2023 Red Sox MLB Draft Preview: Part II
What strategy could the Red Sox use to spread their bonus money around?
Welcome to Part II of my 2023 Boston Red Sox MLB Draft Preview! If you missed Part I, you can read it here.
Yesterday we ran down how the Red Sox draft picks and bonus pool, and we discussed players the team might target with their early picks.
Today we’ll wrap up the preview looking at how the Red Sox draft strategy might play out starting this Sunday night.
What Might the Red Sox 2023 Draft Strategy Look Like?
In the MLB draft, teams don’t always take the best player available. This is not necessarily because some teams draft for need, or that teams are being “cheap,” but because of the slotting and bonus pool system.
Teams have an allotted pool of money for draft bonuses, which they can exceed to sign as many drafted players as they can, but only by 5% before incurring significant penalties. The pool is based on the total of all recommended slots based on what picks a team has.
Myself, Derrik Maguire and Hunter Noll ran down all things related to the Red Sox and the MLB Draft on Episode 274 of The Pesky Report, presented by Beyond the Monster. Listen and subscribe below!
In order to get the most out of their bonus pools, teams will take players willing to sign for below slot value (or “underslot”) so that money can get reallocated to players who may be more difficult to sign. For the players, accepting a below slot bonus is known colloquially in the game as “taking a haircut.”
A terrific full explanation of the draft process—and why many teams aren’t actually being cheap in their strategies—was posted a year ago by the Cespedes Family BBQ guys and I’d encourage anyone interested in learning more to check it out.
As noted yesterday the Red Sox have a total 2023 draft bonus pool of about $10.3M plus about $500,000 they can go over without incurring penalties. However, roughly 40% of their pool could be tied up in the bonus of their first pick at 14th overall.
It can be reasonably expected the Red Sox will be looking for opportunities to save so they can afford better talent in later rounds. Their 2022 draft provides an example for how this could be handled.
The Red Sox drafted two potentially difficult-to-sign high school hitters in Roman Anthony with their post-2nd round compensation pick and Brooks Brannon in the 9th round. In order to pay them bonuses well above their selection slot value, the Red Sox signed their other nine selections in the first 10 rounds to underslot deals.
This included their 1st round pick, Mikey Romero. He was ranked as more of a 2nd-round talent and wound up taking a $700,000 haircut from a near-$3M slot to sign.
To save draft money for overslot picks, teams also take college seniors in the first 10 rounds. These players generally have no leverage and must accept whatever teams offer them to start pro careers. The Red Sox did this in 2022 with three consecutive picks in the 6th, 7th, and 8th rounds, signing two of them to bonuses under $10,000.
Now, we won’t know for sure the Red Sox exact strategy for the 2023 draft until we see how the picks unfold. Having two extra compensation picks after the 4th round, and the extra $1M in bonus pool money with them, opens up possibilities. They could eye tougher-to-sign high schoolers, likely hitters, with some early picks as a result.
In order to do that, they’ll still need to find savings. They could do that in the 5th-10th round range, but that big slot number for the 14th pick looms large as a possible opportunity.
Industry experts believe the 2023 draft is one of the strongest in recent memory. Any of the potential top 5 picks—LSU stars Dylan Crews and Paul Skenes, Florida’s Wyatt Langford, and high school phenoms Walker Jenkins of North Carolina and Max Clark of Indiana—would be candidates to go 1st overall most years.
That means other strong talent is getting pushed a little further down the draft board. Players mentioned yesterday who’ve been linked to the Sox—college bats like Matt Shaw, Tommy Troy and Brayden Taylor, and high school hitters like Blake Mitchell, Aiden Miller and Colin Houck—could be Top 10 picks in other years.
It therefore feels like the Red Sox would be doing the franchise a disservice by not selecting a top-half-of-the-first-round talent at 14. Maybe they select a player willing to shave a few dollars off that $4.663M slot. Generally speaking college bats are less likely to ask for overslot bonuses since their leverage diminishes by going back to school for their senior years.
But passing on the best actual talent available in that spot would register as a disappointment. It doesn’t seem like the right year to go for a significant haircut at that spot.
If they did, a name to watch would be Pennsylvania high school middle infielder Kevin McGonigle. He’s been projected as more of an end-of-the-1st round pick, but he fits the exact hit-first high school position player profile the Red Sox have gravitated towards with early picks since Chaim Bloom took over.
