NEWSLETTER
Although his signing has been known for about 10 days now, the Chicago Cubs finally announced the signing of supplemental first round pick Pierce Johnson, who has been assigned to the Arizona Cubs (rookie league). Johnson will reportedly receive his full slot bonus of $1.196 million.
The Cubs also officially announced the signings of fifth round pitcher Anthony Prieto (whom we already knew about, and who received $200K), 10th round pitcher Chad Martin (who received $10K), 13th round outfielder Bijan Rademacher (terms not known), 16th round pitcher Michael Hamann (who received the full $100K), and 22nd round pitcher Eduardo Orozco (who received $1,000).
There have also been a handful of as-of-yet unannounced signings, including 6th round pitcher Trey Lang, and 26th round pitcher Jasvir Rakkar (fresh of a cinderella season with Stony Brook). Each player announced the signing himself on Twitter, naturally.
Lang is a big (6’3″, 225 lbs), hard-throwing (mid-90s fastball), junior college pitcher with absurd numbers (0.87 ERA). The terms of his deal haven’t yet been disclosed, but, with his signing, the Cubs have signed 9 of the 12 players they took in the top 10 rounds. The only picks remaining to be signed are first round Albert Almora, second rounder Duane Underwood, and third rounder Ryan McNeil (though quotes from him soon after the Draft suggest there won’t be an issue signing him, and he may have already agreed to terms).
Setting aside Lang’s signing (and other late-round signings that might have been over slot), since we don’t know the dollars yet, we can take a look at how the Cubs are doing relative to their $7,933,900 bonus pool. The Cubs have done a solid job of signing players, where reasonable, to under slot deals, and they’ve now saved about $425,000 under their pool amount for the picks they’ve signed. That’s a healthy amount that could be used to entice later picks to sign (picks from rounds 11 to 40 can receive a maximum of $100K, and any amount you give a player over $100K counts against the bonus pool), or to ensure that Albert Almora signs. And, who knows? Maybe Underwood, for example, is going to require over slot to sign.
The Cubs can exceed their bonus pool by just shy of 5% – or another $396,700 – without losing a future draft pick, so you can expect that, right now, they feel like they have a total of an extra $800K to play with.
The full, official list of signings so far can be found on Cubs.com. Once the signing period has passed – July 13 – I’ll have a full round up on all the signings and, where available, the bonuses.
