More Yankees Draft Stuff

With the MLB Draft coming fast, let's take another look at how the Yanks might do business.  As the now tiresome "draft pool" system - that gives each team an absolute number of money + 10% that they can spend on the first 10 rounds of their draft.  Any amount that remains after the top 10 rounds are taken care of, can be spread among the other 30 rounds and teams see fit.  Since this started, I don't tink any team has used slot value to sign the picks for their first 10 rounds - thereby leaving no pool money for the other 30 rounds - but they have tried every other combination of slot, underslot and overslot payment strategies to make things work.

Teams quickly figured out that they could save hundres of thousands and even millions by taking picking only college seniors in 8 or more of the first 10 rounds. That gave them al sorts of money to spread around on "signablility" players in the next 30 rounds.  And that worked out for awhile, but isn't really a great idea every year - because once the fina 30 rounds are underway the talent pool is 25% smaller.  So teams have learned to vary their strategie when needed.

Last year, the Yanks paid C Anthony Seigler at pick 21, the gave C Josh Breaux an overslot deal (about 400K) at pick 61. Then at pick 97, the Yanks went overslot again for prep OF Ryder Green (another 400K), before finally getting collegiate RHP Frank German for a pool savinngs of 87K.  Then they made a few more slighly underslot deals in 5,6.and 7, before taking cheap seniors for big savings in 8,9 and 10.

By going overslot in rounds 2 and 3, the Yanks were able to get players they loved, Breuax and Green, as well as some intriguing arms, and still have room to give out  10 overslot deals between 125,000K and 147, 500K over the next 30 rounds - where slot is 100K.  So in total they gave out 12 overslot deals, and everything else was slot, underslot, or way understlot.

This year they are picking 30th and also have pick 38, so their pool could be similar to last year's, and we should be able to identify their strategy by the end of night one, or in the early going of day too.  We'll they front load, like they did last year, or will they try to kick more savings into day 3?