There R Giants Player of the Year: Vaun Brown

Seasons can surprise you in the most delightful ways

Photo Credit: Shelly Valenzuela | San Jose Giants

“I don't think it ever fits together as clean as a puzzle does.” Michael Holmes, the Giants’ Director of Amateur Scouting, was talking by phone this summer about the complications and different theories of running a draft while dealing with the bonus pools that has been a feature of the last several CBAs. Each pick in the draft has a recommended slot value, and the sum total of these values becomes a team’s bonus pool — a finite amount of money that cannot be exceeded by more than 5% without incurring Draconian penalties (penalties that no team has ever been willing to take on).

As Holmes says, while some teams have shown that playing it straight — giving each player that they select roughly what his slot value was — others have shown that getting creative and moving the money around with an underslot pick here, an overslot there, can bring teams an influx of high end talent. That’s a strategy that was pioneered by the Houston Astros and has lately been a key part of the Baltimore Orioles’ rebuild (helmed by former Astros’ front office members).

Under Holmes and Farhan Zaidi, the Giants have tended to take underslot players in the top round and use that “savings” signing players with negotiating leverage — typically high school players — later on in the draft. That is the philosophy that has brought high end prospects like Kyle Harrison and Grant McCray into the fold in a series of excellent 3rd round picks. “What we don’t want to do is sacrifice talent to do that,” Holmes says. “And that’s our main priority. It’s really just identifying guys we like, guys we want to put into our system.”