Pirates Draft Bonus Pool

This morning the MLB released their final draft bonus pools for the first year player draft on June 9th.  The Pirates will have two first round picks this year.  Their first pick is slated at 22, which is moved up after teams giving up their first round picks to sign qualified offered free agents.  The Pirates other first round pick is the last pick of the round at #41.  The Pirates received this pick as part of the competitive balance lottery.  The Pirates bonus pool is important as they rely on the draft to continue to bring talent into the organization.

The Pirates have received an allotment of 7,007,900 for the entire draft.  You can compare this to the Cincinnati Reds who have the highest allotment at 13.9 million.  The main reason there is a difference between the teams first round pick allotments is due to their records last season.  The Pirates for the #22 spot in the first round will be given an allotment 2.253 million dollars, while the Reds for the #2 pick 7.762 million.  The reason is obvious the higher priced players will be at the front of the draft.  This number of 2.253 million makes up a good chunk of their total budget of 7.007 million.

The Pirates #41 pick is allotted 1.576, giving them a grand total of 3.828 million dollars for their first round pool.  The total drat pool of 7.007 million is to be used for players drafted in the top 10 rounds.  Players selected from the 11th round or lower and received a signing bonus of no more than 100K.  However, you can sign them for more if you save money on picks in the top 10 rounds.  If the Pirates signed their #1 pick for 2.00 million then they will save 253K on the slot.  This means the Bucs will have an additional 253K in bonuses that they can give to rounds 11-40.  For instance, if the Pirates signed a player in the 15th round to a 125K bonus, then 25K over the 100K mark counts against their pool.  This is why you see teams  trying to save money on their top 10 round picks, the more money they save in the top 10 rounds the more money they have to hand out to the bottom draft picks.

Last year the Pirates received 7.392 million dollars for their draft bonus.  The Pirates received less this year because they ended the 2015 season with the second best record in baseball.  The draft order is based on record, rather than post-season finish.  However, their final number this year of 7.009 mil ranks 18th in the league as many teams forfeited their first round picks. When a team forfeits their first round pick they also lose their pool money for that slot. For instance, the Giants were slated to be ahead of us by 10 picks in the draft, but they forfeited their pick to sign Jeff Samardzija.  Because of that they lost their allotment for the first round.  Their bonus pool ranks 28th now instead of 12th. (before QO signings SF was 19th and Pirates were 29th in the draft).  Due to qualifying offer signings the Pirates moved from 29th to 22nd.

As the season gets under way we will start doing weekly articles leading up to the draft.  The articles will focus on players who are expected to go around our the Pirate’s picks at 22 and 41.  This was the first article of many for the MLB draft.  Now that we have an idea of the budget we can start to figure out which players could fall in the draft and which could fit into the budget.  The closer the draft gets the more we will learn about players who will fall due to demands, injuries, or just simply being outperformed.

*Numbers courtesy of MLB.com

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