How Tradeable Are MLB Draft Picks, and How Might the Twins Do It?

Teams do this to some extent each year. They draft seniors and sign them for tiny bonuses, planning to reallocate their funds to higher draft picks to pay them more money. That’s the biggest difference between the MLB Draft and the NFL and NBA drafts. In those drafts, pick bonuses are hard-capped. If you’re drafted earlier, you’re making more money. 

Sure, you can nitpick and say the NBA has a scale that goes 20% above to 20% below the value, so Knicks draft pick Pacome Dadiet will make less than the guy who was drafted after him. And that the NFL draft picks always get hung up on “offset” language, which could eventually change the bottom line for some. But the drafts on a whole are apples and oranges. 

I’m not going to get too deep into the minutiae of everything. It would get wordy, and you’d lose interest. Instead, I’m going to give you a few examples of how teams have done this in the past.

The first example I can remember is the Royals in 2013. Drafting 8th overall and possessing the 34th pick (the first of the competitive-balance round), the Royals had money to play games. They drafted Hunter Dozier with the eighth pick, who was considered a back-half of the first-round guy, at best. Dozier signed for a bonus of $2.2 million, below his slot allotment and more in line with what the 16th or 17th pick would get. In essence, they traded down. They now had extra money to spend, or “trade up.”

When top-10 talent Sean Manaea continued to fall and eventually went to the Royals with the 34th pick, he was signed for $3.55 million. That bonus fell in line with what the 6th pick would get.

You might ask, why didn’t they just draft Manaea first and Dozier second? Well, Dozier may have been gone. And then you would say, “Well, they didn’t know Manaea would still be there.” And that’s where I’d argue with you. He was floating hefty bonus demands that no team would have the money to meet before the Royals came back on the clock. 

I also think that, due to some hip issues that Manaea had been experiencing, there was some doubt about his health, and there was less of a risk in matching Manaea up with that lower pick in case something showed up in his physical and he didn’t sign. The Royals would still have the extra money from signing Dozier to throw at later guys. They did draft and not sign four guys in the last 10 rounds who became major leaguers. They would have been the likely beneficiaries of Manaea not signing.

Another, more recent example is the Cubs in 2022. Their selection of Cade Horton seventh overall was met with more than a few raised eyebrows. He was considered a first-round prospect, but this was too high. His under-slot bonus of $4.45 million was very close to slot for the 13th pick. Ah, a “trade back.”

The result was a “trade up” from 47th, where they drafted Jackson Ferris, another first-round talent, in the second round and paid him $3.01 million. That matches with the 24th pick’s slot. So while drafted 7th and 47th, the Cubs manipulated their money to essentially pay their selections as if they were the 13th and 24th picks. These are not the only examples. There are dozens. And they can be done on a wide variety of scales.

So what are the Twins outside-the-box options?

The Twins draft 21st, 33rd, 60th and 69th, and those picks have a total bonus pool allotment of over $9.2 million. Breaking this down to its simplest form, if the Twins use their second, third, and fourth picks and sign guys for 75% of their bonus (which is guaranteed for anyone who submitted medicals at the combine), the Twins could add an additional $1.35 million to their first-round pick bonus and “trade up” from 21st to 13th.

Sure, it’s more complex than this, because other teams in front of them can do the same thing and there’s no guarantee that your preferred player will fall to your actual pick. You have to do background work, and you have to have a fallback plan. But it’s also as simple as that: if you want a guy that might not be available at your spot, call their agent and tell them they have money waiting for them.

Who might be of interest to the Twins in this scenario?

Maybe it’s unfair (or just overly simplistic) to say they have an affinity toward college hitters, but that’s a demographic that they have leaned on heavily. Do they feel especially strong towards a player like James Tibbs or Cameron Smith, both of Florida State? Do they like Carson Benge enough to offer him extra money in an attempt to float him down the board a half dozen more spots?

Or maybe it’s something more run-of-the-mill. High school pitchers always seem to have bigger price tags, and in the NIL era, they have access to other money sooner. Could a pitcher like William Schmidt or Ryan Sloan be encouraged to sign for an extra $1 million at pick 21? 

The chances are the Twins play it relatively straight. The biggest domino to fall is the first one. Maybe the guy you like the most isn’t the most expensive player on the board, and in that moment the “trade down” becomes available. On the flip side, maybe that first domino falls the other way. It's impossible to know what's going to happen with the 20 picks in front of yours.

At any rate, it’s going to be a blast watching every team not only make a new player’s dream come true but also do it while working their phones, their boards, and their draft pool.

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