MLB Draft Day Primer 2018

After months of articles previewing dozens of Players who will never be Phillies, it’s finally the day when they start selecting prospects for Jay to write about 5 days a week. Now for some of the nuts and bolts of the draft. The First and Second Rounds, along with the compensation and competitive balance rounds A and B will be conducted today starting at 7:00 PM Eastern. The Phillies hold only selection #3 in the First round and will likely make their pick somewhere around 7:15 PM Eastern. The Phillies will then be done drafting until the 4th Round mid-afternoon on Tuesday.

In general picks can not be traded, with the exception of the competitive balance picks (which is ironic since the whole reason picks can’t be traded is it was felt it created an unfair balance toward wealthier teams who could afford to sign players cheaper/smaller teams couldn’t).

On Tuesday rounds 3-10 will occur, beginning at 1:00 PM Eastern. The Phillies hold pick # 107 overall in the Fourth round, from the 4th round on the Phillies will have the 3rd pick in each subsequent round. Rounds 11-40 will occur Wednesday starting at Noon Eastern and will blow past in no time, as teams seem to take about 30 seconds to make each pick.

Each team receives a Bonus Pool from which to sign picks made in the first 10 rounds. The pools are based off of the slotting sytem for picks, so it’s very dependent on which numbers of picks you have. The Phillies pool is $8,858,500, though you can exceed that by up to 4.99% without incurring a penalty, so technically the Phillies can spend up to $9,301,424. That puts the Phillies roughly in the middle of the league for total pool money (12th highest). If you exceed that total on picks from rounds 1-10 you start getting penalized money and future draft picks. I won’t bother with specifics, since it’s detrimental enough no one has come close to doing it. After round 10, all picks from Round 11 on, need to be signed for $100k or less, however, if you have spent less than your bonus pool for the top 10 rounds, you can apply those savings to picks made in Round 11 or later.

I’ve previewed absurd amounts of possible players for the Phillies to select, here are links to all of them:

Alec Bohm, 3B
Casey Mize, RHP
Joey Bart, C
Nick Madrigal, 2B
Jonathan India, 3B
Matthew Lberatore, LHP
Travis Swaggerty, OF
Brady Singer, RHP
Shane McClanahan, RHP
Brice Turang, SS
Ethan Hankins, RHP
Jarred Kelenic, OF
Nolan Gorman, 3B
Jackson Kowar, RHP