According to MLB.com's draft tracker, the Red Sox have signed senior draft picks Ben Taylor, Tucker Tubbs, and Michael Gunsolus, taken in the seventh, ninth, and tenth rounds respectively, for a grand total of $25,000.
That the Red Sox locked in all three seniors for cheap should come as no surprise. Players in their position have little-to-no leverage when it comes to negotiating with major league teams. While the best of them can use the threat of playing baseball in an independent league for a year to get what they deserve, for those fringier prospects that comprise most of a senior class, it makes a lot more sense to jump into a major league farm system when given the opportunity.
What's important about this is just how far under slot those three picks are: a combined total of $506,700. That's very nearly enough to make up the difference between eighth round pick Logan Allen's reported ~$725,000 bonus and the recommended slot figure of $175,000. The Sox will still have to find anywhere from $8,000 to $33,000 depending on if Allen comes in at $725,000 or $750,000 when you factor in their ability to go 5% over their pool, but that shouldn't be too hard to do with their top five picks still left unsigned.
Allen certainly stands out from those drafted around him. An 18-year-old lefty with a fastball that's already in the low 90s, he ranked just outside the top-100 draft prospects for both Baseball America and Perfect Game, with Kiley McDaniel placing him at exactly 100.
There's a lot of work left to do before the Sox can call it a draft class, but they seem to have tied off the bottom four of their picks from the first ten rounds with a pretty neat bow, and per Ben Cherington before yesterday's game against the Braves, are at least getting close with Andrew Benintendi. This may be a year without any drawn out signing sagas.