2022 Twins 10-round Mock Draft

[AlwaysinModeration]

11 hours ago, Sielk said:

I'll try to explain...

Somewhat similar to, say, football each pick in the MLB draft is assigned a certain signing bonus. But unlike football, a player drafted with that pick doesn't automatically get that signing bonus. Instead the slot amounts of all the picks a team has in the first 10 rounds are added up together and then can be distributed among the drafted players however the team sees fit. 

Very simplified example:

It's important to understand that teams usually negotiate signing bonuses with players before they draft them, not the other way around. 

So, let's say our team has three picks with the slot values $3M, $2M and $1M, meaning they can spend $6M in signing bonuses total on their draft class. Of course they could just hand it out like that.

But maybe don't like the consensus top players for their first pick and draft someone lower on the board who they found out is willing to sign for only $2M. They now have $4M for their other two picks.

Meanwhile, there are always some players in every draft who fall because no team is willing to meet their asking price. Often HS players who have the leverage that they can just decline and go to college.

Since we "saved" money with our first pick, we now have more left than most other teams, $4M, and can just go to one of those should-have-been first-rounders in the second round and throw first-round money (e.g. $3M) at them.

So, to sum up, instead of getting a first and a second, we ended up with a slightly worse first-rounder and another guy that should've been a late first. It's basically baseball's version of a trade down, except that the actual picks are never traded.

Like with the Mets, it can work the other way, too. Maybe in my example the team really likes a player expected to go before they pick. So they go to that player and offer him $4M to sign. If that player then communicates to the other team that he won't sign for less than $4M and no one else is willing to give that to him, they might let this player slide right to our team. Of course, that also leaves only $2M for the other picks, meaning that we'll have to use our second-rounder on a player that's not really worthy of a second-round pick but doesn't have better offers from other teams. That scenario would basically be a trade up.

I hope that helps a bit? I agree, the MLB draft can be confusing to watch, especially because fans don't know those prenegotiated deals until the players actually sign a month or so later.

In other words, there is a lot of tampering and shenanigans.  They should just allow picks to be traded already.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

I'd encourage everyone to take a shot at their own 10-round mock. I put the rankings of those four sites to try to make where guys are coming off the board as realistic as possible. So if a guy was ranked in the Top 35 on all four or three of those four publications, they weren't options at 48. I tried to give myself other guidelines too. 

Going in, my intention was to take a college and high school player with my first two picks. Originally, I had Jett Williams and falling college pitcher Peyton Pallette at 48. The one name that never changed was Dom Keegan, because he's a really good bat with a chance to stick behind the plate. I thought getting a catcher was important, but wanted to swing for the fences on developing the defensive side while getting an existing hitter. I did want to add some left-handed pitchers, but everyone of them that was in my range to draft were always pitchability/low-ceiling lefties that didn't do anything for me. 

Not drafting *any shortstops* wasn't intentional, in fact, one iteration had me taking three (Williams, Nazier Mule and Aiva Arquette). Obviously the benefit of hindsight while doing this exercise is really nice. Don't like it? Start over. And that's not at all how it really works, obviously.  Clark Elliott, an outfielder from Michigan, checks all the boxes to be drafted by the Twins and was on the list until the very end. Taking Cross eliminated the need, in my opinion, of taking another college outfielder. 

I do think the top 10 is going to be very heavy pitching. I'd set the o/u at 7. So drafting a catcher, shortstop and center fielder leaves a small chance to take a pure hitter.

Of course, this is all very speculative so we might see something completely different play out.

[MN_ExPat]

14 hours ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

I respectfully ask, "Why not?"

All joking aside, while Wallner is actually a very good athlete, just simply transitioning someone to catcher isn't as easy as it sounds.  Firstly, I don't know if he's ever even played the position.  It's hard enough to jump to it in HS, let alone in college and especially in professional ball. 

Second, would he even he a willing participant in the switch?  I'm sure he would do it if he was told to, but would his heart be in it? Hard to say.  You might add, "What about Bechtold? He's doing it?".  While this is true (and please correct me if I'm wrong), I believe Bechtold volunteered and added that to his repertoire of positions to increase his chances of advancing and making it to the show.

[MN_ExPat]

13 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

Thanks.  That did help.  But it almost sounds like a slimy backroom deal if you do it right.  It sort of defeats the purpose of the draft (parity) if you can negotiate before you select.  Weird.

