Red Sox sign senior draftees Ryan Scott, Matt McClean to $10,000 bonuses

The Red Sox and outfielder Ryan Scott, their seventh-round pick in the 2016 draft, have agreed to a $10,000 signing bonus. They have likewise signed Matt McClean, their ninth-round pick, to the same token bonus. John Manuel had it first in both cases.

This is hardly a surprise in either case. Senior draftees--a group both Scott and McClean fall into--rarely are. Except for a select few who can essentially threaten to head to independent leagues with a real expectation of being followed and improving their bargaining position with teams, guys in their final year of school have no real leverage with the teams that draft them. As such, any of them that want to keep their baseball dream alive have to take what's offered to them.

While Scott did put up garish numbers in Little Rock, there are certain environments where hitting .435/.516/.713 just doesn't move the needle past that token bonus of $10,000, especially for one of, by definition, the most experienced players in said league.

This is where the Red Sox were always going to get a good deal of their work in with freeing up money for Jason Groome. While the slot values are not huge, signing both men for a total of $20,000 frees up nearly $380,000 to go to Boston's top pick. If you combine that with the $45,000 made available by the Nogosek deal, the $195,000 from CJ Chatham, and the $3,350,000 the Red Sox could offer to Groome based on his pick alone, that's some $3,970,000--awfully close to the $4 million that's often cited as a (lower) reasonable estimate for Groome's bonus. There's still plenty of picks to go, to, which could add to that pool.