My Mariners board, trading a pick for a player & more draft questions answered
With the draft now less than a month away...
The MLB Draft is four weeks away, so let’s address some of the more basic — and some not-so basic — questions about the event, what it means, and how Seattle could attack it.
Q: When is the draft?
A: July 9-11, in Seattle.
Q: How do I follow the draft?
A: Round 1 is televised on both ESPN and MLB Network. All other rounds will be on MLB Network only.
You can also watch/listen to the broadcast at MLB.com for FREE, also accessible via the MLB app, whether it be mobile or Firestick.
Day 1, July 9, is the entire first two rounds, including both rounds of the competitive balance selections, and compensation picks for losing qualifying free agents. There will be 70 selections on Day 1 in 2023.
Day 2 is Rounds 3-10. Day 3 is Round 11-20.
Q: What picks do the Mariners have?
A: Seattle owns picks 22, 29, 30, and 57 on Day 1. On Day 2, they have picks 92, 124, and 160, then select everu 30 picks after that, through Round 20 on Day 3.
Q: Can teams trade picks?
A: Yes, but not freely like other major sports leagues allow. Clubs with Competitive Balance picks can trade them for players, or even other Competitive Balance Picks. These selections can only be traded once, and cannot be traded for cash.
Q: What the heck is a ‘Competitive Balance’ pick?
A: Competitive Balance picks are selections awarded to all teams from the 10 smallest markets or the 10 smallest revenue pools. There are two rounds (A, B), with Round A coming in right after the natural first round, and Round B right after the second round.
Clubs in these groups alternate Round A and B from year to year. This year there are 14 Competitive Balance picks, eight in A and six in B.
Q: Then why do the Dodgers and Mets have picks in Round A?
A: These picks listed as Competitive Balance picks are not picks awarded to those two clubs as a result of market and revenue sizes. The Mets’ first round pick was pushed back 10 spots to No. 32 as a result of the club exceeding the competitive balance tax threshold by more than $40 million. The Dodgers’ pick was slid down to No. 36 for the same reason. These picks are listed as Competitive Balance Round A picks, but are not additional selections awarded.
Q: Why doesn’t every team have a first-round pick? Why doesn’t every team have a second-round pick?
A: There are just 28 natural first-round selections because of the Mets’ and Dodgers’ tax adjustments pushing their picks down 10 spots each. In Round 2, eight clubs forefeited their selections due to the signing of qualified free agents. Those clubs are the Angels (Tyler Anderson), Cardinals (Willson Contreras), Cubs (Dansby Swanson), Phillies (Trea Turner), Padres (Xander Boagerts), Rangers (Jacob deGrom), and Yankees (Carlos Rodon).
Q: So, the Mariners can trade a pick?
A: Yes, but only for another Competitive Balance pick or a player. Seattle can trade pick No. 30.
Last year the week before the draft, the Kansas City Royals traded their 2022 Competitive Balance pick, No. 35 overall, to the Atlanta Braves, for three minor leaguers, including former second-round pick Drew Waters.
Q: What the heck is this ‘bonus pool’ stuff I keep hearing about all the time?
A: Each club has a bonus pool from which they can sign drafted players. Each pool is generated by the ‘slot’ values of each selection a club holds.
Seattle, despite their organic slot in the draft being No. 22, have the seventh-most money to spend ($13.171M) in the draft because of the extra selections. They are the only 2022 playoff team to have one of the top 12 bonus pools.
Q: Why do the Mariners also have pick No. 29?
A: In a word, Julio. Seattle was awarded pick 29 as a result of the new Prospect Promotion Incentive. Rodriguez was a preseason Top 100 prospects on at least two of three major media outlets (MLB, Baseball America, ESPN), started the season on thebig-league 26-man roster, and won the Rookie of the Year.
Yes, it’s ridiculous to base the qualifications on the media — truly, it’s trash — but the general idea is to stop service-time manipulation — holding back players from a promotion to the majors for days to weeks to push back arbitration and/or free agent eligibility — and that’s a good thing.
This pick cannot be traded, but adds over $2.7 million to the Mariners’ bonus pool.
Q: Is this a particularly good year for the Mariners to have the high bonus pool and extra picks?
