The reality is that even the most advanced pitching prospects in the past few seasons have made at least some minor-league starts before making their big-league debuts. After being drafted by the Giants in 2006, Tim Lincecum made 14 minor-league appearances in 2006 and 2007 before getting an early call to San Francisco. The Orioles drafted Brian Matusz fourth overall last year and he made his debut in the AFL, then made 19 minor-league starts before the O's brought him up a few weeks ago.
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.
Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.
Eugenio Velez (pronounce the first name: ay-ooh-HEY-nee-o) is a relative unknown major league baseball player. He's currently gaining playing time for the San Francisco Giants without having an actual starting job. He fights for playing time at second base (against Freddy Sanchez), left field (against Nate Schierholtz and Fred Lewis) and right field (against Randy Winn). Lately, though, Velez has been playing pretty much everyday, and swinging a hot bat. The question is, can it continue?
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.
The rumored $15-20 million offer to Stephen Strasburg, of course, isn't anywhere near the largest monetary value thrown around in today's game, but it's a whopper of a salary for a guy who hasn't thrown a single major-league pitch in his life. Perspective is always helpful when discussing huge amounts of money, and the penny serves as a handy visual aid. $20 million, for example, is two billion pennies. That many pennies would weigh over eleven million pounds. That's a lot of pounds! See how easy this is?
Admission to today's Dugout, after the jump, is fifty cents. Just shove it in your CD-ROM drive; it'll get to us.
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.
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."
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.
Every Monday, the MLB Weekly Rewind is here to take a look at the past week in baseball in video form. It's biased, rambling, and mostly cynical, but ... Hey! Moving pictures! Sweet!
Anyone hoping to see Stephen Strasburg in a big-league uniform in 2009 got some disappointing news Tuesday. MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo confirmed that Strasburg's first professional appearances will be with the Phoenix Dirt Dogs in the Arizona Fall League. This shouldn't be surprising news (Andrew Johnson reported that possibility here on FanHouse last Friday), but I think a large group of more casual fans expected to see Strasburg in red and blue almost immediately. That will clearly not be the case. 
Every Sunday, 
Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the 
Ever since word started to circulate about how special 
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 
The truth can't be avoided any longer. It would be like denying 