Ideally, the Red Sox will go into Sunday night knowing the bonus number some of their top targets at 14 will accept. If they’ve evaluated a few players at about the same level of future projection, they’ll likely select the player who they believe will accept the lowest bonus.
If they don’t get a player to take any kind of haircut at 14, look for the Red Sox to find ways to save money with other high picks. It wouldn’t be shocking for them to go off the board with their second pick at 50th in that case. One name mentioned for this spot by ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel in his draft guide posted Monday was Arizona State 2B Luke Keaschall, ranked 55th by Baseball America and 90th by MLB Pipeline.
Considering that will be their only other pick on the first night of the draft, the “WHAT ARE THEY DOING???” takes will be wildly annoying from people who don’t understand how the draft works, but that’s to be expected anyway. Ideally those same people would shut up if the Red Sox take big talents on day two and eventually sign them.
Some high school hitters the Red Sox might consider with their picks after the 1st round may include the following (I have not read any direct links between the Red Sox and these players, I’m just mentioning them as possibilities):
Lastly, given that the Boston Red Sox have drafted high school shortstops out of California with their first picks each of the last three years, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s a highly-touted shortstop from Capistrano Valley High School in California named…Boston Baro.
A couple of additional things to note:
Under Bloom’s leadership, the Red Sox generally have stayed away from drafting pitching early. As the Sox have tried to build their system up, selecting less-risky position players has been their MO with early picks. Dalton Rogers, a 3rd-round pick in 2022, represents the highest the Sox have taken a pitcher in the last three drafts. This is not to say the Red Sox have shied away from pitching—13 of the team’s 21 selections in the 2022 draft were pitchers. It’s just clear the team would rather spread their risk on less-heralded pitching prospects and try to develop them as opposed to spending big upfront. Don’t be surprised if they take shots in later rounds on guys like Rogers who were college relievers that could be converted to starters in the pros.
However, the team may have a real choice to make in the unlikely event Tennessee RHP Chase Dollander or Wake Forest RHP Rhett Lowder falls to them at 14. The farm system is in a better spot now than previous years and the Sox could decide now is the right time to take a risk on a pitcher early, especially if they’ve evaluated either as a top-of-the-rotation talent. Florida RHP Hurston Waldrep is also a possibility but he carries significant reliever risk due to a lack of command. The Athletic’s Keith Law said last week he hasn’t heard the Red Sox linked to any pitchers at 14, but followed up in a subsequent chat that “it's not out of the question they'd take a college arm if one happened to fall to them.”
The previous three drafts under the Bloom regime were run by Paul Toboni. This past offseason, Toboni was promoted to a hybrid player development/amateur scouting role, and the director of amateur scouting role was bestowed upon Devin Pearson. The 2023 draft will be Pearson’s first running the draft room. While Bloom, Toboni and others are part of the process, this ultimately will be Pearson’s draft. This excellent profile of Pearson by the Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey posted Wednesday indicates not much may change with Pearson in charge.
For the draft as a whole, there’s a ton of intrigue right now on if the Pirates will take Crews, Skenes, or someone else, with industry consensus shifting to Skenes of late after Crews had been in pole position for well over a year. If Skenes or Crews goes 1st, that won’t change the top of the draft much since whoever of the two that doesn’t go 1st should go 2nd to the Nats. But there’s been speculation the Pirates could take Clark, which would throw things out of whack.
The Tigers, Rangers and Twins then pick in succession after the Nats, and they’re all candidates to take someone besides the aforementioned consensus top 5 prospects, which would potentially throw the entire 1st round into chaos. The Rangers, for example, have the 4th pick but the 16th-largest bonus pool (they don’t pick again until the 4th round after their early pick). Last year they were in a similar position and shocked the world by taking Kumar Rocker 3rd overall. I wouldn’t rule out something similar.
Enjoy the draft!
If you’re interested in more on the Red Sox minor league system, I’m joined each week on The Pesky Report by Derrik Maguire and Hunter Noll to talk all things Red Sox prospects. Listen and subscribe to The Pesky Report here.
Follow Jake on Twitter @JakeTODonnell.
For additional Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, MLB and NFL content follow Beyond the Monster on Twitter @BeyondtheMnstr.
Join our new Facebook group for all of our latest content, click the link here.