Adding 3 top-10 talents in ’15 eases pain from ’14 debacle
CLEVELAND — Every player the Astros selected in the top 10 rounds of the 2015 amateur draft has signed. The medicals are done, and there has been plenty of praise for the haul the Astros brought in — particularly with their first three picks.
That leaves a simple question: Does this year’s draft make up for last year’s?
There was a record amount of signing-bonus money available to the Astros this year because of the second overall pick they received for Brady Aiken, the top overall pick in 2014 who went unsigned amid controversy over the health of his elbow.
Twenty-five other teams came into the 2015 draft with less than half the signing-bonus pool of the Astros, which was nearly $17.3 million. They used that financial might — a direct consequence of the Aiken mess — to great effect, landing three players considered to be top-10 talents, even though the team had only two picks inside the actual top 10.
LSU shortstop Alex Bregman was taken at No. 2, followed by Florida high school outfielder Kyle Tucker (brother of Astros outfielder Preston) at No. 5 and another high school outfielder, Daz Cameron (son of former big leaguer Mike), at No. 37.
Going into the draft, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said a success would be landing two impact players, a logical expectation considering the team had two of the top five picks.
But landing Cameron, a third player who fits that description, changed the whole outlook.
“The 2014 draft, certainly, that part of it didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” amateur scouting director Mike Elias said of Aiken. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget about that unfortunate part of that draft class. I think we took a lot of other good players in that draft. But to certainly not sign the first overall pick, have what happened happen and have the other complications that arose from that occur, it was an unpleasant experience, I think, for everyone involved.
“But we did receive compensation in this year’s draft in terms of the second overall pick. I’m really excited about Alex Bregman. I’m excited about Kyle Tucker. … And yeah, to come away with three top10 players essentially, out of two high picks and a (compensation round pick at No. 37), it’s huge. And it is, I think, the optimal outcome for the compensation that we received for not signing Brady last year.”
Moving on
Aiken is with the Cleveland Indians organization now, rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. The Astros worried Aiken would need that procedure and that he subsequently would have trouble recovering from it.
Taken at No. 17 overall, Aiken received a $2,513,280 bonus — roughly half what the Astros offered him on the day of the signing deadline last year. Jacob Nix, a 2014 fifth-rounder whom the Astros didn’t sign as fallout from the Aiken controversy, got a six-figure settlement following a grievance. He then received a $900,000 signing bonus from the San Diego Padres as a second-rounder in this year’s draft.
The Astros also moved on, doing so by allocating their resources.
In the top 10 rounds, every player has a signing-bonus value assigned to him. If a player signs for less than his slot value, the money can be directed elsewhere.
All but one of the 12 players the Astros drafted in the first 10 rounds signed below his slot value, leaving enough money to throw Cameron a $4 million bonus — more than $2.3 million above his assigned value.
“I think in this instance in particular, it helped a lot,” Elias said of the Astros’ financial ability. “This is a very rare instance to have a player of (Cameron’s) caliber get as low as he did in the draft. It tends to only come with somebody who is known to be a firm college commitment like he was.”
The Astros say they didn’t go into the draft planning to have Cameron fall to them, but there were rumors of a high price tag — $5 million — on draft day, and he quickly slid. The Astros pounced. “It’s all about value,” Cameron said during his introductory news conference at Minute Maid Park before his agent, Scott Boras, elaborated.
“I think we all know that in baseball that — and Daz is right, he’s studied his economics well — (in) the draft, sometimes it’s not about talent as much as it is about value,” Boras said. “When certain clubs in certain situations in this draft structure have an opportunity to maximize that, Houston did a tremendous job of looking into the draft window and utilizing their top pick effectively.”
Touch the ceiling
When Aiken was drafted, Luhnow called him “the most advanced high school pitcher I’ve ever seen in my entire career.” No such player existed in this draft, by most accounts.
Bregman is the closest to the big leagues and the most polished of the bunch. Tucker has the highest offensive upside, while Cameron has more all-around upside.
But Elias believes their ceiling can match Aiken’s.
“They’re different types of players,” he said. “(Aiken’s) a pitcher, he’s a high school pitcher, and he’s one of the best high school pitchers in the past few years. That’s a very high ceiling.
“But we took an extremely talented shortstop from a good conference who can hit, who has power, who can run. And to have a middle infielder who can do all those things, I make this point all the time: Some people just assume that college players don’t have as high ceilings as high school players. That’s not always the case.
“Dustin Pedroia goes out and wins MVP awards by virtue of his bat and the position he plays. … I think these are high-ceiling players. They’re different; they play different positions. They’re different types of players. Absolutely, anybody that’s a top talent in the draft has a big ceiling.
“You know, we’ll see how these guys do. Maybe they won’t live up to our expectations; maybe we didn’t take the right guys. We definitely don’t feel that way now. In some ways, all we can do is sit and judge a draft on paper right after it happens.
“But on paper, I do feel that we made the most of a scenario we were presented with for 2015.”