasture Christian School (HS), overslot by ~$210K

Pick 550, LHP Sterling Patrick, South Hills HS, over"slot" by ~$200K

For me, all of these guys are comparable to the two high-schoolers the Twins took with their last picks, in that they don't show up in any draft rankings, but are obviously liked by internal scouting departments. Even $400K can get these types to sign if you know your targets well enough.

Yup, they went over slot. Still doesn’t show that it is of value to do so. Logically the better the player the better chance, but there hasn’t been proof it is of value

[old nurse]

4 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

If not spending into the tax works, where is the proof?

Every team but Mn and CO has done it, do you think the other 28 teams are wrong, and CO is right?

I have no idea....but I'd guess MN would love to have a few more guys like Winkour in their system right now.

Did not say anything was right or wrong to spend into tax on draft picks or not to. If there is a problem with  not doing it, as the article seems to imply there ought to be something to back it. Logically it would seem that it would pay off, but if drafting and outcomes were easy to figure out Ober would not have been drafted so late.