With bounty of Draft picks and big bonus pool, Rays are ready to stay flexible

BOSTON -- The All-Star break will begin sometime late Sunday afternoon, when the Rays wrap up their four-game series against the Red Sox at Fenway Park. But Sunday will be a very busy, very long and very important night for the front office executives gathered in Tampa Bay’s temporary office space in St. Petersburg.

The MLB Draft begins Sunday night, and the Rays will have five picks during the Day 1 proceedings. The Draft is always a key opportunity for a small-market club like Tampa Bay to add talent to its Minor League system, but the stakes seem a bit higher with so many selections in the early going and one of the largest bonus pool allotments in baseball.

“I think it's great, because you kind of go into it ready to go a bunch of different directions based on what happens with the first or second pick,” Rays amateur scouting director Chuck Ricci said in a phone interview last weekend. “The pool money just gives you a lot of avenues to try to kind of bring it all together. You've got the opportunity to go a lot of different directions, so it's a definite advantage.”

The Rays have four of the first 67 picks and five of the top 86, and they’ll make them all Sunday night. They initially had six Day 1 picks, but they traded the 37th overall pick to the Orioles on Thursday to acquire reliever Bryan Baker.

“Luckily, we have a staff that's understanding and gets it. Look, we're drafting players, and the goal is to turn them into big leaguers,” president of baseball operations Erik Neander said. “And this Draft pick turned into a big leaguer very quickly.”

How did they wind up with such a bevy of selections, boosting their spending power with a larger bonus pool?

The 14th selection is their first-rounder, the result of last year’s 80-82 finish. Pick No. 42, which they acquired from the Athletics as part of the Jeffrey Springs-for-Joe Boyle and Co. trade, comes in Competitive Balance Round A.

The 53rd pick is their second-round slot, and they picked up an extra selection (No. 67) as compensation for not signing shortstop Tyler Bell, last year’s No. 66 overall pick. Not long after that comes their third-rounder at No. 86, capping a night the front office and scouts have spent countless hours preparing for.

“I think you just paint out a lot of different scenarios, and really, you're going to react,” Ricci said. “I've said it to a lot of people before: The best way to go into this is just without a real philosophy, but understanding if we go one direction, that means we're going to go this direction after -- and just being prepared for all of those different scenarios is probably the best way to get ahead of it.

“It does move quick, and in real time, those picks are really going to be a kind of rapid-fire. ... So I think the best plan is to really think it through ahead of time, whenever possible.”

• Day 1 picks: 14, 42, 53, 67, 86
• Bonus pool allotment: $14,068,000, ninth-highest in MLB
• Last year’s top pick: Theo Gillen, OF, 18th overall pick … Gillen was one of the most polished high school hitters in last year’s class, and the Rays bet that the former infielder’s athleticism would allow him to make the move to center field. That has all been true in his first full professional season, as the Rays’ No. 2 prospect entered the week slashing .277/.450/.410 with 28 steals while drawing rave reviews for his defensive work with Single-A Charleston.
• Breakout 2024 pick: Nathan Flewelling, C, 94th overall pick ... Flewelling’s numbers and tools may not get as much attention as those of Gillen, but the Rays like what they’ve seen from the 18-year-old Canadian catcher and their No. 30 prospect, specifically his mature approach and his ability to hold his own behind the plate.

Along with the number of early picks they have, the corresponding boost in bonus pool space affords the Rays a degree of flexibility entering what they believe to be a deeper Draft than last year's. In the roughly 24 hours the Draft will take, the Rays could commit to spending upwards of $14 million. That’s a lot of money to spread around or push toward specific players.

“There's going to be a lot of really good players in this Draft, and I think they're going to come from all parts of the Draft,” Ricci said. “I think that's always been our goal. Yes, you're really focused on the first day and those six picks, because there's going to be a lot of Draft equity spent there.

“But you also realize there's going to be big league players toward the end of this Draft, and the more players you get that have big league value, the better we're going to be.”

The Rays have gravitated toward high school hitters atop the Draft over the past few years, from Carson Williams and Cooper Kinney in 2021 to Xavier Isaac in ’22 to Adrian Santana in ’23 (after college infielder Brayden Taylor) and most recently Gillen.

But Ricci said the state of the Rays’ deep farm system provides them with yet another reason to react and adapt as the Draft unfolds, knowing they can get the most out of whoever they select.

“The system’s in a pretty good place. We have confidence that our development [group] is able to develop, whether it's a high school position player, college position player, high school pitcher or college arm,” Ricci said. “I think just having that flexibility and that confidence in them makes this a lot easier.”