Padres MLB Draft: What’s Left to Sign Cole Wilcox?

The San Diego Padres have worked quickly to sign their selections from the 2020 MLB Draft, but they have one big one left to get done.

Many were surprised by how aggressive the San Diego Padres were in taking high school players in the 2020 MLB Draft.

It was thought that teams would be more likely to go the safe route and take college players in this unusual draft as most high school players would probably elect to go to college and hope for bigger money in a few years when things are hopefully back to normal.

And for the most part, teams did that, but not the Padres.

They took high school players with their first three picks and with four of their six picks.

When that happened I’ll admit I thought there was no way they’d get all of them signed. It was going to take a good amount of money to convince these high school to turn down college and a better draft in a few years.

They took care of the easy one first by signing fourth-round pick Levi Thomas for $80,000, which was well under the $533,000 slot value for that pick.

Next up was their fifth-round pick Jagger Haynes who I thought they had no shot at signing when they picked him. But instead they were able to convince him to sign him for nearly $100,000 under slot at $300,000.

And then they took care of the big one by inking their first-round pick, Robert Hassell, for $4.3 million, which was under the slot value for that pick at $5,176,900.

Earlier this week it was reported they also signed Justin Lange for $2 million and signed Owen Caissie for $1,200,004, which were both under slot value.