Why the best player(s) in this MLB draft might not be taken No. 1 overall

By pure luck, the team with the best record in the American League is also picking No. 1 overall in Sunday’s Major League Baseball draft in Fort Worth, Texas. The Cleveland Guardians entered the draft lottery in December with a 2% chance at the top pick and exited with seven months to decide on whom they would choose.

They still haven’t declared their intentions and among evaluators, there is no unanimity as to who deserves to go first. Oregon State’s Travis Bazzana and Georgia’s Charlie Condon are the consensus two top players, but the Guardians could potentially forgo them for an alternate route.

If the idea of taking anyone other than the top name on their draft board doesn’t make sense, well, it’s understandable. Here’s what you need to know about why the baseball draft works differently than any other sport and how it could create chaos this year.

Watch: MLB draft, Sunday at 7 p.m. ET

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So, the best players don’t always go at the top of the draft? Why?

The MLB draft is unlike any other major professional sports league in its disbursement of amateur talent. The league assigns a dollar value to every pick in the first 10 rounds. Those values are added up to constitute each team’s bonus pool. And from there, each team can spend that money — and up to 5% over it, taxed at 75% but with no pick penalty — however it pleases.

How does that work?

Players like Bazzana and Condon may not demand the full slot value of the No. 1 pick, which is $10,570,600. Last year’s No. 1 pick contributed $9,721,000 to the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ bonus pool, but Paul Skenes signed for $9.2 million

On the other hand, a player like West Virginia shortstop JJ Wetherholt could go No. 1 overall for a significantly under-slot deal, which would reflect where he might be selected otherwise, and then Cleveland could use the additional bonus-pool money to convince a difficult-to-sign high school player to pass up college later in the draft.

Teams that implement the strategy promise the tough-to-sign player a certain signing bonus. The player then informs other teams that he won’t sign unless a team meets that bonus — which could very easily wreck their own pools and prevent them from reaping talent later in the draft. The player then drops to a later pick where he signs a well-over-slot deal.

Even if bonus money is saved, it must be wisely distributed to warrant the gambit in the first place. If a team winds up with unspent money, it’s a failure of process — and one where they’re not rewarded with the ability to take that money and apply it elsewhere.

For teams picking at the top, it raises the ultimate question: Would you rather have one superlative prospect or one excellent prospect, plus some more excellent ones later?

How long has this strategy been around and does it pay off?

The Houston Astros pioneered it in 2012, the first year of slots. Rather than spend the majority of their bonus on the No. 1 player in the class, Byron Buxton, they chose Carlos Correa with the first pick, paid him $4.8 million of the $7.2 million slot and used the leftover money to float right-hander Lance McCullers Jr. to the 41st pick, where they snagged him and paid him $2.5 million, nearly twice the slot value, and then selected infielder Rio Ruiz in the fourth round.

The strategy has been used enough since to at least validate it as an option. In 2016, the Philadelphia Phillies signed Mickey Moniak for $6.1 million, even though the slot value for the No. 1 overall pick in that draft exceeded $9 million. The Pirates cut a deal with catcher Henry Davis in 2021 and used the extra money to land three high-ceiling high schoolers — left-hander Anthony Solometo, outfielder Lonnie White and right-hander Bubba Chandler, now the top prospect in their system, for at least $1.5 million each.

The strategy isn’t reserved for the No. 1 pick. Last year, the Detroit Tigers opted to choose high schooler Max Clark with the third overall pick instead of outfielder Wyatt Langford. Detroit used the savings to give shortstop Kevin McGonigle more than $500,000 over slot with the 37th pick.

Clark and McGonigle are both top 50 prospects in all of baseball now. At the same time, Langford would look mighty good on a big league team that needs offense. The answer in this particular case won’t be known for years. But the idea itself is sound enough to intrigue teams every year.

Why does this happen in baseball and not other sports?

Football, basketball and hockey have hard slot numbers for their draft picks. It doesn’t matter how good the No. 1 overall pick is in any given year; he will get paid a specific amount ordained by each league’s collective bargaining agreement.

Baseball’s system offers leeway and encourages creativity. While it’s counterintuitive that the best player in a draft might not go to the team with the first pick, baseball recognizes that in an uncapped system, offering a team a choice over how it approaches its draft is a valuable proposition — particularly in years when there is no clear-cut choice at the top of every team’s board.

Who could the Guardians target in the next rounds if they opt for savings at the top?

One of the reasons many executives believe Cleveland will opt for Bazzana at the end of the day is the relatively weak high school class. Because high school players carry significantly more leverage than their college brethren — the mere threat of going to college, as well as the name, image and likeness money they can now receive there — they can make such demands. College players, who typically leave for the draft after their junior seasons, might suggest they’ll head back to school if they don’t get their desired bonus. But to what end? Seniors almost never sign for top dollar, and teams call college players’ bluffs annually because of it.

A few names scouting sources believe Cleveland could float to the 36th and 48th picks with extra money saved if they opt for Wetherholt at No. 1: left-hander Kash Mayfield, right-handers William Schmidt and Ryan Sloan, shortstops Kellon Lindsey and Carter Johnson, and outfielders Slade Caldwell and PJ Morlando.

What does it mean for the teams picking after Cleveland in the draft?

Potential chaos. This isn’t standard draft subterfuge where the team with the No. 1 pick feigns that maybe there is a real conundrum as to who to take. Nobody knows who is going where this year because the Guardians can take multiple paths — and all of them have a demonstrable effect on the picks below them, starting with the Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies who would have to adjust their strategies on the fly while on the clock for the No. 2 and No. 3 picks, respectively.

If the pick is Bazzana, the draft could break as expected. If not, nobody knows — and it could make for a very interesting night at the Cowtown Coliseum.