Two Down: One Wheeler to Go

The Giants have announced that they have signed second rounder Tommy Joseph and fifth rounder Brandon Belt, both potential plus power hitters, which rounds out their early draftees with an interest in power: they had already signed Chris Dominguez long ago for basically slot.

Joseph, a high school catcher, received a $712,500 bonus, which is almost $60,000 over the slot for his position. Belt, a college firstbaseman, received a $200,000 bonus, which is almost $26,300 above slot. Both are roughly what their slot was assigned last year; basically, the Giants gave them the bonus without the 10% markdown that the Commissioner decreed for this draft.

Again, was it really worth waiting two months to accept probably what the Giants offered them in the first place? Belt in particular, two months of minor league salary is probably close to that; the value of the experience, probably invaluable to making the majors sooner. Just think of it this way: assuming that missing the two months only pushed back his making the majors by two months, then he just lost about $100K.

Of course, the rub is that most players past the Top 5-10 picks overall in any draft rarely make the majors. And if you never make the majors, you never make up the $100K.

But even at minor league salaries, which I think is pretty low, let's say it's about $1,000 per week, by missing 10 weeks of pay, that's $10K.

As an example, Dominguez has already played in rookie ball then has been at Salem Keizer getting significant ABs. He's hitting .246/.297/.483/.780 with 8 HR in 118 AB. His 36 strikeouts isn't good, but that's reflected in his low BA. Still, he's showing the power he's got and started getting instructions on how to improve himself plus it gives him something to think about before next season.

Wheeler Round the Corner

I have to think that Zach Wheeler will sign with the Giants on Monday sometime for somewhere in the $2.4-2.5M range, which is what the slot was last year. They probably figured that it didn't hurt Bumgarner to wait until the last minute - it didn't stop his progress through the minors - so they may as well wait until thelast minute to see if they can squeeze the Giants out of enough money to pay for the agent, that is, let the agent try to earn his money.

The Giants don't get squeezed though in the draft, so it was pretty useless for them to wait until the last minute to get last year's slot. With him I can understand, it could mean more than $250,000 to try, but if you look at the history of the Giants, they are not going to overpay for anyone. They did with Posey, but that is because he legitimately could have gone #1 easily, it was just that the Rays decided to go with Beckham instead.

Otherwise, the most anyone got is about $200K more than the slot, though Graham this year got a lot more but that is because he could have been drafted much higher based on his talent. Wheeler was drafted about where he should have been, in fact, the commentators I saw thought that Leake and Matzek were better than Wheeler, so he could have ended up further back in the draft (though realistically, he probably would not have fallen past the Braves at #7).

And as I noted in the comments, the Giants probably wouldn't mind getting the 7th to 10th pick next year in replacement for Wheeler not signing, there are a lot of good college pitchers touted for next year already and you never know when a hitter raise their game up and push into the Top 10.