Angels Lost 5-4 This Time

Here you go:

Sam Blum
By Sam Blum
Jul 27, 2024
ANAHEIM, Calif. — In the modern era of the MLB Draft, it is incredibly rare for a player selected in the first three rounds not to sign with his drafting team.

In the past five drafts, it only happened four times. Four of 516 draft picks — a minuscule 0.78 percent.

Of those four players, two didn’t sign because of medical concerns raised during their physicals. In the bonus pool era, particularly with college players, there’s almost no reason for a top-10-round draft pick not to sign.

So when Angels third-round selection Ryan Prager announced he was going back to Texas A&M, it was pretty shocking. And it raised questions about the Angels’ process in selecting him.

“A week before the draft, (myself and the Texas A&M coaches) had been talking,” Prager told The Athletic on Friday. “And that’s when I became, ‘OK, I’m super comfortable and I’m perfectly content if I end up going back to school.’

“I think we communicated that very well. I can’t speak for the clubs and if they knew extremely well. But I knew we had talked about it and we were very content with having both options.”

Prager said he went into the draft with an open mind and was willing to sign under ideal circumstances. But he also said he made it clear to teams ahead of the draft that he was willing to return to Texas A&M. He felt he had unfinished business after losing in the College World Series finals, he wanted to earn his degree and he felt comfortable with the Aggies’ development plan for him.

And while he praised the Angels’ professionalism during the negotiations, he ultimately chose to go back to school.

It is unclear how much communication the Angels initiated with Prager ahead of the draft, communication that would have given the team an understanding of how much of a bonus he wanted, or if he even wanted to join their organization.

Angels general manager Perry Minasian and scouting director Tim McIlvaine declined to comment .

Prager said he couldn’t recall any specific conversations with Angels scouts. But he believed them to be in attendance to watch him pitch, and that his advisors had spoken with the team.

“A lot of it has to do with the Angels,” college baseball insider Kendall Rodgers said on his D1Baseball podcast. “It sounds like the Angels were not the preferred team that his camp would have liked to go to.

“(Prager) had a very clear idea of what he was going to sign for, and the Angels were unwilling to do that. Most of it is that the Angels botched this whole thing.”

It is commonplace during the pre-draft process for teams to check with players — particularly those with leverage — about whether they’d sign and the price that it would take, specifically to avoid this situation.

The Angels are known for employing a relatively small amateur scouting department, and the question now is how much due diligence they did ahead of selecting Prager.

Prager declined to discuss how much of a bonus the Angels offered, or if the organization’s history of poor player development played a role in his decision.

For the Angels, who already have a weak farm system, missing out on a top pick is significant. Prager had a 2.25 ERA in 19 starts for the Aggies this season. They will get a compensation pick at the end of the third round next season. But it will be later than pick 81, where Prager was selected this season, and they’ll lose bonus pool money this year, as well. Slot value for the 81st pick is $948,600. Not signing Prager lowers the Angels’ bonus pool cap from $12,990,400 to $12,041,800.

It is a costly mistake by the Angels. And it’s unclear if they were aware of Prager’s mindset ahead of time.

“I just think the right situation all around,” Prager said when asked what it would have taken for him to sign. “Knowing what was here at A&M, it was going to take the right situation to leave it. That’s kind of how we went about it in the first place.

“We weren’t going to settle or take a situation that wasn’t the very best.”

Prager had Tommy John surgery in October 2022 and missed the 2023 season, giving him a medical redshirt. He enters the 2025 season with two years of collegiate eligibility remaining, although he will turn 22 in October.

The Angels have become known for getting creative in how they utilize their bonus pool. They’ll often look to save money with below-slot value picks early in the draft, then utilize the extra cash on over-slot high school pitchers later in the draft. They continued that tradition this season, signing high school right-hander Trey Gregory-Alford, their 11th-round pick, to a round-record deal of $1,957,500, according to MLB.com‘s Jim Callis. All but $150,000 of Gregory-Alford’s signing bonus will count against the Angels’ bonus pool.

The Angels were able to sign the rest of their top-10 round picks, going over slot to sign second-round compensation pick Ryan Johnson and fifth-round pick Dylan Jordan, while signing the rest to under-slot deals.

It’s worth noting that Texas A&M is considered one of the most lucrative schools for NIL deals, and it’s possible that could have played a role in this negotiation. Rodgers reported Prager’s NIL deal with Texas A&M is “well north of $500,000.”

Prager said his goal is still to be a long-time big-league pitcher. But he held all the cards in this situation and had the choice to leave school under only the most perfect of circumstances. This was not that.

The Angels were excited about the pick. After he was selected, McIlvaine broke down the selection.

“We’ll see what kind of strength and conditioning he’s been doing and get him on our path,” McIlvaine said. “Delivery-wise, I don’t know if I want to touch anything because there’s a deceptive piece to it too, that he gets a ton of outs with already.”

Clearly, the Angels thought they’d sign Prager without an issue. And clearly, that was not to be. The question is if they should have known that ahead of time.