Reports: D-backs won’t sign 2018 first-round MLB Draft pick Matt McLain
Jul 6, 2018, 8:42 AM
Arizona Diamondbacks first-round pick Matt McLain. (Twitter photo/@mattmclain_)
(Twitter photo/@mattmclain_)
Arizona Diamondbacks first-round MLB Draft pick Matt McLain will not sign with the team and instead plans to attend UCLA, reports FanCred’s Jon Heyman and The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan.
Heyman added that the D-backs offered a $2.6 million salary to the 25th pick in the 2018 draft, but McLain informed the team he will enroll at UCLA.
With McLain foregoing his professional career or now, Arizona will receive compensation with a first-round pick next year in addition to their standard first-round pick.
McLain, 18, was drafted out of Beckman High School in Irvine, Calif., and was listed at 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds.
D-backs amateur scouting director Deric Ladnier said after the first day of the draft in June that the team saw the infielder as a shortstop.
McLain, who is a switch-hitter, was ranked as the 53rd best prospect by ESPN’s Keith Law and 54th best player in the draft by MLB Pipeline.
“We felt like it was a very advanced high school bat,” Ladnier said of McLain. “It’s a short, compact swing. He’ll end up having some power.”
The offer by Arizona was at the slotted value for the selection. MLB.com’s Jim Callis wrote that “McLain’s asking price was $3 million and the D-backs can go as high as $2,900,985 without surrendering a future first-round selection. They have yet to offer him full pick value …”
They indeed could do nearly $2.9 million without incurring an overage penalty that would cost them a first-rounder next year. But they'd pay an extra $300K in taxes on it. Plus, with compensation of an extra first-rounder in '19, little reason to stretch the wallet. https://t.co/uvTC2Mkyc3
— Zach Buchanan (@ZHBuchanan) July 6, 2018
McLain was one of four 2018 first-round picks who had yet to sign as of Friday morning with a 2 p.m. MST deadline to ink a deal with the teams that drafted them.
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