[DJ's left nut]

For the Mizzou fans, there's an interesting real time example.

Trey Dillard is a pretty exciting recruit coming to Columbia in the fall should he not sign. He was considered a top 3 round prospect but a little bit of a tough sign. The Dodgers have a pittance of a bonus pool ($5.3 million) but just lost damn near half of it by not getting JT Ginn signed. So their 'money' bonus overage is based on a pretty small figure; 4.99% of a mere $5.3 million. But when they lost the $2.275 allocated to Ginn, that amount got even smaller. now it's 4.99% of roughly $3 million.

So they had $150K in 'fun money' they could pay with no real penalties after the 10th round. They spent $25K on that by going over slot to get Julian Smith signed, so they're down to $125K. And the first $125K of any bonus after 10 doesn't count against those penalties so they could throw roughly $250K at Trey Dillard.

Meanwhile, had Ginn signed at slot that figure could've been nearer $375K. Mizzou's odds of getting their big shit prospect on campus now have to be seen as pretty good.

There are just a whole slew of moving parts in these drafts now so these GMs have to have guys littered throughout that are decent fallback plans. The Dodgers had one of those in Dillard but when Ginn didn't sign he tied their hands and then when they went way over slot to get Grove done (which was on odd pick when made and even stranger when signed), they effectively torpedoed any remaining flexibility they had.

The MLB draft is a fascinating look at strategy and if you want to see someone that's just murdered it over the years, your guy is Jeff Luhnow. He always seems to have a plan and executes it exceptionally well. Sure, the large pools have helped, but 2012 was a masterclass in using resources when he saved $2.4 million under slot by taking Correa instead of Buxton, then plowed that saved pool money into getting McCullers out of his FL commit.

In 2014 he refused to blink when a medical exam found something off in his #1 overall picks elbow. He offered something like 2/3 of slot value (the lowest he could offer to get a pick the following year) and Aiken balked. By losing the pick and the slot overage that would've come with it, Luhnow also lost Jacob Nix and he got blasted by the national media for it. But rather than knuckle under and pay too much for damaged goods, he took his comp pick the next season and used it on Alex Bregman.

He got BLASTED by the national media for that but it was smart and of course they came out well ahead for it.

Luhnow does the draft dance as well as anyone in the game.