Last season, Major League Baseball's new Collective Bargaining Agreement changed a lot of things having to do with free agency. It also changed how the financials of the draft operated, in an attempt to bring a little parity to the one way a struggling franchise can consistently rely upon for hope for the future. Teams were allocated money out of a "pool", with each individual slot assigned a "recommended signing bonus".
Based on those recommended signing bonuses and the number of picks a team had, you could perform some simple addition to find out your team's total allotted spend. Last season it meant the Twins had the largest draft pool in all of baseball, which comes in handy when you look at the penalties for going over your given budget.
This season the Twins don't have the largest pool, but they do slide into the top ten. With the draft pool for the entire league up 8.2%, everyone will have more money with which to appease their fussier draft picks. In the first ten rounds Minnesota has ten picks, and has $8,264,400 to spend between them.
Just a couple of notes from BA's original article.
- The Nationals have the smallest pool, thanks to picking last in every round and forfeiting their first round selection after signing Rafael Soriano. I know the Nationals are in a pretty fantastic position right now, but is Soriano really worth it? I think it's a mistake, especially for a reliever, but Washington would disagree with me. The Angels don't crack $3 million, either.
- Minnesota picks fourth overall, but due to compensatory picks won't select again until 43rd overall. Another compensation round brings their third pick to number 78. In the fourth round they pick for the 110th overall pick. From that point forward they should be making their choice every 30 spots, meaning that rounds five through ten will be overall pick numbers 140, 170, 200, 230, 260, and 290.
- The Astros are picking first overall for the second year in a row. They'll probably pick first in 2014, too.