Brooks Brannon could be insurance incase they can't sign one of the top 3 picks, so if 10 of their top 11 picks sign and Brannon does not it's still a good draft. If all 11 sign it's a really good draft.
I don't expect much today, but gems are found in the these later rounds.
Sox have $8.48M to spend. If they give all of the bonus to Roman (about 400K), they have to save about 1.3M elsewhere. Each pick from 11-20 is slotted at $150k.
Romero will probably sign for slightly under slot. Maybe 2.6? 400K savings.
Brooks Brannon isn't going to sign. That's 150K savings.
Rogers/Meidroth would also be way under slot. 500K savings.
Pass on signing Caleb Bolden at 200K and you can probably sign the rest of your class. Brooks Brannon is probably not signing though.
Allegedly he's signed, so I guess that shows what we know!!!
I do want to be careful here, I saw this posted on soxprospects and have no ideal how reliable the article is.
I know players get drafted and talk like they're ready to sign all the time and then when the two sides are too far apart on bonus demands everything falls apart. A prime example of this was JUD FABIAN, however, according to this source it's a done deal.
If we sign all top 10, I'm loving this draft.
And they lose the 5% overage too, BUT if they were anticipating having to go well above slot for one of these guys anyways then hypothetically they still have a few hundred thousand to throw elsewhere.
I'm intrigued by this "draft and follow" which apparently allows you to give a guy a bonus larger than 150K and not count against the pool and sign them up until a week before next years draft. I guess it was an old rule that came back under the new CBA.
What I want to know is where does the money come from? if they decide to sign him does it come out of next years pool? I'd be willing to be soxprospects addresses this, either in an article or the next podcast, but I'm too lazy to go through all the threads and see or to google it. Maybe I'll have the motivation to do so later haha.