Shi Davidi: New draft rules change Jays' philosophy
Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 5:54 pm
http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/ ... philosophy
"Signability is going to become a lot more important," general manager Alex Anthopoulos conceded in an interview this week. "The last two years signability, I don’t want to say it wasn’t important, but we didn’t care, especially last year. We did not ask anybody for a price tag, we didn’t ask any players what it would take to sign them, we just relied on our scouts to do their work, grade out the talent, and we said we’re going to take the talent. …
"Now if we feel we’re not going to be able to sign the player, then it’s a very real component that we don’t select the player. I don’t see the benefit of a player not telling you the truth because the pick behind us offers less money than what we’re offering, so there’s no benefit to lie about a price tag."
That’s because each team’s bonus pool is based on the specific value assigned to each of its slots over the first 10 rounds, with the higher picks obviously getting a higher allocation.
Every spot a player drops lowers his bonus ceiling, which is why the expectation is that player advisers will be working hard to move their clients up in the draft, rather than trying to land them with a free-spending club lower down.
That approach led to an exploitation of draft spending inequities by a handful of teams, players and advisers, leading to early-round talents routinely sliding to richer clubs who ignored the slot recommendations and loaded up on them, while others sifted through thinning prospect fields.
Additionally, now that players chosen from the 11th round on won’t count against a team’s bonus pool unless they sign for more than $100,000, the teen-round gambles routinely seen in recent years should also be a thing of the past.