DRAFT - KC Royals

[SubGod22]

According to Twitter, 16th pick Lopez signed. Rumor has he was asking for 1.3 mil.

[wsushox1]

Apparently bubba signed

[kcshocker11]

Apparently bubba signed

:good: :good: :good: 8)

[RoyalShock]

Twitter is saying 7.5 million over 3 years.

[kcshocker11]

Twitter is saying 7.5 million over 3 years.

I think he wanted 10 but not a bad contract. 8)

[SubGod22]

Restocking the cupboard

Going into this year I was looking at the possibility of the Royals system ranking dropping off due to the extreme number of promotions. I thought that Kansas City may go heavy in the bullpen with rookies or at least thought that they should along with the likely promotions of Giavotella, Hosmer and Moustakas but with the promotion of Salvador Perez the Royals have 10 rookies on their 25 man roster a number even I hadn’t thought of prior to September. With 8 of those rookies appearing on the preseason Baseball Prospectus Top 20 one would normally say an organization has been stripped of talent at the minor league level. How could a system replace that much talent and not fall off a cliff into the bottom half of organization rankings? Well one way to do it is to spend a franchise record amount of money on the draft and in Latin America something that the Royals have just done.

With the signings of Bubba Starling, Jack Lopez, Kyle Smith and Bryan Brickhouse today the Royals have completed a process that saw them sign the equivalent of 9 first round picks according to major league slotting recommendations. While it’s not a completely fair comparison to say Elier Hernandez and Adalberto Mondesi earned first round money because they signed under a open market driving their price up a tad, I think it is fair to say they would still be paid quite well under a draft scenario. Leaving Mr. Glass with a job well done and a number of prospects we can watch come up in the 2nd wave.

Name Pick Bonus Equivalent to MLB slot

Bubba Starling 1-5 $7.5M 3rd highest overall
Elier Hernandez Intl FA $3.1M 1st Round 3rd Pick
Adalberto Mondesi Int FA $2M 1st Rd 8th Pick
Cam Gallagher 2-65 $750K Supp. 1st Rd 46th Pick
Bryan Brickhouse 3-95 $1.5 M 1st Rd 16th Pick
Kyle Smith 4-126 $695K Supp. 1st Rd 51st Pick
Jake Junis 29-876 $675K Supp. 1st Rd 53rd Pick
Patrick Leonard 5-156 $600K Supp. 1st Rd 60th Pick
Jack Lopez 16-486 $750K Supp. 1st Rd 46th Pick

Now are all of these guys lock 1st round talents? Probably not but Kansas City views them as 1st round money worthy talents and they have done pretty well at acquiring talent through the draft for one wave of talent so adding these players to the next wave is a good sign.

Lets take a quick look at the next wave ranking players from A ball and below

I'm not too concerned about a drop off in the minors. Not long term by any means. There's a lot of talent in A ball and lower this year and this draft class sounds pretty good. They're definitely spending money.

[SubGod22]

Royals come to terms with Nos. 3, 4, 5 picks
Royals signed 7 yesterday which may set a Royals record for last day signings. Can't wait to follow these guys over the next few years.

Royals secure Starling just before deadline

KANSAS CITY -- Outfielder Bubba Starling, envisioned as a hometown hero in the making, agreed to terms with the Royals just before Monday night's deadline to sign picks from June's First-Year Player Draft.

Starling, Kansas City's pick in the first round and fifth overall, will receive a $7.5 million signing bonus spread over three years. The right-handed power hitter is projected to be a center fielder.

"This guy is without a doubt one of the best athletes to play the game of baseball in many years," Royals general manager Dayton Moore said.

Moore was quoting the refrain he heard often from director of scouting Lonnie Goldberg and assistant general manager J.J. Picollo, who spearheaded the pursuit of Starling.

The $7.5 million deal was the largest to be conferred on a Draft pick by the Royals.

"I've got to thank the Glass family for all of the support they continue to give us as we add to our organization," Moore said of the Royals' ownership.

Moore said the deal with the 18-year-old Starling wasn't struck until "five or six minutes" before the deadline of 11:01 p.m. CT.

