2010 Draft: What a Kick: Kickham Signed

Baseball America reported that the Giants signed 6th round pick Mike Kickham for $410,000.  The MLB recommended max for picks after the 5th round is $150,000, so that is why it took so long to announce, this was $260,000 over the max and the MLB has been delaying their approval of signings in inverse relationship to the amount the deal is over slot, meaning the more overslot, the more delayed.

Of course, not all deals are delayed for that reason.  Teams could be trying to keep the prospect at around slot, and business negotiations require the team starting low, the prospect's agent starting high, and working towards the middle until both parties are satisfied.  But sometimes the two sides don't agree where the middle lies, and negotiations drag on until you get close to the deadline and one side finally caves.

For example, the team might want slot and offers slot while noting that's as far as they are going, but then the prospect's agent might think that stalling until the deadline might put pressure on the team to sweeten the deal, and once they realize that the team said what it meant, and meant what it said, finally agrees.  And the opposite could certainly happen too, the prospect has a price he wants, the team waits him out, but finally decides that they would rather pay that than lose the prospect.

Great Giants 2010 Draft Coverage of Final Week Before Signing Deadline

There is a great fanpost on McCovey Chronicles by a Fla-Giant that covers all the remaining draftees who have not signed yet, with good research and analysis on what might happen by the deadline.   I would highly recommend going there and reading, and he appears to be updating the post as signings happen, so you might want to re-check periodically.  Fla-Giants also kindly provided links to previous posts he had done which had even more in-depth research and information on select draft picks.

I would also recommend reading the comments, Fla-Giant has been posting updates there, for example, he posted some news on the 38th round pick, Jake McCasland, about how his great performance appears to have convinced the Giants that he is worth the money he was asking for, which was 4th round money or better, which is roughly low $200K range or better.

More Kickham

Lastly, I would add some info on Kickham that I can't recall where I read it before but reading this fanpost reminded me, that the reason he fell to the 6th round was, per what I noted above about picks, because he had a set number in his mind that he wanted to sign for - "2nd round money" - and so teams did not draft him due to that demand.  I guess the Giants liked Parker more, but thought Kickham was worth roughly 2nd round money and waited to select him in the draft.

And this gets back to what I said about negotiations above.  2nd round money last season was roughly $450-700K.  Kickham signed for $410K, which was early 3rd round money.  He and his agent set a higher offer hurdle, but they and the Giants were willing to meet somewhere in the middle.

Fla-Giant noted that he pitched a lot of innings so far, so he probably won't see any time in the minors, and I would agree with that assessment.  I definitely see some instructional league and Fla-Giants thinks some Arizona Rookie League work.

Looking at Fla-Giant's research, Kickham reminds me of Jonathan Sanchez, similar height, lefty, fastball in the low 90's but touching mid-90's.  Except Sanchez was drafted way late if I recall right.  Kickham was ranked somewhere in the 2nd and 3rd round by the services.  Fla-Giant noted that Kickham was ranked 68th overall by Keith Law, and in the top 110 by most rating agencies that Fla-Giant checked (BA ranked him 110th, with the comment, "The latest quality arm from Missouri State's pitching factory.").  Perfect Game had Kickham ranked 87th just before the draft, and that was a drop from 81st the prior month, but more in line with Keith Law.  Thus, in essence, the Giants picked up themselves another 2nd/3rd round pick but in the 6th round.

What John Barr Has Brought to Giants

And that is the dynamic that John Barr has brought to the draft for the Giants.  Maybe it is because the news on prior drafts were not as detailed, but since he has come on, the Giants have been much more willing to draft players who fell for whatever reasons down in the draft.  Previously, the Giants were more prone to draft players that nobody else thought was that good, most were ranked by Baseball America, I found in a previous study, at least one round or more later than when they were selected.

But since Barr was put in charge of the Giants draft, they have been more prone to draft players who fell in the draft for whatever reason.  In prior seasons, the examples were more like Brandon Crawford and Roger Kieschnick, players who had a poor year but were highly thought of previously, but they did draft players like Conor Gillaspie, who fell because of his high salary demand.

Drafting Guys Who Fell Due to Salary Demands

Based on what I've read in Fla-Giant's post, this season the Giants appear to be doing more of what I've been hoping they would do:  draft players who fell in the draft because of salary demands that turned off other teams, players like Mike Kickham.  And it is not like the Giants are late copycats - they were the first I can think of to do something like that, when they drafted Travis Ishikawa late and gave him a near $1M bonus in the 2002 draft - but rather that they had not pursued that avenue as heavily as other teams, like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Tigers have in recent seasons.

I'm glad that they are devoting more dollars to this effort, for as bad as the draft is in terms of finding talent, which I've shown in my draft study, this is still a numbers game, where the more prospects and the more talent you have, the greater the odds that you find a good player.  By selecting and signing more of these players, the sooner the Giants will find that needle in the haystack.

And given their expertise in finding and developing pitching talent, it makes even more sense that pursue this avenue with regards to pitchers like Kickham, 23rd rounder RHP Alec Asher, and 38th rounder RHP Jake McCasland.  And they also have selected a number of position players as well in this vein, starting with 2nd rounder CF Jarrett Parker, 19th rounder OF/1B Austin Southall, and 46th rounder 3B Caleb Hougesan.  They probably lucked out with Southall, who would have been drafted early in the draft but fell due to his commit to LSU, but then he failed to get into LSU and now is committed to a JC, but really, as long as the money is good, he should sign.