Tyler Beede took a substantial risk with a potential change coming to the draft slotting system.
SEATTLE -- Aaron Hill's plans to attend Louisiana State University on a baseball scholarship nearly hit a snag when the Los Angeles Angels chose him in the seventh round of the 2000 draft.
Though he was very much focused on going to school, the offers he was getting to sign became more and more tempting. Ultimately, he stuck with his original plan, starred for the LSU Tigers, ended up being chosen 13th overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2003 and signing for US$1.675 million.
That's why in some ways, he can understand high school right-hander Tyler Beede's decision Monday night to turn down the Blue Jays' offer of US$2.5 million and honour his commitment to Vanderbilt instead.
But in other ways, the veteran second baseman doesn't get it.
"Pitching, or if you get offered that kind of money out of high school, I think that would be hard to turn down," Hill said Tuesday. "I don't see why you wouldn't (take it), just because one, you never know, and two, that kind of money, first- or second-round money nowadays, is life changing. When you look at the amount of people who don't make it to the big-leagues, that could be a pretty big safety net for him."
The money certainly could have been that, which is why Beede's choice to leave such a substantial offer on the table remains such an intriguing one. He was the only first-rounder not to sign before Monday's midnight ET deadline, and is the only Blue Jays first-rounder in franchise history not to have reached an agreement.
It was a gutsy roll of the dice on many different levels, as aside from the chance he's taking with injury or underperformance and that the draft system may change dramatically under terms of the new collective bargaining agreement that is currently being negotiated.
In particular, the owners are seeking a hard slotting system to regulate the signing bonuses for draft picks to replace the loose system of recommendations issued to teams by Major League Baseball that is nearly universally ignored.
The slot for Beede's 21st spot was $1.332 million but he would have nearly doubled it had he taken the Blue Jays' offer. Right-hander Kevin Comer more than doubled the 57th pick's slot of $634,500 with his bonus of $1.65 million while left-hander Daniel Norris got four times the 74th pick's slot of $492,300 with his bonus of $2 million.
The Blue Jays signed eight of their 10 picks from the first five rounds and went over slot on all but one of them, supplemental first rounder Joe Musgrove, who took $500,000, two-thirds of the 46th pick's slot of $751,500.
It's a trend that was followed across baseball.
The Pittsburgh Pirates for instance, whose president Frank Coonelly designed the current slotting system, spent $8 million on first-rounder Gerrit Cole and $5 million on second-rounder Josh Bell alone.
So it's with good reason that owners want hard slotting, something that makes sense for players, too.
Some veterans resent the so-called "bonus babies" receiving huge sums without having accomplished anything in the game yet, and there's something to be said for that.
Another school of thought is that money spent on draft picks diverts funds from the big-league roster and should be spent on players in the majors instead, and there's merit there, too.
"It's a touchy subject because there's arguments on both sides that you kind of go, I can understand that," said Hill, who is also the team's player-union rep. "One side says you don't want to slot because it puts a foot in the door for a future cap. The other side is these kids haven't even made it to the big-leagues yet and you don't want to take away the motivation. … You hear more stories of guys not succeeding because they blow the money or feeling they've got the world by the fingertips.
"You just hope they realize this is what their ultimate goal was when they were little, not to become the richest baseball player, but to become a winner."
Still, while the issue of slotting seems straight forward for so many reasons, there is logic to the players' philosophical opposition to it. They don't want to give away the bargaining rights of its future members and if free market rules apply in other areas, why should they not in the draft?
As the Blue Jays showed, teams have a choice if they don't want to meet a player's price. They'll get a compensatory pick in the 2012 draft for their failure to sign Beede, and future draft picks and their representatives will know that their final offer is their final offer.
But if a team is willing to ante up, it's good for the player.
"There's arguments both ways," said Ricky Romero, the Jays' alternate player rep. "If you've earned it out of college or high school and a team is willing to pay you, than hey, why not?"
But Romero also tells the college players he meets that a big signing bonus isn't the way to set themselves up financially. The left-hander signed for $2.4 million as the sixth overall pick in 2005 and didn't spend much time haggling over it after he was drafted.
"If you sign for $1 million or $2 million, half of it gets taken away in taxes anyway and you've got to be smart, so you make your money by getting to the big-leagues and staying in the big-leagues," he said. "That was my mentality the whole time."
Beede, clearly, felt differently.
"Obviously we wish we would have signed him, from what I hear he's a really, really good pitcher but no one can judge him on his decision," said Romero. "Only he knows what he does, and he's smart, he's going to a good school and who's to say that in three years he won't be a top-five pick?"
Then again, who's to say he will?
Quite the risk but he's simply a product of a system that needs repair.
