Mets Sign First Round Pick Reese Havens

No shock there; expect to see Jason Castro, Josh Fields, Dan Schlereth, Carlos Gutierrez, Lonnie Chisenhall, and perhaps Jemile Weeks to sign over the next few days as well. Davis may not take long either. Same s$*#, different year.

As I understand it, MLB has set guidelines for the size of contract you are allowed to offer a draft pick based on what position in the draft he was selected under. For example, under these guideliens (which are not strict rules but more like "friendly suggestions"), the Rays can offer more money to Tim Beckham since he was picked first than the Mets can for Reese Havens who was picked 22nd.

This becomes a big issue with the top High School players, and also lower classmen in college. If a player feels he can move up in the draft by playing another year of amature baseball, he will often forgoe signing at a young age. Sometimes, teams anticipate this, and won't draft a player with early-first round type talent until much later in the draft, knowing they won't want to pay what the player is demanding. This year, we saw this most clearly with Tim Melville, who fell all the way to the fourth round due and was picked up by KC because of his contract demands. As a fourth round pick, MLB guidelines suggest the Royals offer Melville nothing close to what he's been asking for since well before the draft took place. So the Royals can either pay up and go against MLB guidelines (the only consequences of which will be that they mildly irritate the commisioner's office) or they can give him the lowball offer dictated by the slotting guidelines, likely losing him completely and watching him go off to pitch in college.

As a result of this, many amature players get drafted multiple times. For example, Reese Havens was drafted in the late rounds by the Red Sox after he finished High School, but he neglected to sign, and after going to college was drafted again by the Mets in 2008, and this time opted to sign.