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Atlanta Braves’ Draft Position Grants the Right to Spend a Lot of Money

By Alan Carpenter

Jul 20, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; First overall pick in the 2015 MLB draft Dansby Swanson looks on after signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. At this point, he has no idea what's to come later! Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 20, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; First overall pick in the 2015 MLB draft Dansby Swanson looks on after signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. At this point, he has no idea what's to come later! Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports /
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Jul 22, 2015; Mississauga, Ontario, CAN; Rafael Alba of Cuba (blue) celebrates beating Carlos Rivas of Venezuela (not pictured) in the men s taekwondo +80 kg gold medal final a during the 2015 Pan Am Games at Mississauga Sports Centre. Mandatory Credit: Matt Detrich-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 22, 2015; Mississauga, Ontario, CAN; Rafael Alba of Cuba (blue) celebrates beating Carlos Rivas of Venezuela (not pictured) in the men s taekwondo +80 kg gold medal final a during the 2015 Pan Am Games at Mississauga Sports Centre. Mandatory Credit: Matt Detrich-USA TODAY Sports /

The J2 Market: Spend it all… and then keep spending

If you want to talk about a manipulated market, then look no further than the International signing season, opening for official business on July 2nd.  But of course the signings that will take place on July 2 will already have been ready for ink-to-paper months before.

Deals with trainers, package deals with multiple players… all of this has been discussed in these pages before.  But nothing has changed, so now that the Braves are in a position to act, they seem poised to dive into this pool headfirst.

The only drama at this point involves how Atlanta will aim to reduce their “tax” penalty for going over the assigned pool amount.  So for that, let’s introduce the Yankees.

Why New York?  Because they are one of the max-penalty teams for 2016 and cannot sign any International teen for anything beyond $300,000.  Nonetheless, they still have a bonus pool allocation – which is tradable.  Here’s how it breaks down:

  • $700,000 base (not tradable)
  • 4 “Slots” based on draft position (tradable)
  • Their slots are 22/52/83/112 (think draft position)
  • Values are $609.8K, $411.8K, $278.1K, $177.4K

New York can sign as many under $10,000 bonus kids as they want – these don’t count against the pool.  They can sign players between $10K and $300K, but those are subject to pool limits.

Atlanta’s initial pool is $4,766,000.  The Braves are allowed to increase this via trades up to 50%, or $2,383,000.

If the Yankees were to sit out the season entirely (not terribly likely), they will have $1.477 million to trade away.  Since the Braves seem intent on spending perhaps $20 million all together, it behooves them to find trading partners like the Yankees to max their allowable pool, and thus reduce the penalties.  It’s not quite saving a dollar for every new dollar of pool space they can get, but it’s close enough to think of it in those terms.

As a result, there will be a few prospects traded away this Spring to help accomplish this goal.  Last year – on July 2nd, the Braves traded well-regarded RHP Garrett Fulenchek to the Tampa Bay Rays for $494,000 of additional spending rights.  In earlier deals, Cody Martin, Jordan Paroubeck and Caleb Dirks were traded for this purpose.

The return?  Primarily it was Christian Pache and Derian Cruz.  Hopefully that will pay off positively, but it will still be several years before we know for sure.

Next: No Respect... even from video games

Those are the battle lines now drawn up for later in the season.  We’ll keep watch to see how things fare from here.

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