Brewers Sign First-Round Pick Brice Turang

July 6: Turang’s bonus with the Brewers is $3,411,100, reports Callis (via Twitter). That comes in nearly $400K over the slot value.

July 5: With less than 24 hours until the signing deadline, the Brewers have inked first-round pick Brice Turang, as Turang himself announced tonight (Twitter link). Bonus terms aren’t known, though Turang’s No. 21 slot came with a $3,013,600 slot value.

The 18-year-old Turang, a high school shortstop out of California, had been committed to Louisiana State but will instead forgo college to embark on his professional career. There’d been some debate as to whether he’d sign at all, with GM David Stearns telling reporters earlier tonight that there was still “nothing to report” on Turang (Twitter link via Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

Heading into the draft, Turang was ranked as the draft’s No. 14 prospect by the team at Baseball America. Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen rated him 18th at Fangraphs, while ESPN’s Keith Law ranked him 24th. Turang was ranked 25th by Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com,

Scouting reports on Turang generally indicate that he wowed scouts throughout the country earlier in his high school career but didn’t impress as much last summer or in his junior season. Law calls him a potential 70 defender at shortstop with some power but questions his hit tool, while Callis and Mayo give him an above-average hit tool but below-average power. Given the discrepancy between Turang’s early work in high school and his more recent showings, opinions on him vary, but there’s no clear area where scouting reports universally indicate that he’s below average. The variance with prep players is always high anyhow, and the general feeling that Turang can stick at shortstop with plus speed creates plenty of cause for optimism even if his bat is less certain.