So with the draft order set MLB has also announced what the draft pools will be. Over last year the pools grew 8.77% according to John Manuel of Baseball America. What that means for the Yankees is with their top picks they get a $7,885,000. This is the sixth highest pool of any team which means the Yankees can be very aggressive with their selections.
Before we discussed strategies that the Yankees could employ with picks. Now we can discuss how to increase the bonus pool.
- Strategy one is to go over 5% which would trigger a 75% penalty on that overage. This would increase their pool by $394,250 which when added to their bonus pool gives the Yankees $8,279,250. This would close the gap between the Yankees and Braves who have the fifth largest bonus pool. This gives the Yankees money that they can go more after the 10th round which can get a high school kid to forgo going to college.
Now the Yankees could go crazy and go over their bonus pool to 15% which would forfeit their first two picks in the draft. They could do this if they were going to go after multiple big name free agents that winter. An example of this would be going after David Price and another top free agent. Then you would be forfeiting your third round pick and fourth round pick for free agents. I don’t see a club or the Yankees doing this unless they are exceeding expectations. If they were going to get a pick from 25 to 30 and had a large bonus pool because of the previous year you could see them doing this would would add almost 1.2 million to their pool.
Either way the Yankees should exceed their pool of money to acquire talent this year just as they did internationally.
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