Oakland snatched an impressive pool of college talent on Day 1, and is now set to add to their system significantly
It has been a busy three days of drafting for the Oakland Athletics, and they ended up with a fascinating crop of talent that they will now set out to sign. The most important piece of the puzzle is, of course, fourth overall pick Nick Kurtz who is set to receive the biggest bonus of this draft. However, the Athletics should be saving some money here which enabled them to go out and get a trio of day one players with Tommy White and Gage Jump of LSU joining Kurtz in Oakland’s draft room. Oakland has recently used this strategy to some success, in 2023 taking Jacob Wilson at 6th overall and using that money to enable them to sign Steven Echavarria who is now one of the top pitchers in the system.
Beyond that day one trio, all of whom represent significant additions to the top of Oakland’s system, the Athletics will have some tough signs that will likely take them going some amount over slot. Josiah Romeo is the big prep arm this year, a supremely talented Canadian righty who excelled in MLB’s draft league this season. He was followed by Dylan Fien in the 7th round, a catcher out of Great Oaks High School who is not regarded as highly as Romeo but still needs to be signed away from a UCLA commitment. The final prep talent to look at is 20th rounder Dylan Volantis, but that looks like a long shot and I don’t expect him to sign. Often teams will take players like Volantis in the late rounds just as an opportunity to negotiate and talk with them, with another understanding that they could serve as backup options should negotiations with someone like Jump or White fall apart leaving the Athletics with a significant pool of money to work with. The deadline for signing is Thursday, August 1st at 2:00 PM PST.
So for those who need an introduction or refresher to signing rules, here we go. Each pick in the first ten rounds of the draft is assigned a value, known as the slot value. This slot value adds up to a total draft signing pool, which is really the number to know as you can pretty much sign a pick for whatever you want with restrictions. One such restriction is that if a player went to the combine and submitted to a pre-draft medical there is a minimum signing bonus in place of 75% of the slot value. This rule applies to Competitive Balance pick Gage Jump, third round pick Joshua Kuroda-Grauer, fourth round pick Rodney Green, sixth round pick Josiah Romeo, and eighth round pick Davis Diaz, though I do not expect any of those players to be scraping the bottom of that 75% threshold.
So the individual slot values are not that important, and it’s that total pool of $15,347,900 which matters. Except not really, as most teams exceed that amount and just pay a penalty on the overage. The bonus pool is not a hard cap, so the real number to know for the signing bonuses is the 5% overage, noted in the table, which is what the Athletics will not exceed. Any money spent between 100% and 105% will be subject to a 75% luxury tax against those bonus numbers, but above 5% and the A’s would then be forfeiting a future first round draft pick which is not worth the benefit of signing whichever player puts them over. Any player from the first ten rounds who does not sign will have their slot value removed from the total bonus pool, thus teams typically have all of those picks lined up to sign prior to even drafting them.
The worst-case scenario for Oakland is that Nick Kurtz doesn’t sign, as it would throw their draft into chaos. This is unlikely to happen, but teams have had medical red flags pop up in the past creating a rift between agent and team, so it’s not out of the question. If a player in the top two rounds of the draft does not sign, and was offered at least 40% of the slot value by the drafting team, the drafting team would receive a pick of the same round, one spot later in the subsequent draft. So if it was Kurtz, Oakland would receive pick #5 in next year’s draft. Should a third round pick not sign, the team receives a compensation pick after the end of the third round.
The signing rules for the final ten rounds are a bit different, where each pick is given a cap of $150,000 in signing bonus, and any amount over $150,000 would be subject to the bonus pool. So let’s say Volantis popped up and signed for $1,000,000, the Athletics would then have $850,000 deducted from their bonus pool. There shouldn’t be any tough signs for the A’s out of the last ten rounds other than Volantis, though there are four college juniors with eligibility remaining. Still, typically those guys will sign regardless as not doing so would put them in the next draft where they run the risk of being a day two senior sign and getting a significantly lower bonus.
