After last night's midnight deadline for signing draft picks, it appears that the Boston Red Sox became the first team in history to exceed the $10 million mark in total signing bonuses.Given the way the Red Sox have been run under Theo Epstein, that's not a huge surprise. What is surprising is their competition in the race to $10 million this year. It wasn't the Yankees or Dodgers or Mets or another similarly deep pocketed team. It was the Pittsburgh Pirates. One of the big stories after midnight last night was that the Pirates managed to sign their first round pick, Pedro Alvarez, to the biggest signing bonus in franchise history ($6 million). Picking the best talent available and signing him to a big deal hasn't exactly been the Pirates' MO over the past (see: Brian Bullington over B.J. Upton and Danny Moskos over Matt Wieters), but it's also not hard to do. Where the Pirates really made their impression was later in the draft.
In addition to signing Alvarez and their third-through-fifth round picks at about slot level, the Pirates broke out the checkbook for sixth rounder Robby Grossman and 20th rounder Quentin MIller. Some rated both of them as high as second or third round talents that dropped because of their commitments to Texas and UNC, respectively. The Pirates paid both of them in the neighborhood of $1 million to convince them to sign, way above their slot values.
All told, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is estimating that the Pirates broke the $9 million barrier and came close to paying out $10 million in signing bonuses in Neal Huntington's first draft as Pirates' GM. He inherited a team in quite a hole last September, but it certainly looks like he's making strides towards digging out of that hole.
