Over the weekend it was reported by Baseball America's Jim Callis that the Astros and 1-1 pick Mark Appel have agreed on a deal for $6.35m.
I talked about this in today's Morning Drive podcast, which had to get canned due to some technical issues, but we also talked about it last night on the Crawfish Boxes' podcast. Appel signed for $1,440,400 less than the slot value for the 1-1 pick in this year's draft, meaning that he signed quicker and for a lot less money than I expected.
Should this number turn up accurate (and there's no reason to think that it won't), the Astros will be $1,437,900 under their bonus pool for the picks they've signed - and we still don't know what 5th Round pick Tony Kemp signed for. This leaves a lot of money to negotiate with Emanuel, Holberton, Nicely, and 11th Round pick Devonte German.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
