Why the SF Giants cannot miss in the first round of the 2024 MLB draft

More often than not, teams find get their best value in the first few rounds of the draft. For the SF Giants, they hold the 13th overall pick and then they do not pick again until the fourth round. They cannot miss in the first round this year.

Why the SF Giants cannot miss in the first round of the 2024 MLB draft

The Giants forfeited their second-and-third-round picks when they signed Matt Chapman and Blake Snell, respectively. Both Chapman and Snell had rejected qualifying offers last winter.

As a result, any team that signed a player who had rejected a qualifying offer would lose at least one draft pick. The penalty for signing a player who rejects a qualifying offer varies to some extent. For the Giants, the penalty is straightforward in that they lost a draft pick and $500,000 in international bonus pool money apiece.

Not only do they lose the pick, but they lose the slot value associated with that pick. That is why the Giants have one of the lowest bonus pools in this year's draft. It limits their flexibility in terms of how they can spread out that $7.5 million bonus pool.

The slot value for the 13th overall pick is $5.2 million, or about 70 percent of their total bonus pool. They typically sign prospects to an underslot value in the first round so they can use that money elsewhere. However, that strategy may be tougher to do this time around because they just do not have that much money to spend outside of the first round.

Draft day slides happen all the time, especially with high school players. If teams project that signing a player will be difficult for a number of reasons, they will usually avoid that player. However, a team like the Giants usually tries to bank some extra bonus pool money early in the draft to nab someone who is sliding.

That is one of the reasons they will able to sign Kyle Harrison to a $2.5 million signing bonus after picking him in the third round of the 2020 draft. Teams were unsure of their ability to sign him, so despite being a first-round talent, he slid to San Francisco in the third round.

That strategy has its benefits. It has its downside as well. Overdrafting and the corresponding underslot deal usually means that a player was selected ahead of his expected position. That also means that other talented players were left on the board.

For the Giants, they may not be able to follow the same approach that they have done in the past. That first-round pick is by far the best value that they will have in this year's draft. They have only had one first-round pick, Patrick Bailey, reach the majors in the past five years. Of course, it is still too early to make an evaluation with a couple of those picks.

The Giants do need to hit in the first round because there is usually a pretty steep dropoff in the probability in finding a player after the third round. It happens all the time but it becomes more of a crapshoot. Even drafting in the first round can be a crapshoot in baseball.

It bears mentioning that the Giants farm system has not necessarily progressed as many had hoped under Farhan Zaidi. The club is beginning to realize some of that drafting success, but progress has been slow. Missing on a top pick like this halts much of that progress.

For the most part, what separates good teams from bad ones is how they draft, sign, and develop amateur players. A lot of that success and failure occurs in the first round.

The Giants hope that they get a future starter when they are on the clock later today. Some names they have been tied to include pitcher Cam Caminiti, first baseman Nick Kurtz, and pitcher Trey Yesavage. While mock drafts are educated guesses, teams often do deviate from what many believe the plan to be.