Draft Pool Spending: Where The Cardinals Stand
Posted on June 27th, 2012 by Jeff in 2012 MLB Draft, MLB DraftThe Cardinals have made official a bunch of draft pick signings over the past few days, so it is time to take a look at where they stand with regards to the draft pick pool allotment. After the jump, I take a look (with handy charts!).
Here is where we stand right now with the 1st through 12th round picks in the Cardinals draft. I didn’t pencil in the signings of Alex Mejia and Kurt Heyer because we do not have numbers on them yet.
| Round | Name | Signed For | Slot | Savings |
| 1 | Michael Wacha | $ 1,900,000 | $ 1,900,000 | $ - |
| 1 | James Ramsey | $ 1,600,000 | $ 1,775,000 | $ 175,000 |
| 1s | Stephen Piscotty | $ 1,430,400 | $ 1,430,400 | $ - |
| 1s | Patrick Wisdom | $ 678,790 | $ 969,700 | $ 290,910 |
| 1s | Steve Bean | $ 700,000 | $ 870,600 | $ 170,600 |
| 2 | Carson Kelly | $ 1,600,000 | $ 574,300 | $ (1,025,700) |
| 3 | Tim Cooney | $ 404,400 | $ 404,400 | $ - |
| 4 | Alex Mejia | $ 294,200 | ||
| 5 | Cory Jones | $ 220,300 | $ 220,300 | $ - |
| 6 | Kurt Heyer | $ 165,100 | ||
| 7 | Kyle Barraclough | $ 65,000 | $ 143,300 | $ 78,300 |
| 8 | Yoenny Gonzalez | $ 50,000 | $ 133,800 | $ 83,800 |
| 9 | Rowan Wick | $ 75,000 | $ 125,000 | $ 50,000 |
| 10 | Jacob Wilson | $ 20,000 | $ 125,000 | $ 105,000 |
| 11 | Trey Williams | none | ||
| 12 | Max Foody | $ 385,000 | none | $ (285,000) |
| $ 9,128,890 | $ 9,131,100 | $ (357,090) |
That leaves the Cardinals in the negative to the tune of $357,090 with regards to their pool, but will certainly save a small bit of money with the Mejia and Heyer deals.
Next let’s put Mejia and Heyer’s deals in. They should sign below slot deals, but simply averaging deals for rounds 3 and 4 gets an overslot deal for Mejia and almost a slot deal for Kurt Heyer. Amongst the top 10 rounds, Carson Kelly is the only bonus that was not in top to bottom order. So, we need to keep both below slot, but between the pick ahead of them and behind them. Pencil in Mejia for $250,000 and Heyer for $100,000. I have no prior knowledge of these bonuses.
With those (albeit ballpark) numbers, the Cardinals are still over their draft pool allotment. But never fear, the Cardinals (and all the other teams) are able to go over the draft pick slot pool allotment by 5% paying only a fine. If they go over that 5% limit, they will lose a draft picks next year. Needless to say, the Cardinals will not be going over that 5% extra (and I doubt any team will be) but from the looks of the chart below, they will absolutely have to go over the original draft pool.
| Round | Name | Signed For | Slot | Savings | |
| 1 | Michael Wacha | $ 1,900,000 | $ 1,900,000 | $ - | |
| 1 | James Ramsey | $ 1,600,000 | $ 1,775,000 | $ 175,000 | |
| 1s | Stephen Piscotty | $ 1,430,400 | $ 1,430,400 | $ - | |
| 1s | Patrick Wisdom | $ 678,790 | $ 969,700 | $ 290,910 | |
| 1s | Steve Bean | $ 700,000 | $ 870,600 | $ 170,600 | |
| 2 | Carson Kelly | $ 1,600,000 | $ 574,300 | $ (1,025,700) | |
| 3 | Tim Cooney | $ 404,400 | $ 404,400 | $ - | |
| 4 | Alex Mejia | $ 250,000 | $ 294,200 | $ 44,200 | |
| 5 | Cory Jones | $ 220,300 | $ 220,300 | $ - | |
| 6 | Kurt Heyer | $ 100,000 | $ 165,100 | $ 65,100 | |
| 7 | Kyle Barraclough | $ 65,000 | $ 143,300 | $ 78,300 | |
| 8 | Yoenny Gonzalez | $ 50,000 | $ 133,800 | $ 83,800 | |
| 9 | Rowan Wick | $ 75,000 | $ 125,000 | $ 50,000 | |
| 10 | Jacob Wilson | $ 20,000 | $ 125,000 | $ 105,000 | |
| 11 | Trey Williams | none | |||
| 12 | Max Foody | $ 385,000 | none | $ (285,000) | |
| $ 9,478,890 | $ 9,131,100 | $ (247,790) | total | ||
| $ 9,587,655 | $ 456,555 | 5% add’l | |||
| $ 208,765 | to 5% cap |
The Cardinals will now be over the original pool by $247,790, but they will have $456,555 worth of wiggle room and will have $208,756 of that remaining. It seems unlikely that the Cardinals would be able to sign any of their unsigned 11th-40th round selections with a very hard maximum of $308,756 to offer any one of them. If Mejia and Heyer get slot deals, that will eliminate another $100,000 for the Cardinals to use and most certainly make any unsigned player completely unsignable unless they wanted to sign for under $100,000. And if they wanted to sign for that little, they would have been signed already.
