Atlanta Braves draft: 17 picks and 4 UDFA signed in four days
By Fred Owens
The Atlanta Braves moved quickly to ink their selections in the draft, signing 11 picks from the 1st 10 rounds in three days.
Atlanta Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos didn’t waste any time getting his newest players’ names on the dotted line.
As Alan noted yesterday and updated late last night, the Braves now have eleven of the players selected in the first ten rounds and two comp rounds. The only player from those rounds yet to sign is fourth-round selectee David McCabe, a catcher out of UNC Charlotte. The club also signed six or the ten players selected in rounds 11-20.
The pools they are – or were – a changin
Shortly before the draft, MLB made a slight change to everyone’s slot values that slipped by largely unnoticed. I’ve yet to see an explanation for the change; maybe MLB used Steven Colbert’s calculator.
Crunching the numbers on Trump’s voter fraud claims #LSSC pic.twitter.com/hkL3p4TcZe
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) February 7, 2017
No matter the reason, my calculations show that the net effect for the Braves was a $24,500 reduction in the draft pool.
| New Pool | Original Pool | Change by slot |
| $3,409,200 | $3,400,000 | $9,200 |
| $2,203,200 | $2,200,000 | $3,200 |
| $1,307,300 | $1,310,000 | ($2,700) |
| $860,100 | $895,700 | ($35,600) |
| $635,800 | $635,500 | $300 |
| $478,900 | $478,700 | $200 |
| $357,400 | $357,200 | $200 |
| $275,100 | $274,900 | $200 |
| $215,400 | $215,200 | $200 |
| $176,400 | $176,300 | $100 |
| $159,800 | $159,700 | $100 |
| $151,000 | $150,900 | $100 |
| $10,229,600 | $10,254,100 | ($24,500) |
(Updates slot values from SpoTrac)
Braves avoid the penalty box
I wrote about the penalties a team incurs for exceeding their draft pool allocation last week, and looking at the way the Braves used their pool suggests the club is attempting to use funds more strategically.
I’ve closely tracked tracking Braves’ spending for five years and looked back through first-round signings from 2010 using Baseball America’s draft database ($), but I’ve never seen first-round bonuses as low as those for rounds eight, nine, and ten this year.