Your 2017 Giants Draft: Some Analysis

I just found time to gather a bunch of data on the 2017 draft, and below are my data and musings.

ogc thoughts

The Giants signed the first 19 draftees, and 27 of the first 28.  And in recent years, since the new rules came in and shortened the draft to 40 rounds, usually the picks from 30-40 are speculative picks, high school players (or JC) who they were interested in, and perhaps could pick up if they had any money left over (like John Riley a few years back) but at worse could talk with them and learn more, and thus usually, at most, one or two might get signed.  This year, the Giants signed five of the 11 picks, including paying $250,000 to Connor Nurse, a 6' 6" RHP high schooler.

And Nurse just capped a day of spending, as the Giants paid the $125,000 threshold (max before potential overage penalty) for any pick after the 10th round to five picks (11, 12, 13, 15, 16) and paid above the max for the 19th pick, Frankie Tostado, a lefty RF.  With these overage payments, the Giants still had another $100K that they could have spent over the $125,000 threshold, as they overpaid the 3rd round pick, Seth Corry, $441K, but underpaid almost every other pick in the first ten rounds except for rounds 1, 4, and 10.  Corry, Tostado, and Nurse were all signed for above the max for their round, all the rest were at or below.  I can't recall a prior year, either, with five draftees paid the post-10th round penalty threshold.  I think there were maybe 3 the year we got Jonah Arenaudo, but that's the max I can remember.  Anyone remember a higher year?

So, the Giants did what they have done since Barr joined them:  sign players before their BA 500 rank, but also picked some players who fell a lot.  The first three draftees were over selected, though to be fair, if ranking is where they should be drafted approximately, then two of them would not have been around when the next pick came.   Many were drafted before their ranking would have expected.

The rankings between MLB.com 200 and BA 500 were pretty similar, where the player was ranked by both service.  3 of the 5 were within 10 spots of each other, another one was within a round (23 difference).  The only vast difference was Garrett Cave.  While MLB.com really liked him (#80), BA did not like him that well (#160).  The Giants overall pick (#126) used to select him almost exactly split the difference between the two.  So for MLB.com, he's a steal, for BA, he's an overdraft.

As usual, the Giants drafted a lot of pitchers, more than they did hitters.  They drafted 24 pitchers, and signed 17 of them.  Out of the 16 hitters they drafted, 14 of them signed, so they almost had an even split.  But out of the 7 players signed for $2,500, 3 were pitchers and 4 were hitters.   Part of the disparity in signing was because 8 of the 11 speculative picks (30-40) were pitchers, and they signed 4 of them (1 of 3 for hitters).  And the only two picks not signed among the top 29 picks were pitchers.