Giants sign Hunter Bishop and more

According to MLB’s Jim Callis, the Giants have signed 1st round pick Hunter Bishop today. In fact, it’s a busy day with the pen in the draft room, as Callis is reporting that they have reached an agreement with all four of the un-signed picks from their top 10 rounds.

Because of the complicated mathematics behind the hard slotting system that rules the major league draft, Texas Tech and Louisville’s prolonged run in the just completed College World Series created a logjam that held up the Bishop signing. But now that all the players were free to sign, the number crunchers have worked their magic and logjam turned into one of these —

The upshot of these four signings was a savings against slot value of approximately $850,000. Combined with the Giants previous overslot signings for 3rd rounder Grant McCray (+$8,200), 5th rounder Garrett Frechette (+$428,400), 6th rounder Dilon Rosario (+$328,200) and 7th rounder Armani Smith (+$77,300), and their underslot deals with 9th rounder Simon Whiteman and 10th rounder Jeff Houghtby, that brings their current surplus to about $227,000 in addition to the 4.9% amount over their pool they are allowed to go without major penalty. So roughly $662,000 extra dollars to spend on players from the 11th round onwards — money that should be put to use signing Trevor McDonald and Kanoa Pagan, as well as hopefully Richard Rodriguez, Reese Sharp, or Connor Beichler.

As a quick reminder, if a team fails to sign any of their picks from the top 10 rounds, they lose the entire slot value of that pick from their pool. From the 11th round on unsigned picks don’t effect the pool. All picks after the 10th round are valued at $125,00 and only the amount over that figure is applied to the team’s pool figure.

But for now, the one certainty is that Hunter Bishop will soon be stepping on a field to play for the SF Giants organization, probably in Salem-Keizer, following an ever so brief tune up in Scottsdale. And how good a thing is that?

With some luck on the trade market, the Giants could head into the winter with suddenly five top 100 prospects, give or take. It’s starting to feel like something building, something way far off is starting to get a little closer...