The 2015 MLB Draft was last week. You can find all of VEB’s coverage of the St. Louis Cardinals‘ draft, which continues today and in the weeks ahead, here. On Monday, the Cardinals announced their first wave of draft pick signings. Some of the names will not be all that surprising. Between the close of the draft and Monday, we learned the following

• The Cardinals and first-round pick Nick Plummer agreed to terms pending a physical.
• The Cardinals signed fourth-round pick Paul DeJong.
• Tenth-round pick Kep Brown will not sign with the Cardinals and turn pro. Instead, Brown will honor his commitment to play NCAA baseball at the University of Miami. The failure to sign Brown will cost the Cardinals the $149,700 slot value assigned to the 281st pick, which they used on Brown.

I thought I’d put together a chart to aid us in keeping track of which draftees the Cardinals have signed, which picks have declared that they will not sign, and how the signings relate to the MLB-assigned slot value of a given pick.

Remember that the MLB assigns slot values to each of the picks in the Draft’s first ten rounds. The slot values for each club’s picks are then added together to get an overall bonus pool amount. Teams may sign players above or below the assigned slot value, but may not go over the overall bonus pool amount. After the tenth round, there’s a $100,000 value for each pick. If a team goes over $100,000 to sign a player taken in the 11th round or later, the amount in excess of $100,000 counts against the organization’s bonus pool.

If a club goes over its overall bonus pool amount with its draftee signings, it is subject to the following penalties, which are triggered based on the amount of overspending:

As discussed above with respect to the Cardinals’ 2015 tenth-rounder Brown, who has decided not to sign with St. Louis, if a team fails to sign a pick from the first ten rounds of the Draft, it loses the slot value assigned to that pick from its overall bonus pool. So the Cardinals’ failure to sign Brown reduced their bonus pool by $149,700 or about 2%. However, if a team fails to sign a player it selects in the 11th round or later, there is no penalty.

The following chart contains the Cardinals’ picks from the 2015 MLB Draft and reported bonuses. It appears that bonuses are only being released for those players taken in the first ten rounds. Perhaps if the Cards sign a player to a bonus in excess of $100,000, that will be released since it would impact the club’s draft pool. Based on the information we have, it does not appear that St. Louis has yet made such a $100,000+ signing to a player selected in the 11th round or later.

2015 St. Louis Cardinals MLB Draft Signee Tracker