How many draftees will enter the Top 100?

The Draft might be over, but that doesn’t mean we’ve recovered from Draft fever yet!

Signings are happening fast and furious these days and we’ll continue to report them to you. And clearly, you guys still want to talk about the players who were just selected last week. All of this week’s questions for Inbox are indeed Draft-related.

Interesting that you bring that up now. Thanks for that because we will get countless questions about the re-rank. The official one, where we will incorporate all the recent draftees (and soon-to-be international signees), will come at the end of July. Stay tuned, however, for some tweaks to the list in the next little while, kind of like what we did back in May. But that doesn’t mean we can’t consider questions like…

Last year, we added 10 members of the 2018 Draft class to our re-rank, starting with No. 1 pick Casey Mize, from the Tigers. He came in at No. 20 overall. A total of 11 from the 2017 Draft made that midsummer list (Reds right-hander Hunter Greene topped that group at No. 21). In 2016, there were 13 additions and back in 2015, we added 15 draftees to our midsummer list. I guess we’ve become a bit more discerning over the years in terms of adding these new prospects?

I do think you can use that as a guide of sorts. This was not the best Draft class we’ve seen, not by a longshot, so while we haven’t had conversations about this yet, I might take the under if you set the bar at the 10 we added a year ago. I do think, however, that Adley Rutschman is better than how Mize was evaluated at this time a year ago. So I would peg him to break the Top 20. Back in 2015, Brendan Rodgers and Dansby Swanson were added at No. 11 and No. 12. Rutschman could get placed in that area, though that also depends on the prospects already on the list and how we stack them up.

After Rutschman, I think the other top draftees who will make the Top 100 (along with a rough guess of where) will be: Bobby Witt Jr (Top 20), Andrew Vaughn (Top 30), JJ Bleday (Top 40), CJ Abrams (Top 40), Riley Greene (Top 40) and Nick Lodolo (Top 50). I could see Hunter Bishop and Shea Langeliers cracking the Top 100 also. As for Alek Manoah, I’m not sure about him. I think he could perhaps begin on the outside looking in, something we would then revisit in 2020.

I fully expect the Mets to sign first-rounder Brett Baty, second-round pick Josh Wolf and yes, third-rounder Matt Allan. They’ve saved almost $1.5 million with the seniors they took on Day 2 of the Draft already and I really feel they will make it work. Nearly all players, as we’ve said time and time again, who are taken in the first 10 rounds, do end up signing (not a guarantee, mind you!).

Just to be sure, I reached out to MLB Pipeline colleague Mike Rosenbaum, who does our Mets Top 30 list and he confirmed what I thought to be true: The answer to your question is yes. As I mentioned above, we haven’t really started stacking things up, but Rosenbaum said an argument can be made that Baty belongs ahead of Mark Vientos and Shervyn Newton, currently Nos. 3 and 4 on the Mets’ Top 30. And both Allan and Wolf could end up ahead of David Peterson and Simeon Woods-Richardson, who are Nos. 5 and 6 on that list. So if I were going to re-rank the top of the Mets list now, quickly and without feedback from evaluators, I might go:

1. Andres Gimenez
2. Ronny Mauricio
3. Anthony Kay
4. Matt Allan
5. Brett Baty
6. Mark Vientos
7. Sherwyn Newton
8. Josh Wolf

I love when I can refer to an article I wrote to answer an Inbox question! I recently wrote about 10 players who could be among the quickest to make it up to the Majors. But if you’re going to force me to pick just one, I have to go with one of the pitchers, as most of the quickest over the last couple of years have been arms. The safest bet would be to go with a college left-hander like Nick Lodolo, now with the Reds. He’s got solid stuff, he knows how to use it, and commands the ball very well. That’s a recipe for an aggressive assignment to start 2020 and perhaps making it up to Cincy by 2021.

A lot of people have been talking about this on Twitter as we’ve been announcing some of the senior signs. And I can understand how it sounds like the system is full of inequity. And perhaps it is -- that’s way above my paygrade. I don’t know that the bonus pool system that created the senior-palooza that occurs on Day 2 of the Draft will change with the next CBA, but I have a feeling something similar will be in place. One thing I do think you have to keep in mind is that while it seems unfair to give a player, say, a $5,000 bonus when the pick value at that spot is in the hundreds of thousands, those college seniors would not get drafted that early otherwise. No one really notices the seniors who get drafted in the 28th round and sign for $5,000, right? It’s just the disparity between the assigned value and the actual bonus that stands out.

Former big leaguer Josh Satin chimed in with the fact that seniors have long been thought of money-saving dratees, even before the bonus pool system was instituted. He should know. He was a sixth-round pick of the Mets as a senior out of California back in 2008 who signed for just $25,000.