M’s Come to Terms with Walker, Ten Others
Divish on the Twitter, pt. 1, pt.2. The second part also notes that Woodinville’s RHP Luke Taylor has spurned his commitment to Hawaii to sign with the hometown team. Considering we’ve poached three players off their incoming class, the Rainbows must really hate us now. A press release also lists RHP Tyler Burgoon (10th), 3B/1B Stefen Romero (12th), LHP Jason Markovitz (13th), RHP Jandy Sena (23rd), C Andrew Giobbi (32nd), OF Ethan Paquette (35th), RHP Joshua Krist (39th), C Billy Marcoe (41st), and RHP Tim Boyce (44th). Marcoe’s been long rumored as being on the way to Everett too. Walker will be at Safeco later today.
That Walker signed at all shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Certain people were concerned that with so much more press on him as a potential D-1 recruit for basketball, he was still more focused on that than baseball these days, despite his own comments in interviews to the contrary. Signing him was probably the easy part. Getting him to learn how to pitch like a natural will be a little trickier.
That brings us to another point, which is that of all the M’s vaunted top four picks, he was probably the easiest sign. Paxton, who’s tied to Boras, may take a little while, but given that he’s without much leverage, has an offer from his “hometown” team, and the track record is not great for indy league draftees, I’d say it gets done. More difficult will probably be Littlewood, who had agreed to play at San Diego, and Stanek, who has the commitment to Arkansas. I see Stanek as maybe being the toughest one. That’s not even touching on later picks like Jordan Shipers, who are wild cards at the moment.
We’re making progress, and still have a lot of work to do before August 15th.
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How many out of 50 can the M’s really expect to sign? Is there really 30 to 40 players released from the system every year?
A lot of the late round picks wash out after a year or two, so yes, there are at least 30-40 players that are annually on the outs. Additionally, we’re the only team with seven affiliates in the States, and it doesn’t seem like there were all that many summer league promotions over the past year or so, and that might free up a few extra spots.
Woohoo get Walker pitching ASAP! I’m encouraged by all the draftees getting on board quickly.
As for Paxton–I’m guessing his negotiations will be similar to Aaron Crow. Same story, same agent. Paxton was drafted much later than Crow. Negotiation leverage is pointing at the M’s.
Is august 15th the deadline to sign college eligible kids Jay? Also, I heard somewhere that over slot guys cannot be signed before some date, is that true and if so, what I that date?
In the case where we signed Josh Fields, we were able to bypass the signing deadline because he was a senior and not going to be eligible to play again. Everyone else is August 15th.
You can sign overslot guys any old time, but most teams hold off until much later to do it because they don’t want to offend the commissioner. You can see how well this process works.
In addition, many of the overslot deals get done before the deadline, but the commissioner holds off on approving them until the deadline or close to it in an effort (albeit likely a wasted effort) to keep the amounts of other signings down.
Divish says the AP says we signed Walker for 800k. Wow.
What is slot?
That probably is slot. Last year the pick taken 43rd signed for $857k, but the one before that was $802k.
Signed for around slot and before July started, awesome.
So does this mean that the team can announce the signing pending approval or do we have to wait on our stupid commissioner?
So, where does Walker start the season? Would they stick him in Everett?
Not a chance he sees Everett in my opinion. Way too raw.
Excellent work, Jay. How many 2010 draftees have signed for the Mariners? I hear 26,28…but I count 29.
Gut feelings: Stanek is the hardest sign of them all, and comes down to the wire. Paxton signs before June is out. And Littlewood signs in mid-July.
And we do get Shipers, but he’s not signing ’til early August.
And the only other currently-unsigned draftees besides those four that we bring in the fold are Wiswall, McGibbons, Blash, Keller and Linehan.
SoZ The All-Seeing has peered into his crystal ball and spoken. (Elvis voice) “Thank ya, thank ya verra much.”
I’ve never looked so forward to a Mariners draft class getting underway. Never. This one has the potential to be the org’s all-time best.
You’re way more optimistic on McGibbon than I am.