LA Angels Thursday News Crash: Play Ball

I’m very mixed on this.

First off, the first round discounting is not unique to Minasian. As I’ve pointed out many times, half of the top dozen bonuses last draft were underslot. As slot bonuses get into unprecedented territories, many teams are discounting at the top of the draft to redistribute savings. Not an Angels thing – it’s an MLB thing.

My issue with Minasian’s top 100 picks is they are near-term focused and more floor than ceiling. Way too many relief profiles!

The simple fact is – Minasian could have drafted Anderson or Hernandez at #2, and BPA Anthony Eyanson in round two, and still pursued his pool saving strategy in later rounds. Maybe he selects 4-5 prep arms instead of seven, but it would have been largely the same draft, with a much better result from his two top 50 selections.

Seth signed for $450k less than Bremner. Anderson signed for about $1.5M less than the Angels’ #2 slot value. That savings alone would have paid for Slawinski.

So far, none of the prep arms beyond Slawinski have been slam dunks – there are some nice raw arms out there, but six of seven have barely pitched or are showing up-and-down results (Haley) in A ball.

Paying Shores full slot ($2M+) – an oft-injured reliever who still can’t take the mound in A+ ball – is the real travesty of last year’s draft. Shores over Eyanson was pure Perry-ball.

This is a long way of saying something simple: drafting Bremner and Shores wasn’t necessary to his prep arm drafting strategy. He could have accomplished the same thing while drafting the best players available in rounds one and two.