True, I imagine it would seem to sort of defeat the purpose of the draft from that vantage point. Until the league can no longer draft HS kids, we will continue to see things like this play out.  A top HS kid in the country has a huge amount of leverage going into the draft.  At that point they have garnered (usually) a huge amount of interest from colleges and the pros.

If they so choose, they can and often do leverage that to get the best deal they can.  A LOT of kids coming out of HS really do want to go play in college though and to lure them away from that dream, it usually takes a bit more money (Enlow is a good example in that the Twins went over slot to lure him away from LSU).

Another kid I know of who graduated ahead of my son from his HS had a good number of teams really interested in him as an outfielder (Cubs and Red Sox chief among them and they probably would have taken him in the Top 10 rounds).  However, he had always wanted to play for UGA and really wanted to honor the offer they had given him.  So his thought was, if you want to draft me and have me sign to give up my dream of playing in college, it has to be Top 4 rounds or the equivalent money.

Note: I have the utmost respect for this young man and his family.  They truly are amazing people.  Plus if you watch any UGA games this fall you may see him playing WR this year for the football team (he was freakishly fast coming out of HS).

So this (IMHO) is where you see the deals and agreements in place before the draft.  Signability becomes a huge issue for both college (D1/Major JUCO) and Pro teams.

[2wins87]

39 minutes ago, MN_ExPat said:

All joking aside, while Wallner is actually a very good athlete, just simply transitioning someone to catcher isn't as easy as it sounds.  Firstly, I don't know if he's ever even played the position.  It's hard enough to jump to it in HS, let alone in college and especially in professional ball. 

Second, would he even he a willing participant in the switch?  I'm sure he would do it if he was told to, but would his heart be in it? Hard to say.  You might add, "What about Bechtold? He's doing it?".  While this is true (and please correct me if I'm wrong), I believe Bechtold volunteered and added that to his repertoire of positions to increase his chances of advancing and making it to the show.

Also Wallner is 6'5".  I think there might be more tall catchers in professional baseball now than ever before after Sandy Alomar and Mauer proved it's possible to be tall and a good defensive catcher, but I would guess that there is still more of a challenge for a tall guy to learn to use his body effectively behind the plate.

Guys like Mauer, Alomar, and Wieters had tons of reps to get there, and I doubt it would go well generally for a guy trying to do it for the first time in AA.  Not to mention the wear on the player from playing at catcher which can have an adverse effect on their offense. 

If the idea is to turn him into a catching prospect, they would most likely do better just trading him for the best catching prospect they can get in return.

[2wins87]

14 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

Thanks.  That did help.  But it almost sounds like a slimy backroom deal if you do it right.  It sort of defeats the purpose of the draft (parity) if you can negotiate before you select.  Weird.

Not that I have inside information or a perfect memory of drafts, but I think the strategy of trying to push a player down in the draft is pretty tricky and probably hasn't really been executed effectively very often.

The Mets have $4.78 million allocated to their first pick at #11, and the Cubs at #7 have $5.7 million allotted.  If they wanted to push one of the consensus top 7 down they would have to be offering them well over $6 million, since the player would otherwise see their floor value at around $5.7 million, and they would also probably have a decent chance at going a slot or two higher as well.  So if the Mets went over their first pick slot by $1.5 or $2 million they would have to either make it up by signing lesser guys to below slot deals later in the draft, or if they can't manage to save enough money they start losing picks in future drafts.  It sort of defeats the purpose, especially in the MLB draft where good players routinely come out of later rounds and high picks still bust quite a bit.

The Mets' #11 pick is actually a compensation for not signing Rocker at #10 last year, so they actually have another 1st round pick at #14, giving them a unique opportunity to try something like that this year.  They could get an underslot deal in place at #14 with someone that doesn't expect to go until late in the 1st round otherwise, and use the savings to up their offer at #11.  In most situations it can be a lot trickier when the team is trying to save money on 2nd and 3rd round picks that have smaller slot values and smaller gaps between where the player could reasonably expect to go otherwise.

