Bonus Pools, Slot Prices Set For 2022 Draft
$6,000 Welcome Bonus
Major League Baseball has established the bonus pools for all 30 teams and the slot values for every pick in the first 10 rounds of the 2022 amateur draft, MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis reports. This year’s draft is set to take place July 17-19, coinciding with All-Star week in Los Angeles.
While the new collective bargaining agreement made some changes to the draft’s operations (most notably the lottery that begins in 2023), the basic structure of the bonus pools and slotting system remains intact. As a refresher, each team receives a bonus pool to cover selections from the draft’s first 10 rounds, and each draft placement within those ten rounds has an assigned price attached to it. Teams are free to sign players for above or below those assigned slot prices, as long as the total price tag of those signings doesn’t exceed the value of their bonus pool.
The bonus pool limit isn’t a hard cap, as teams are allowed to exceed their bonus pool, but with increasingly punitive costs. A club must pay a 75 percent tax on any overage of between 0-5 percent of a draft pool, and many teams routinely pay this relatively minor penalty. However, since the institution of the bonus pool system, no team has overspent its pool by more than five percent, as doing so would require a 100 percent overage tax and (of far more import) the loss of a future first-round pick. Spending beyond the 10 and 15 percent thresholds lead to the loss of multiple picks, and it seems hard to fathom any club would ever absorb such a steep penalty.
The 2022 draft marks the first time in three years that slot prices have risen, as due to the pandemic, the league and the MLB Players Association agreed to freeze slot prices for the 2020 and 2021 drafts. The first overall spot of this year’s draft (held by the Orioles) has an $8,842,200 slot price, a bump above the $8,415,300 assigned price for the first pick in the 2021 draft.
Here are the bonus pools for all 30 teams…
- Orioles: $16,924,000
- Diamondbacks: $15,112,100
- Mets: $13,955,700
- Pirates: $13,733,900
- Rockies: $13,660,700
- Royals: $11,668,300
- Nationals: $11,007,900
- Reds: $10,794,100
- Marlins: $10.486MM
- Cubs: $10,092,700
- Padres: $10,088,900
- Twins: $10.036MM
- Guardians: $9,980,900
- Rangers: $9,640,700
- Blue Jays: $8,367,700
- Athletics: $8,315,800
- Red Sox: $8,078,300
- Tigers: $8,024,900
- Braves: $8,022,200
- Rays: $7,795,100
- Mariners: $7,254,400
- Brewers: $7,070,900
- Angels: $7,024,300
- Cardinals: $6,842,300
- Astros: $6.837MM
- Yankees: $6,425,100
- Phillies: $6.307MM
- White Sox: $6,289,100
- Giants: $5,793,200
- Dodgers: $4,221,400