At this point, the Cardinals bringing Max Foody into the fold with the addition of James Ramsey’s monstrous bonus means the end of the player signings for the 2012 draft pending some wild development. And with the MLB draft, you never know!
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Thanks for this. I apparently misunderstood the information on BA drastically. Apologies to everyone for raising unrealistic hopes on the Williams front. Your math looks better than mine.
Glad to have all these guys in the system. I’m disappointed that it seems Williams is out of our reach. Who knows what number he would have accepted, but it seems that we were a little overly generous with many of the college guys compared with some of the bonuses other teams are giving out. In contrast, the fact that Wacha and Piscotty were both rated higher than where they were picked and signed for slot, so the negotiations went well to some degree.
A behind the scenes HBO series on this who process would be amazing.
I know there was some talk earlier in the Ramsey thread about the parameters for receiving a compensation pick and if it was in fact tied to a team being required to offer slot money or some percentage of slot in order to receive a comp pick for an unsigned draftee. Well, someone asked that question in the Baseball America chat with Jim Callis earlier today and Jim’s answer is below.
Ted (St. Louis, MO): Is there a rule requiring a team to offer a certain percent of slot in order to be eligible to receive another pick next year for not signing a player?
Jim Callis: No. A team doesn’t have to make an offer to player in order to receive a compensation pick for not signing him. Compensation only applies to players drafted in the first three rounds.
Thanks for the clarification, David.
Keith Law just tweeted that he thought the Ramsey pick was a huge overpay. I appreciate his opinion…hate hearing it…but appreciate his opinion.
I’m writing/ranting about Ramsey for tomorrow and using that quote. Should be some… healthy discussion.
Sweet. I may have tweeted the original question to keith law ;) Shocked by @dgoolds thoughts on this.
What were goold’s thoughts? I would expect him to adhere to the party line; he needs to protect his access.
He didn’t think it was that surprising they were so close to slot. That surprises me.
I don’t think it’s that surprising. I think it’s clear that Cards drafted Ramsey at 23 and paid him like the 23rd pick because they thought his talent justified him being drafted there. The supposed stratgey of drafting Ramsey to save money to sign other overslot picks was only people’s speculation to explain Ramsey being “overdrafted” in their opinion. It’s obvious now that that was never the Cards strategy with respect to Ramsey.
I don’t think anyone disputes that Ramsey was an overpay. No doubt Keith Law would hate the pick regardless, because he is all upside on prospects.
Let me be the first to go on record and say that I dispute that Ramsey is an “overpay”. First, none of us have any idea what kind of player Ramsey will turn out to be. This includes Keith Law. If you doubt that, go back and look at Law’s list of top 100 players before the draft four or five or six years ago. Look at his success rate and you will see SEVERAL misses. I’m not criticising his picks…..just saying what is true. This is a very, very humbling business for scouts and touts.
So I prefer to trust the judgement of a professional scouting department of the St. Louis Cardinals over guys like Keith Law. Most of these guys had Ramsey ranked somewhere between 30-55 in their top 100 picks. BBA had him ranked #51. MLB.com had him#40 I think. So I ask you…..is it really such a stretch to believe that maybe the Cards extensive paid professional scouts might just have an edge over these guys?
And maybe the future will prove the Cards wrong. But if I was going to start a team tomorrow….I would, without a doubt, take the judgement of an organization of paid professional scouts over Keith Law or BBA.
With that information and the fact that they signed him under slot…..I dispute the overpay label.
Jim…I agree with your point that none of know how good he will be. None of us are scouts. He could end up becoming an awesome player. In fact, I hope he does. Most of us are not disagreeing with you about that.
My arguement is that the Cardinals seem to have ignored basic market economics. They bought high on something that they didn’t have to buy high on. College seniors have less leverage than HS’ers. That is just a fact. They have less options and less leverage. They command lower bonuses. The Cardinals paid a higher % to slot value than Houston did for the first overall pick. They paid higher % to slot than some teams did for draft-eligible sophmores. It doesn’t make sense.
Because it doesn’t make sense based on our peripheral knowledge, there is likely more to it than meets our eyes. Being able to squeeze a senior down simply because he is a senior begs the question whether that’s a reasonable ploy.
Is saving $350K the only criteria from which a signing should be judged? Did the $175K they locked in (when they did) serve the purpose the Cards wanted. Given Williams unlikely signing, I suspect it did.
Entirely too much angst has been wasted on the Cards decision to get the deal done quickly rather than squeeze a little bit more money from a first round draft choice. Perhaps getting the deal done quickly took precedence. I don’t hear a single complaint from the FO…just the fans and scouts. Much ado about nothing IMO.
