With the deadline to sign draft picks just a few days away, the Red Sox and their first-round selection Jason Groome are said to still have "work to do" per Jon Heyman, who's heard that their offer currently stands at just $3.5 million.
If that's where their offer currently stands, that's not where it's likely to stay. While Heyman likens this to a stare down, it's more like going through the motions. The reason for those motions? The smart money is on fourth-round pick Mike Shawaryn, and a handful of other names in the later rounds.
The $3.5 million offer is the important clue here, because it's not the most the Sox can offer Groome right now. Things are slightly confusing at the moment since the Sox' tenth-round pick, Santiago Espinal, has signed for an undisclosed amount. But he's not a player that's likely to cost them much more than slot, if not less. And when you look at the other six guys the Sox have signed out of the 10th round, they've thus far spent $2,230,000 (and another $15,000 over the $100,000 limit to 12th-round pick Matthew Gorst) against about $2,770,000 in allotted slot bonuses.
Add in the 5% overage, and we're looking at about a $680,000 difference. When added to the $3,352,000 the Sox can give Groome just based on his slot value (and 5% overage), we're left with slightly over $4 million.
There are two paths open to the Red Sox for that money. They could take it and give some of it to Shawaryn. He was taken in the fourth, but had more of a second-to-third round reputation, and will likely take more than slot money to sign. The Red Sox also picked a number of guys around round 30 who were top-150 talents with significant signability questions. If the Sox don't sign Groome, that extra $680,000 can go towards grabbing Shawaryn, one or two of them, and maybe even third-round pick Bobby Dalbec if he actually ends up requiring more than might be expected to sign.
In that situation, the Red Sox would have a bunch of new solid prospects, and an extra first-round pick in 2017 right around where they picked this time.
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But they would not have Jason Groome, and Jason Groome represents a rare opportunity indeed for the Red Sox. For the moment, the only ways for the Red Sox to get guys as talented as him in their farm system are to sign them once every three years on the international market, trade for them, or hit gold with their later picks. Granted, those scenarios have been working out really well for them lately in producing the likes of Bradley, Betts, Bogaerts, Moncada, Benintendi, Devers, Espinoza...well, you get the point. But still, guys deserving of the first overall pick don't just fall into a team's lap like this every day.
We're under new management these days, but the team's modus operandi for quite a while now has been to prioritize quality over quantity when it's come to their farm system. They would trade away 10 middling prospects to save a blue chipper like Moncada. So chances are they'll pass up on a few 3rd-round types if it means landing one Jason Groome.
But that doesn't mean they shouldn't at least try. They'll wait and see if maybe, just maybe they can land Groome and some of these other over-slot players. But when deadline arrives the Sox will be there, ready to put as much money on the table as they can possibly offer, and so long as Groome isn't looking to risk $4 million to maybe make $5 in a more stacked 2017 draft class, he'll take it.
Nothing is guaranteed until the contract is signed. But nothing that's happened (or, rather, hasn't) thus far is at all unexpected. This was always likely to take until the last minute.