MLB Mlb Draft

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

As the No. 1 overall pick in 1990, Chipper Jones signed with the Braves for $275,000.

Even in today's dollars, that's about $450,000 -- or about 3 percent of Stephen Strasburg was guaranteed as this year's No. 1 pick.

And Jones agreed to his deal the night before the draft, while Strasburg came within two minutes of missing last Monday's deadline to sign.

"I think the only way that you're going to get kids signed and get them into the various camps is to put some kind of cap on it," Jones said. "I was always of the belief that you make your money at the big-league level."

That's how the teams want it too. When the current collective bargaining agreement is up in two years, Major League Baseball may pursue an NBA-style slotting system -- with signing bonuses locked in depending on how high a player is picked, as opposed to the current non-binding slot recommendations.

SEATTLE -- Given that the Mariners have struggled mightily offensively, the signing of No. 2 pick Dustin Ackley serves as a serious momentum boost for an organization looking to escape a series of shaky moves under the Bill Bavasi tenure.

For example, Bavasi traded Adam Jones and George Sherill for Erik Bedard, and he selected Cal's Brandon Morrow over the University of Washington's Tim Lincecum in the 2006 draft. Morrow is in the minors while Lincecum is one of the top starting pitchers in the major leagues.

So the Mariners needed this. They needed to sign the best hitter in college baseball. Ackley hit .422 with 22 home runs and 73 RBI in 66 games for the University of North Carolina. Signing him went down to the final minutes, with general manager Jack Zduriencik revealing that the deal was agreed upon at 8:45 PM PT, about 15 minutes before the deadline.

Stephen Strasburg got the record contract that his agent expected, and the Nationals got the pitcher considered to be the finest amateur in the history of the draft.

Strasburg, the No. 1 pick in the June draft, signed a $15.1 million, four-year deal. The previous record was $10.5 million, which the Cubs gave Mark Prior in 2001.

The Nationals reportedly had put a $12.5 million offer on the table more than a week ago, and the offer apparently was increased with some last-minute dealing. The deal was not announced until just after the midnight ET deadline.

---

---

We're roughly 35 hours short of the MLB deadline for teams to sign their draft picks, and in spite of what's reported as a record-breaking contract offer to Washington Nationals first pick Stephen Strasburg, the two sides have yet to come to an agreement. It could just be another instance of Scott Boras wanting to wait until the last minute in hopes of forcing his opponent to crack, or Strasburg may just be dead set on not wanting to pitch for the Nationals.

We won't really know until late Monday, early Tuesday, but after reading some comments from Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman on the subject, I'm wondering if the Nats might be better off having him handle the negotiations. The man speaks the truth.

With just a little less than 48 hours until Monday's midnight deadline to sign picks from June's draft, Washington Nationals' president Stan Kasten told the AP he has "no idea" if top pick Stephen Strasburg will sign with the team. This is despite the Washington Post's report that the Nats have already offered Strasburg a larger signing bonus than any draft pick in history, a report that Kasten more or less confirmed to the AP.

In each of the two seasons that the early deadline has been in place, most of Scott Boras' clients (including Matt Wieters, Pedro Alvarez and Eric Hosmer, all top-six picks in either 2007 or 2008) have gone right up to the midnight deadline before signing. Even if Strasburg has already decided that he wants to accept whatever it is that the Nationals have offered him (likely in the neighborhood of 15-$20 million), the world won't know until Monday.

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

Yes, the Dodgers' solar system revolves around Manny Ramirez. He's their star on the field and their main attraction.

But they wouldn't have Ramirez, nor many of the players who carried the team in his absence, were it not for a farm system that has been remarkably productive.

"It's nice that management kept us all here," ace Chad Billingsley told FanHouse. "There's some teams that maybe just start trading guys away. And believing in us, that's a huge thing."

In the 2002-03 drafts, Los Angeles took Russell Martin, James Loney, Jonathan Broxton, Matt Kemp and Billingsley. Those five players made their big league debuts within an 11-month span, from July 2005 to June 2006.

Ever since word started to circulate about how special Stephen Strasburg seemed to be, everyone wondered just how agent Scott Boras was going to bend the system to get the most for his client. Boras himself said that Strasburg is unique the day after the draft, but further proof came along Tuesday. Ben McDonald, the former No. 1 pick and phenom, told the Washington Post that he's talked to Boras -- his former agent -- about Strasburg.

"He just told me that he's got a special kid, reminds him of myself a little bit, and they're going to do something 'unusual.' But that's all he told me. I don't know what he's got cooked up."

Best 1-2 punch in baseball? Maybe Josh Beckett and Jon Lester.

Best young 1-2 combo? Probably Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain.

Best young 1-2 starters you may not have heard of? Josh Johnson and Chris Volstad.

Fire up the Bryce Harper hype machine. The 16-year-old baseball prodigy who was recently hailed as the "Chosen One" on the cover of Sports Illustrated is poised to accelerate his path to the big leagues.

Harper, who is a rising high school junior, plans to earn a GED later this year and will enroll at the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college in Las Vegas, this fall and play baseball for the Coyotes next spring, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The move – virtually unprecedented – will allow Harper to be eligible for the draft a year early, in 2010 instead of 2011.

NEW YORK – Thanks in part to the influence of a 300-game winner, and the brother of a 300-game winner, the Rangers no longer have to try to out-slug people.

In the most remarkable turnaround of the season, Texas' pitching staff is actually pretty good, with a 4.46 ERA after shutouts Thursday and Friday and allowing three runs Saturday. If the Rangers can keep it there all year, it would mark the first time since 1993 the franchise had an ERA better than 4.50.

Not coincidentally, Texas leads the AL West at 35-26, the second-best record in the league.

"This is my third year here," right-hander Brandon McCarthy said, "but in two years I got sick to death of hearing, 'Texas pitchers stink. Texas pitchers stink.'

"Now we can turn those tables a little bit, be the group that maybe changes that whole mindset. It would be an awesome accomplishment."