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Since the beginning of the Derek Falvey era in Minnesota, the stated goal has been to build a sustainable winner. The extent to which the Twins infrastructure, front office staff, and player development has expanded is easily glossed over or even forgotten. A rotation once known for a lack of velocity and strikeouts is now one of the best in baseball. That’s one clear, tangible example of the development of the organization since 2017.
It’s also notable how impressive a job the Twins have done in drafting and player development in recent seasons. Limiting ourselves to a 2021 and 2022 draft retrospective, the Twins added Chase Petty, Cade Povich, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, David Festa Brooks Lee, Tanner Schobel, and a stable of young, rapidly improving college pitchers who now make up the entire Cedar Rapids rotation to the mix.
The Twins signed Walker Jenkins on Monday after protracted negotiations to a deal $5,000 above the $7,139,700 slot number for the fifth overall pick. In doing so, the Twins spent their entire bonus pool of $14,345,600 to cap an exciting draft class. But are the Twins leaving a draft efficiency on the table? Is there a way they could better maximize the talent entering the farm system?
Why Your Bonus Pool Isn’t Actually Your Bonus Pool
The Twins had the fourth-most money to spend in the 2023 draft, $14,345,600. The rules of the draft dictate that a team can spend between 0-5% in addition to their bonus pool with a tax penalty of 75% on any overage used. For the Twins, that would have created an additional $717,280 in bonus pool money. If you add the tax, the total additional spend would be $1,255,240, of which the team would be responsible for $537,960 in tax.
The draft is the second cheapest way to get team controlled talent into your organization (after international signings). To cherry pick some examples, the Twins drafted and signed Bailey Ober and Louie Varland for a combined $240,000. Not bad. In the bonus pool era, only two teams have never spent over their bonus pool. The Twins are the first. The other? The Rockies.
Who Does This? What are the Implications?
You might be wondering if this is a common practice for MLB organizations? This isn’t some quirk that only a few teams take advantage of. Since the beginning of the bonus pool era (11 seasons), teams have outspent their bonus pools a whopping 195 times going into the 2023 draft. So how did this year look? Three teams, including the Twins, spend their exact bonus pool allotment. Five teams spend under their total allotment. 22 teams spent into their bonus pool overage, including every other AL Central team. Cleveland, arguably the smartest of the bunch, spent closest to their 5% overage.
So, what is the possible impact of spending an additional 5% on top of your bonus pool? This, of course, depends on the year and the bonus pool. This year, the Twins could have had an outsized impact from an overspend given their large bonus pool and an incredibly deep draft class. To put the additional $717,280 into perspective, that’s about the equivalent of the 94th overall pick. Obviously, the calculus is not that simple and hopefully, the Twins won’t always have such a large bonus pool.
It’s also, of course, not a foregone conclusion that paying overage on a bonus pool can be easily or accurately allocated (as the protracted nature of the negotiations with Walker Jenkins served to remind us). With players’ bonus demands usually well known, what is likely is if the Twins choose to start overspending, they can likely add a prep player with some upside between rounds 10-20, where bonuses are standardized at $150,000 and any overage dips into your bonus pool. The Brewers are a great example of this practice, nabbing Bishop Letson, a prep pitcher, in the 11th round (332nd pick), the 179th ranked overall player and paying him $482,000 to forgo college.
So Why Not Overspend if it's Advantageous?
If overspending is so advantageous, why not do it? Well, there is a tangible benefit of not overspending for revenue sharing teams, of which the Twins are one. Small market teams equally split the bonus pool tax of teams who overspent in a given year in the draft. This year, that equates to a net gain of around $882,000 for the Twins. While that obviously attractive to owners and the organization, without any transparency around where that revenue goes, it's likely to frustrate fans, particularly if draftable talent is being left on the table.
It seems likely that not spending over the bonus pool is an organizational directive for the Twins. It still feels like a missed opportunity to add more impactful talent to the organization, leveraging one of the cheapest avenues available to teams to do so. What do you think of the idea of the Twins spending over their bonus pool? Add your thoughts in the comments.
Check out our 2026 mock draft board, updated regularly, and with detailed player write-ups!
View The Mock Draft Board
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