The Pirates took Henry Davis last night with the first pick of the 2021 draft, passing up the favorite, Marcelo Mayer.
This has people a bit riled up. This, and something called “Slot Value.”
In the MLB Draft, each pick in the first ten rounds has a “slot value” attached to it, ranging this year from roughly $8.4M (the first overall pick) to roughly $142K (the last pick of the tenth round). When it comes to signing bonuses (where early-round draftees make most of their money), each team is allowed to spend, in total, the full value of their “bonus pool,” which is the sum of each slot value for which they sign a drafted player. The spread in pool values is enormous, ranging this year from the Pirates’ $14.4M to the Astros’ $2.9M (the Dodgers, who didn’t lose their first two picks due to a sign-stealing scandal, are at $4.6M, which is probably the better minimum to use).
Ostensibly, this is an effort to increase parity. The Pirates can spend bigger on their draftees than the Dodgers, thereby closing the talent gap that’s arisen due to the Dodgers’ competence (and other factors) and the Pirates’ incompetence (and other factors). Really, this is probably just a way to cap draft spending so teams (and therefore owners, also accurately called investors) keep more money. The Players Union signed off on it, but the Players Union, notably, is run by guys who were drafted a long time ago, and are therefore fine with making concessions that hurt future draftees if it leaves a bigger slice of the pie for current players. A free market would be better for draftees. This system is great for current players and owners.
Anyway, the big reason the Pirates took Davis over Mayer, or so the story goes (we do assume this is the big reason, but there’s always a chance the Pirates are just evaluating guys differently, which now that I type this would explain a lot), is that Davis will sign for a bonus below his slot value while Mayer would not, or would not to as great an extent as Davis. So, people are mad because it appears the Pirates are being cheap.
Are the Pirates being cheap? I honestly don’t know. There’s a chance they plan to, by signing Davis for less than his slot value, pay other guys more than their slot value and lure players to professional baseball who might otherwise remain amateurs (this is the draftee’s choice, and one that Davis—a collegiate catcher—has less reason to make than Mayer, who I believe is committed to USC in the event he doesn’t go pro—hence, Mayer has more leverage, is less likely to sign under slot, would foil the plans of the Pirate brass for global domination). There’s also a chance they’re just being cheap, and that they won’t use their full bonus pool anyway. I don’t think teams have to use the full pool. If they do, no one should be mad at the Pirates. I dug around for a few minutes and didn’t find any great database of signings compared to slot value, so I don’t know the Pirates’ history on this, and I can’t compare it to any other team’s history, but I’m guessing such a database exists (or a few could be combined to make such a database), so if you have an idea of how I could do this or want to do this yourself, hit me up. In the meantime, keep an eye on Mayer’s eventual signing bonus and Davis’s eventual signing bonus, as well as how the Pirates spend or don’t spend the money they save on Davis.