A: Absolutely. Not only is the class as a whole deeper and better than most over the past 10-plus years, it’s strength happens to be one of the Mariners’ major organizational weaknesses: Hitters. Seattle is always going to have problems convincing free-agent bats to sign with them long-term. Inherently, Seattle is a relatively tough place to get people to move when they’re from California, Texas, Florida, Ohio, et al. But the added layer of the ballpark impact on offensive production makes it legitimately difficult, and generally warrants 20 percent or more in a contract offer to entice the player. Trades are one way aound this, but drafting your own hitters is the other. The 2023 class offers an inordinate number of future major-league hitters, including a strong crop at the college level that could reach the majors inside of two calendar years. In addition, there are middle infielders in this class that would fill an organizational need.
Q: So, the Mariners are going to draft hitters a lot because that’s what they need, right?
A: Maybe. One thing clubs don’t want to do is draft for need, especially early in the draft (first few rounds at least), because they don’t want to leave better players on the board. If the club has a 56.5 grade on a right-handed high school pitcher, and there’s a 54.5 college hitter there, the club should take the pitcher. The grade considers risk, floor, and ceiling, and is designed to make the decision for the club.
The idea is get the best players, and move the puzzle pieces around (trade them), to get what you need.
But the best players on the board (BPA) may often be hitters this year, including on Day 1.
Q: Who can the Mariners get?
A: This is a tough question to answer with any legitimate specificity, simply because we’re a month out, and there are 21 selections before the Mariners’ first pick at No. 22. The MLB Draft is even less predictable than its NFL and NBA brethren, due in part by signability, the bonus pools and how clubs want to use put it to use, and the varying degrees of evaluations on a much larger pool of players.
There are at least a large handful of players no one expects to be available at 22 for Seattle, including Dylan Crews, Wyatt Langford, Walker Jenkins, Max Clark, and Paul Skenes. There are around eight players who have virtually no shot to get that far down the round, and another five or six with very little chance to get there.
Q: Why wouldn’t teams ALWAYS take the best player available?
A: Two reasons. One, the player’s signability might be in question. Two, the club might be attempting to spread out their bonus pool in lower rounds to get more good players, rather than take one or two shots at better players. The draft is not a guessing game, as some continually suggest. But there are strategies clubs deploy that ultimately leave better talents on the board.
Seattle may have had a chance at a little better player in 2017 when they took a right-right first baseman in Evan White. But had they done so, it probably costs them more than “slot” which pulls from their ability to take the BPA in later rounds. In fact, what Seattle did was take White for slot, spend well over slot in Round 2 on Sam Carlson, and then go light on bonus in some other rounds in order to fall in line to their bonus pool.
Players, however, do have leverage; they don’t have to sign with the club that selects them. High school players can use college opportunities to leverage their bonuses, and college players with remaining eligibility can use that to their advantage. Draft-eligible sophomores have an especially effective tactic, because unlike juniors, they have another year of eligibility where they maintain some leverage. College seniors have none.
High school players with no college commitments, particularly of the four-year variety, typically have less leverage in bonus negotiations. What it takes for a player to sign and the club’s belief of what it will take are significant factors. Sometimes players want well above the slot value for where they were taken and end up going to college, or occasionally back to college.
Ultimately, when teams take this path, they are saying they’d rather take a chance to get a 55 and a 50 over a 60 and a 45, or their evaluations suggest, despite the asking prices and lot values and how they match up, they’d rather give Player B $500,000 less than Player A would require, and use the savings on later picks where signability may push a player down the draft a bit.
The bonus pool manipulation occurs all over the first 10 rounds of the draft, often in the first round, and the 2023 class is deep enough to suggest it will occur a ton in this draft, including perhaps in the top 5-10 players.
The Mariners, with their extra picks, could very well take part in it.
Q: Who do you think the Mariners should prioritize?
A: I’m glad you asked, but this is a benefit of the Rookie & up subscribers to the Baseball Things podcast. Friday, my first Mariners draft board went live, ranking players 1-40 with the Mariners in mind.
If you’re not yet a subscriber to the podcast, you can do so here. If you are, but not yet at the Rookie or All-Star level, you can alter your subscription in your Membership settings at Patreon, by clicking on the setting gear icon, then Memberships, View Details, Edit, then choosing your new subscriber level. Annual discounts apply for all levels.
I will update this board to 50 players in two weeks, then again the day before the draft.