There is always a lot of talk about bonus pool manipulation because it can be fun to speculate, but I think when it comes down to it, most teams have ended up going pretty straightforward with their picks most of the time, going with their favorite of of the still available picks.  There are a few good examples of creative strategies but I don't think it actually happens that much.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

17 hours ago, 2wins87 said:

Not that I have inside information or a perfect memory of drafts, but I think the strategy of trying to push a player down in the draft is pretty tricky and probably hasn't really been executed effectively very often.

The Mets have $4.78 million allocated to their first pick at #11, and the Cubs at #7 have $5.7 million allotted.  If they wanted to push one of the consensus top 7 down they would have to be offering them well over $6 million, since the player would otherwise see their floor value at around $5.7 million, and they would also probably have a decent chance at going a slot or two higher as well.  So if the Mets went over their first pick slot by $1.5 or $2 million they would have to either make it up by signing lesser guys to below slot deals later in the draft, or if they can't manage to save enough money they start losing picks in future drafts.  It sort of defeats the purpose, especially in the MLB draft where good players routinely come out of later rounds and high picks still bust quite a bit.

The Mets' #11 pick is actually a compensation for not signing Rocker at #10 last year, so they actually have another 1st round pick at #14, giving them a unique opportunity to try something like that this year.  They could get an underslot deal in place at #14 with someone that doesn't expect to go until late in the 1st round otherwise, and use the savings to up their offer at #11.  In most situations it can be a lot trickier when the team is trying to save money on 2nd and 3rd round picks that have smaller slot values and smaller gaps between where the player could reasonably expect to go otherwise.

There is always a lot of talk about bonus pool manipulation because it can be fun to speculate, but I think when it comes down to it, most teams have ended up going pretty straightforward with their picks most of the time, going with their favorite of of the still available picks.  There are a few good examples of creative strategies but I don't think it actually happens that much.

It happens all the time. 

As soon as the the Mets got a whiff that Rocker might tumble out of the top 5 last year, there was an offer of $6 million. His reps then told teams, "our price tag is $6m."

As you start to hear of teams being "out" on guys, some times it has to do with their ability. But I'd guess oftentimes it has to do with money. 

Part of the area scouts job is to know what it's going to cost to get sign the player they scouted. That's why it's pretty uncommon to not get top-10 round guys signed. 

And when you see it, it's usually due to medicals. The Twins had an agreement in place with Kyle Cody almost immediately, but when he underwent his physical, there was something the Twins didn't like.

So much is done behind the scenes and before the draft and teams want to stretch every dollar as far as it can go. If you didn't partake in the "backroom shenanigans", you'd be putting yourself at a severe disadvantage. 

When Mark Prior fell to the Pirates and didn't sign, there was definitely a team behind them that thought they were getting Prior at an agreed-upon price.

[ashbury]

I'd like to see a catcher with a high pick - just not our very highest at #8.  That's a problem with not taking a pitcher with your top pick - you then feel it necessary to load up with multiple higher-risk pitchers in the early rounds, and here in this mock we don't take a catcher until round 5 where the book on him is "a chance to stick at catcher".  Ugh, no.  I like how Rortvedt and Jeffers have played out so far, even if 2022 hasn't proven what I feel to be their eventual value - and I'd like a similar pick this year with our second or third pick. 

I do want pitching of course - and I'd settle for not choosing a top OF prospect, in return.  Cross in particular looks like could turn out to be a tweener, never quite comfortably fitting into a starting role in CF and then everything depends on his bat as a corner OF.

Of course, I don't know who would be a good pitcher to take at #8, since all the draft prognosticators find warts on them all.  If our FO agrees that no pitcher merits consideration at #8, I'm fine with that, especially if one of the top 7 drops - but I hope they can buck the conventional wisdom.  As someone said elsewhere, there should be someone who turns out to have a good pitching career in this draft, and at #8 it looks like our FO will have their pick of everyone - so, show us your evaluation chops, and find that guy!

[Seth Stohs]

Well, @Jeremy Nygaard, you got one name right again this year!! That Comp pick was drafted.. oh wait, that was by the Brewers... I'll give you credit! 

[nicksaviking]

Seems like Jeremy was on the same page as the GMs of the rest of the league as most of those guys went in the 4th round or higher. Looks like Alex Kachel is still there if the Twins want to give Jeremy a win.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

I felt my streak would be in danger as soon as Prielipp got drafted and Day 2 became an underslot day.

But that's ok... it sets the bar low for next year.