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Six Gators and 10 Florida signees from Kevin O'Sullivan's 2014 recruiting class were selected in the 2014 MLB First-Year Draft over the weekend.
There's plenty of good news in that news for Florida: The departures from the 2014 roster that have already happened were more or less expected, and the Gators might lose just one player from another stacked recruiting class.
Here's the table for Florida's six current players that were drafted.
Player | Position | Round, Pick | Team | Slot Value1 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Taylor Gushue | C | 4th, 131st | Pittsburgh Pirates | $388,800 |
Justin Shafer | RHP | 8th, 234th | Toronto Blue Jays | $159,900 |
Karsten Whitson | RHP | 11th, No. 344 | Boston Red Sox | N/A |
Casey Turgeon | 2B | 24th, No. 735 | St. Louis Cardinals | N/A |
Ryan Harris | RHP | 26th, No. 794 | Boston Red Sox | N/A |
Keenan Kish | RHP | 34th, No. 1,025 | Cincinnati Reds | N/A |
Of those players, four are definitely gone. Gushue is a lock to sign and depart Florida, Shafer has already signed, and Whitson, another lock to leave, has indicated that he will, and Kish, a redshirt junior whose Florida career ended before the 2014 season began, thanks to an injury requiring Tommy John surgery, previously indicated that he would give the pros a shot.
Turgeon and Harris, on the other hand, have decisions to make. Neither one would get a bonus of more than about $50,000 at most to sign a professional contract, and both could improve their stock over a 2015 campaign. Pressed to guess, I would lean toward both staying.
And here's the table for Florida signees from the Gators' 2014 recruiting class.
Player | Position | Round, Pick | Team | Slot Value |
---|---|---|---|---|
Grant Holmes | RHP | 1st, No. 22 | Los Angeles Dodgers | $1,980,500 |
Alex Abbott | OF | 6th, No. 179 | Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim | $244,700 |
Weston Davis | RHP | 11th, No. 334 | Washington Nationals | N/A |
JJ Schwarz | C | 17th, No. 506 | Milwaukee Brewers | N/A |
Michael Rivera | C | 33rd, No. 1,002 | Oakland Athletics | N/A |
Logan Browning | LHP | 36th, No. 1,085 | Cincinnati Reds | N/A |
Dalton Guthrie | SS | 40th, No. 1,190 | Minnesota Twins | N/A |
Taylor Lewis | RHP | 40th, No. 1,193 | Colorado Rockies | N/A |
Taylor Lane | SS | 40th, No. 1,196 | Milwaukee Brewers | N/A |
Alex Faedo | RHP | 40th, No. 1,210 | Detroit Tigers | N/A |
Holmes, obviously, would be foolish to pass up nearly two million dollars, and is certainly expected to join the Dodgers. Abbott might find almost a quarter of a million dollars difficult to eschew.
But the rest of Florida's signees went lower than expected, with the possible exception of Davis, and they should eventually report to campus.
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Slot value is the MLB-suggested value of the contract for each player taken in the first 10 rounds of the MLB Draft. Teams can exceed or undercut slot value when signing players, though the former is more common, and the combined slot values of all of a team's picks in the first 10 rounds is that team's bonus pool, or the sum that it cannot exceed when signing all of those picks without incurring penalties.
Positions after the 10th round do not have slot values; instead, teams sign those players at their own discretion.