"It really hasn't sunk in yet, but I know tomorrow we're going to wake up with smiles on our faces," Moore said. "We look forward to moving on in Bubba's development through our system."

Picollo, who heads player development, said that the 6-foot-5, 195-pound Starling will start his professional career with workouts at the Royals' Surprise, Ariz., complex, where the Arizona Fall League team is currently winding down its Rookie classification season. However, Starling will not play in games until the start of the Arizona Instructional League

[SubGod22]

Draft Scorecard

As we count the moments until the 11 PM Central deadline and anxiously await the fate of Bubba Starling and the future of Cornhusker football, now would be a good time to refresh where the Royals stand on their top 30 picks.

UPDATE: The Royals have signed Starling for a reported $7.5 million bonus spread over three years. About a million less than I expected. The three year spread veers from the normal five year spread for a two sport athlete and is probably why Starling’s number fell a little below what most draft gurus expected.

The following table lists those picks and (if known) their signing bonus. The slot figures apply only to the first five rounds. After those rounds, MLB demands that bonuses not exceed $150,000. Players in bold have signed. The table is current at 11 PM Central.

There's a table in the piece that shows who signed and for how much, if known. Royals spent a lot of money.

[SubGod22]

Final numbers on who signed, as we were discussing last week.

9/10, 22/25, 33/50

Looks like they did a pretty good job and found a lot of talent. Can't wait!

[ShockTalk]

Final numbers on who signed, as we were discussing last week.

9/10, 22/25, 33/50

Looks like they did a pretty good job and found a lot of talent. Can't wait!

:good: :good: Question answered!

[SubGod22]

Todd Gold of Perfect Game breaks down Smith, Junis, and Brickhouse

Nice little blurbs on the three pitchers. I'd like to see one of them advance quickly. If I had to choose one, I'm going with Brickhouse.

[SubGod22]

The Signing Deadline.

I know I owe you an article about how the additions of Johnny Giavotella and Salvador Perez have put the finishing touches on the most interesting Royals lineup in years, if not decades. But as you know, Monday was the signing deadline for the draft, and when the dust had settled, it turned out to be a far more interesting day for the Royals than I would have expected.


The interesting part of the day had little to do with Bubba Starling. There was no real danger that Starling wouldn’t sign, not when it was clear that his football skills didn’t match his baseball skills (run-first Nebraska quarterbacks are not exactly elite NFL prospects), not when it was clear how excited he was to be drafted by his hometown team, and not when – most importantly – the Royals have made it abundantly clear over the past four years that they will pay the market rate and then some to sign elite talents.


Starling did sign, as expected, and as expected, he signed so close to the deadline that the first confirmation on Twitter (from Scott Boras’ personal mouthpiece, Jon Heyman) didn’t arrive until about 4 minutes after the deadline had passed. Mildly surprising was that Starling signed for $7.5 million, which was less than what most people expected.


On Draft Day, I had predicted this exact amount, but as we got closer to the deadline, and rumors of $10 million offers swirled and the Boras Factor got magnified, I decided to inch my prediction upward, settling in at $8.25 million. They say you should never bet the under on a Boras contract. That may be true in general, and that’s almost always true for free-agent signings, but I think we may have reached our limit with amateur players, where the money being offered is so life-changing that teams feel comfortable sticking to their offer and daring the player to walk away. Even Scott Boras has his limits.


When Stephen Strasburg got a shade over $15 million guaranteed, everyone assumed Bryce Harper would get even more the following year; it’s a rare year that a Boras client doesn’t break the previous bonus record, after all. But Harper signed for just $9.9 million guaranteed. While Harper had uncommon leverage – he was just 17, after all, and could have gone back into the draft a year later – the Nationals quite reasonably didn’t want to guarantee as much for a player still years away from the majors as they did for a pitcher who could have been a #3 starter in the majors while he was still a college sophomore. And they didn’t have to, because 10 million dollars is an insane amount of money for a 17-year-old kid to walk away from. Scott Boras is many things; he’s not insane.


