NEWSLETTER
Well this is (mostly) pleasant news.
Jim Callis reports that, when the Chicago Cubs signed their 13th Round draft pick Kevonte Mitchell earlier this month, they had to pay him a little extra to get it done. Picks after the 10th Round can be signed for up to $100,000 without counting against the team’s bonus pool, so, any player after the 10th Round who receives more than $100,000 immediately jumps on your radar as a guy the Cubs must have particularly liked.
To be sure, Mitchell’s bonus wasn’t huge – $200,000 – but, given the potentially thin margins with which the Cubs are working on signing some other over slot types, the Cubs must have known all along that they really wanted to get Mitchell. Indeed, a local article from shortly after the draft indicates that Mitchell was always planning on signing, which suggests that this particular deal – over slot and all – was part of the Cubs’ draft plans from day one. That gets me just a bit more excited about Mitchell, who was interesting enough as is.
Mitchell, who was a basketball player in high school, plays third base and destroyed the ball in high school. He’s raw, as you might expect a two-sport high school athlete to be, but also very athletic. Here’s a video of Mitchell taking BP (at Wrigley Field, no less) that Luke posted back during the draft:
Here we go. Cubs pick Kevonte Mitchell taking BP at Wrigley.https://t.co/8zRNUmqrCi
— Luke Blaize (@ltblaize) June 7, 2014
At 6’4″ 185lbs and not yet 19, Mitchell is a big young man. I’ll be very interested to see how he looks next year, after he’s had some time to polish up this Fall in instructional ball.
As for the bonus pool impact of the signing, well, the available dollars drop by $100,000. That’s the “(mostly)” part in the intro.
As of our calculation yesterday, the Cubs had $1,346,310 in “extra” money to use, when including a 5% overage on their given bonus pool (teams can go over by up to 5% without incurring a loss of draft pick penalty). Drop that figure to $1,246,310. Still plenty to work with to sign 6th Round high school arm Dylan Cease, but it’s unclear whether there will be enough left after that to get any of the bigger name over slot types in the later rounds.
And, since this all has the appearance of a pretty-much-pre-draft deal, it’s not like there’s any surprise for the Cubs here. They always knew that $100,000 over slot for Mitchell was part of the calculation – probably even back when they were making their picks.