How many drafted players want to play on The East Coast or West Coast or party some city with college friends ? Some will sign next year as free agent playing for a fan club. Some will never play because of wives or drugs or whatever.
s
what?
I thought Heyer was only a junior. What makes everyone think he’ll sign below slot?
Kurt is a Junior and is a 3 time All-Pac 12 & 3 time All-American. Led the nation in strikeouts, innings pitched and wins…….He has proven himself consistently and took his team to the CWS. Why you would pay H.S. kids millions is beyond me…..
Yes, I am Kurt’s Dad and I am the one that talked him into going to College instead of taking 400k out of H.S. Just doesn’t seem right?
I have thought long and hard about the Ramsey signing and how it could possibly be justified for that amount given the negotiating leverage the Cardinals had. I have only two possible scenarios in which it makes sense 1) (least likely) is that they can sign Ramsey for this amount and still sign Williams. 2) (most likley and the only one that really makes sense to me) is that they came to conclusion they would not be able to sign Williams for an amount they thought he was worth under any circumstances so in this case it wasn’t worth paying hardball with Ramsey. I guess #3 would be that BDW likes to give away money but that is out of the realm of possibility.
Note: I posted this in another thread (6/26 Farm Report) by mistaking and am repeating it here where it belongs.
i agree. it must be as you described in the second scenario. at least that’s the only thing that really makes sense to me. still holding out hope for scenario number one, though.
Why not include the possibility that Ramsey broke a predraft deal causing him to take over a week to sign after they had been eliminating and causing the Cardinals to backtrack on the unoffical signing of Max Foody until the money #’s on Ramsey are finalized.
The fact that he had or didn’t have a pre draft deal for a lower amount wouldn’t have to affect the Cards actions here. If he reneged, just dont sign him.
Btw, weren’t you one of the ones who poo-pooed my thought in the Kelly thread that it took a lot of trust in Ramsey to not back out on a pre-draft deal so we could already sign Kelly? Thought the idea of Ramsey backing out would be ridiculous?
I had thought the Ramsey money would go to Kelly but it seemed the team saved enough on the other picks in order to pay Kelly.
The thing is, as long as he signed for something under slot, it was fiscally sounder to sign him than not. Signing him for under slot still creates wiggle room for over-slot signings elsewhere. As important, and less obvious, it moves the magic 5% over-slot bar, beyond which there is a loss of a draft choice, from being about $370,000 if he doesn’t sign, to about $455,000, since the size of the pool increases. It’s bizarre, but true, that the system penalizes teams for failing to sign guys in the first ten rounds after they have nominally arranged for below-slot signings of those guys.
Because it’s there’s no evidence for it and it doesn’t even make any sense.
A little disappointing and confounding that Ramsey got so paid, but overall, I feel good about this draft. Love Wacha, love Kelly, like Bean, feel fine about Ramesy (as a player, not as value), and don’t know anything about anyone else.
And I feel good about Piscotty as a value pick
Love the viewpoint of the financials of the draft. Thanks for sharing. I am no expert so please don’t pound me too hard for this comment.
Based on this chart and the fact that they signed what looks like 9 guys under slot, it looks like they under-drafted 9 guys to pony up the cash for this Carson Kelly dude, right? The $1m over slot they paid him basically came by reaching on 9 other guys.
Again, I’m no draft expert and my logic is probably off somehow. If not, that’s putting a lot of hope into one player.
Nine guys under slot? I only count seven (so far). The last table speculates that Mejia and Heyer will come in under slot, but we don’t know that yet.
7….9. Premise is really the same though.
That’s basically it in a nutshell KC and that’s why this whole new draft system is asinine to the core.
Yes, essentially the draft order does not tell you how teams valued the players — instead, the bonus money paid reflects the value. There is one caveat to this, which is that MLB’s draft slotting rules means that teams had to make each of their picks, so then in many cases they took players with pre-negotiated underslot bonuses earlier in order to free up funds to pay overslot bonuses later. This raised the value of college kids who lacked leverage and thus would take smaller bonuses. Since teams had to take some of these types of players to make their bonus pool work, it became more valuable to take the better college seniors earlier in the draft. The trick was to take enough underslot players to free up money to make some high-upside plays while still making sure that the high-school kids they wanted will still be available with lower picks.
I think the Cards did a good job of this. They went for Kelly early and made sure they had money to sign him, then gambled on Williams and Foody at a point in the draft where they wouldn’t be hurt if either guy failed to sign. I agree that Ramsey looks like an overpay though. It made sense to get the best senior at that point, but they should have been able to sign him for less.
Also, here’s a reordered view of the top of the Card’s draft based on signing bonus compared with MLB’s recommended draft slot:
1a Wacha
1b/1c Ramsey and Kelly
1d Piscotty
2a Bean
2b Wisdom
3a Cooney
3b Foody
That’s a pretty good mixture of floor and upside.