Thinking About the Draft

The draft starts Saturday (Rounds 1-4) before concluding on Sunday. This will be the 4th draft under current Scouting Director Ronit Shah but will be the first time the team is operating with a top half budget since 2018.

How it works: Each team has a “Bonus Pool” that they may elect to spend however they see fit on the 20 or so players they draft (plus any undrafted free agents signed). There are serious penalties for exceeding the limit by more than 5% and no team has ever done that. Your bonus pool is the sum of all the “Slot Values” for a team’s picks (this is John Schuerholz’s baby, thanks a lot!). Higher picks get higher slot values so bad teams end up with much larger pools than good teams do. This year we have the 8th most money thanks to picking 9th and getting a bonus first round pick from Drake Baldwin’s Rookie of the Year trophy.

Bonus pools
Pirates: $19,130,700
Rays: $19,009,300
White Sox: $17,592,100
Giants: $17,350,600
Twins: $16,929,600
Cardinals: $16,612,300
Royals: $15,954,000
Braves: $15,870,800
Rockies: $15,557,600
Athletics: $13,840,300
Astros: $13,712,700
Diamondbacks: $13,603,100
Orioles: $13,114,000
Nationals: $12,278,300
Marlins: $11,960,100
Angels: $11,755,400
Reds: $10,758,500
Rangers: $10,219,200
Cubs: $9,644,100
Padres: $9,479,000
Guardians: $9,303,700
Tigers: $9,165,100
Red Sox: $8,219,200
Mariners: $8,218,200
Brewers: $8,042,900
Phillies: $7,773,000
Yankees: $7,342,800
Mets: $6,730,900
Blue Jays: $5,543,100
Dodgers: $3,951,900

Last year’s pool for the Braves was $9,081,800 so we have an extra $6.5M to play with this year. For the last 3 years the Braves have signed the top picks at a little under their slot values and used the excess to pay a promising prep player or 2 (examples are Eric Hartman and Isaiah Drake – I encourage them to do more of this!)

This year’s Draft Landscape:
There is no one surefire #1 this season but more of a generally accepted top 3, although none of them has obvious superstar potential (they get comped with Dansby which actually would be a good career). The next tier – guys that lack immediate star power but could turn out great – is where the team’s first pick lies at #9. This tier is between 8-12 guys deep depending on who you ask and picks from this tier average a career WAR of about 12. Baseball is hard!

Various pundits have linked the Braves to 3 guys here. Georgia Tech outfielder Drew Burress, Arkansas catcher Ryder Helfrick (great name!) and Florida prep pitcher Gio Rojas. Under Shah the team has always taken a player who was expected to go much higher but I don’t think the top 3 are going to slide so these are the likely choices. I would take whichever of these 3 has the lowest bonus demand and be happy at #9.

For the 26th pick I think there is a legitimate chance to grab one of the Tier 2 guys who slide for whatever reason on an overslot deal much like Caminiti at #24 2 years ago or the Millionaire at #23 3 years back. The most likely to slide this time is Brody Bumila, a lefty prep pitcher from Massachusetts thanks to a couple hiccups at the end of his season. The kid has all the tools though and I would love our development staff to get a shot at working with him.

Beyond the top 30 or so picks it is very hard to predict which team will pick which player but we can see some trends from our last 3 drafts.
1. We like to get our top pitching prospect early. We used first round picks in ‘23 and ‘24 and 4th round in ‘25 (although he got the largest bonus in his class). I expect a prep pitcher with at least one of our first round picks
2. We usually gamble on an overslot high school guy in the 4th round (Isiaih Drake and Briggs McKenzie)
3. Rounds 7-10 are always college seniors who get WAY under slot because they have no leverage.
4. We used to take a prep overslot guy in the 11th round but have yet to try that under Shah. He grabs his prep overslots in the 18th-20th rounds. I have no idea why.

In today’s game in Pittsburgh, a late granny from Yaz put it away late. Drake and Jim Jarvis had nice games and the Elder Thing gave up 3 homers to continue his funk. Very Lovecraftian of him.