The Marlins have signed second-round pick Justin Twine for the bonus pool value of $1.316MM, Jon Heyman of CBS Sports tweets. Miami selected Twine, a Texas high school shortstop (and also an outstanding high school running back), with the No. 43 overall pick. He was committed to TCU.
Baseball America ranked Twine the No. 138 prospect in the draft, while MLB.com placed him at No. 161. They note he has excellent speed (which is no surprise, given his background), but scouts aren’t sold on his hitting ability, particularly his ability to hit secondary pitches. He also may eventually have to move to center field.
The Marlins also recently reportedly agreed to a $6MM bonus with first-round pick Tyler Kolek, saving $821K against their bonus pool. They also saved about $400K on Comp Round A pick Blake Anderson and about $137K on third-rounder Brian Anderson. As MLB.com’s Jim Callis pointed out earlier today (on Twitter), that meant the Marlins had saved about $1.36MM against their bonus pool. The Marlins gave back $250K of that amount as part of a $350K bonus for 11th-round pick Nick White, but that still left about $1.11MM in savings. Callis guessed that Twine might be the beneficiary of some of that money, but it appears that isn’t the case.
