SPORTS LINE
The 2024 MLB Draft has arrived.
The Milwaukee Brewers will make 22 selections in the 20-round Draft over three days. Players drafted in rounds 11-20 will have any amount of their signing bonus over $150k count towards Milwaukee’s bonus pool. The Brewers can pay a maximum of 5% over their bonus pool to sign their picks. They’ll simply have to pay a tax on any overage. Anything over 5% comes with a loss of future draft picks. No team has ever done that. Last year, the Brewers came within $29 of that 5% mark, essentially maximizing their available money. The Brewers have a signing pool bonus of $12,984,400.
Players drafted in rounds 11-20 will have any amount of their signing bonus over $150k count towards Milwaukee’s bonus pool. The Brewers can pay a maximum of 5% over their bonus pool to sign their picks. They’ll simply have to pay a tax on any overage. Anything over 5% comes with a loss of future draft picks.
In some ways, the Milwaukee Brewers pulled off a surprise with their first pick in the Major League Baseball draft. With the 17th pick, the Brewers selected Braylon Payne, a high school outfielder out of Missouri City, Texas. Payne, one of the younger players in the draft who features top-end speed and solid contact abilities but was not pegged by national draft outlets to be a first-rounder. Payne becomes the first high schooler taken in the first round by the Brewers since Brice Turang went 11th in 2018. The draft bonus pool system works in the draft, it could help set the Brewers up to select players they can sign to over-slot deals later in the draft.
Two of those potential over-slot picks came at the end of Day 1, with Milwaukee taking New Jersey prep pitchers Bryce Meccage and Chris Levonas. Using the pick they received from the Baltimore Orioles in the Corbin Burnes trade, the Brewers went with the University of Tennessee first baseman Blake Burke at No. 34. The Brewers have found success in plucking cold-weather, potentially under-scouted arms off the board ahead of the rest of the league in recent seasons. They went back to the well again this year.
In the span of 11 picks toward the end of Day 1, the Brewers selected a pair of right-handed high school pitchers from New Jersey. Meccage, taken out of The Pennington School in New Jersey with the 57th pick, is a large-framed right-hander at 6-4 and 210 but still has some room to add strength. Not long after Meccage was taken, Milwaukee went back to New Jersey and nabbed Chris Levonas, a 6-2 right-hander who struck out 68 over 31⅔ innings with a 0.44 ERA out of Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft. The Brewers’ Major League roster is overflowing with talented young outfielders, such as Frelick, Jackson Chourio, and Garrett Michell, not to mention All-Star veteran Christian Yelich.
But like any team in baseball, Milwaukee’s focus is on making the best selection with each of its picks.