The rumors – and I must emphasize that everything I’m about to write is pure conjecture – were that the Royals offered $7.5 million to Starling immediately after he was drafted. Based on that rumor, and the fact that the two sides reportedly had no contact until just hours before the deadline, I will try to connect the dots here:


- The Royals drafted Bubba Starling, and immediately thereafter made a formal contract offer of $7.5 million, spread out over five years (taking advantage of the MLB provision that allows two-sport athletes to be paid over five years.)


- The Starling camp responded with a demand for $10 million.


- The two sides spoke rarely, if at all, between Draft Day and about 10:30 on Monday night.


- At 10:30, the Royals made the same offer they had in June, $7.5 million.


- The Boras camp made a counteroffer – perhaps the same $10 million, perhaps not. The Royals refused to budge.


- The minutes counted down, and the Boras camp tried to call the Royals’ bluff. They couldn’t, because it wasn’t a bluff. I’m reasonably certain that the Royals would have held their offer all the way to the deadline.


- The Starling camp realized in the final minutes that the Royals weren’t bluffing. At this point, my guess is that Boras tried to get a cosmetic concession, asking for the $7.5 million to be paid upfront. The Royals agreed to compromise on this request, which is why Starling’s bonus will be paid out over three years instead of five. (This is quite unusual – I’m not sure I’ve seen a signing bonus paid out over three years before. It’s almost always either a five-year spread or a lump sum.)


- With 51 seconds to the deadline, according to published reports, the Royals and Starling agreed to terms.


If my narrative is correct, than the Royals got Scott Boras – or his client – to blink. On the other hand, Boras got his client $7.5 million, the most guaranteed money the Royals have ever given to an amateur player here. The Royals were winners here, but there were no losers.


The part of the narrative I’m most certain about is that there was virtually no negotiating between Draft Day and August 15th, which was true for the majority of first-rounders – 23 of the 33 first-round picks had not agreed to terms going into Monday, and 22 of those 23 wound up signing. If we didn’t know it already, the two-month delay between the draft and the signing deadline is a complete waste of time. I’d rant more about this, but with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement being hammered out behind closed doors, I’m fairly confident that the signing deadline starting next year will be July 15th, if not sooner.


Anyway, Starling’s signing was a foregone conclusion; the intrigue came elsewhere in the draft. Whatever money the Royals saved by holding firm with Bubba, they spent and more. The Royals had already given second-round pick Cameron Gallagher $750,000 to sign – a little over the “recommended bonus” for his draft slot of $562,500. But on Monday, David Glass put on red tights and a fake white beard and stuffed a pillow under his shirt.

As usual, Rany has some interesting facts and numbers on a lot of the signings. There's definitely reason to hope for the future.

[SubGod22]

Save It For Later

The 2011 amateur draft process finally came to an end with Monday night’s signing deadline and the Royals ended up assembling a really promising group. Remember the names:

Bubba Starling
Cam Gallagher
Bryan Brickhouse
Kyle Smith
Patrick Leonard
Jack Lopez
Jake Junis
All guys who the Royals signed for more than Bud Selig’s archaic and irrelevant slot values. In the case of Lopez and Junis, the bonuses were dramatically over slot value as Dayton Moore and crew took flyers in the later rounds on players thought to be unsignable. For all his faults at the major league level, you simply cannot criticize Moore’s ability to find and sign talent for the minor league system.

We all have heard plenty about Starling, but in Gallagher and Lopez the Royals signed a catcher and shortstop with outstanding potential and who, by most accounts, will stick at those valuable defensive positions. Leonard brings power potential, while Brickhouse, Smith and Junis can all be projected as middle to top of the rotation starting pitchers. (Pine Tar Press has a nice scouting report on the latter three, by the way)

Add to the above group two big bonus Latin American signees in outfielder Elier Hernandez and shortstop Aldeberto Mondesi and the summer of 2011 looks like an outstanding contribution to an already fine farm system: part of the ‘next wave’ of prospects. Remember the nine players mentioned above.

Okay, now forget about them.

We do have a lot of talent still in the minors. Most of it now, is a few years away. Which should work out just fine considering most of the major league roster is locked up through 2017 I believe.