I did notice as it was happening. True to the Angels, they also seemed to be taking the oldest high schoolers possible.
EDIT - Looks like they drafted 3 in rounds 11-20 that are halfway through 19 years old.
Ebel is the only one confirmed, and that’s only cause his dad is currently in the opposing dugout.
We are always behind everyone else with confirming signings due to having tough signs in the 11-20 range.
Are we so confident that other teams aren’t in on our late round guys that we don’t even pick them in the late rounds?
Would make sense that we would be a more attractive undrafted offer if we had 10+ fewer college guys to compete with in this class alone.
I think last year they just spent too much time on Levonas.
All the 11-20 signings seemingly happened at the last possible second. That was the first time in a while we left money on the table.
Would love to hear some insider talk on how last year went.
Did not see that one coming.
We must have a bunch of guys already confirmed if we already got a “yes” from the 11-20 group.
Sounds like the coaches he committed to had left?
EDIT - Looks like he was committed to Vandy for a long while. SC’s coach was fired June 3rd, 2024 and Roupe flipped on the 7th without a coach until one was hired on the 11th. Wanted to be closer to home. Our Carolina team is conveniently the same distance from home as SC.
Juan Ortuno too. He’s got sneaky power along with what seems really good swing decisions. Him and Handelfry in Carolina next year should be fun.
Anyone hear anything about what he’s got going on?
He got drafted by the one team most likely to play a scrappy corner OF. If I were him I’d be doing backflips.
Especially with him being from Boston College.
Tobias and Dorchies in the 9th/10th threw me for a loop last year. Ginger gets a number out of these guys.
I also went more towards slot with Ebel than most are. Feel like this was pretty conservative.
Last year we spent almost $2mil of our savings on four late round signings. With the addition of the 150k that doesn't count, the total bonuses paid was around $2.5mil.
Assuming we do something similar, that is roughly $625k each to add four guys (end of 4th round slot value). I think that is absolutely best case scenario. Worst case is probably signing three for a little over $750k each (mid 3rd round money).
Coil probably signs for $150k and doesn't count.
All that being said.... I tried to save a little more than last year and used it all up trying to get Mills in at $250k with five bucks left to spare.
Probably nothing, but a potential high school positional class of Ebel, Hughes, and Cadiz all being from SoCal... Any connections there?
Could be a cool 2B, SS, 3B dynamic to grow with.
Yeah I’d be all on board with you if it was 3 years ago.
Enough good will has been built up, and the results of the past two years have been pretty darn cool.
I’ll take whatever this crazy thing is over the consensus. It feels like we are on to something here.
Which is why we go after the lower ranked guys.
NIL for baseball isn’t going to incoming unranked freshmen. It’s going to transfers that will be playing over them this year (possibly the next too) and to retain your good players from transferring.
Maybe you never get an honest shot. That’s our sell.
All these picks keep saying "4th round grade".
The 4th round just happens to range from $550k to $700k.... That's our wheelhouse in 11-20.
Infinite 4th round pick glitch.
Pretty sure Pratt and Broughton have been the only high schoolers born the year before the draft that we've taken in the last 3 years. Everyone else has been 17 or just turned 18.
We won’t sign them. It’s gonna be nobodies that sign for 400k-600k. Look at last years draft, something like that.
We have so much depth built up that it doesn’t make sense to add even more late round college players. They’d take up innings and PAs from the kids already in A and A+ and the upside is minimal.
This is where we build up our freshman team of no names who would have turned into top 5 round picks had they made it to college.