Twins May Skip a Prior Commitment

The Minnesota Twins may be the most surprising of several surprising teams through the first third of the season, but will they surprise the baseball and financial worlds by making acclaimed USC pitcher Mark Prior the top selection in Tuesday’s annual draft of amateur players?

It is expected to take a draft-record package of $12 million to $15 million to sign Prior--”The team that selects him should be prepared to do something special,” advisor John Boggs said from his San Diego office--and that may be too rich for the Twins, who have baseball’s fifth-lowest payroll and the right to the No. 1 pick by virtue of the worst major league record last year.

Will they dump their small-market budget to take the expensive but potentially rewarding step of selecting a pitcher most scouts think is capable of joining Brad Radke, Eric Milton and Joe Mays in the Twin rotation by the end of the season, when Adam Johnson, their No. 1 selection out of Cal State Fullerton last year, may be knocking on the door as well?

Can they afford to pass on the chance to round out a dominant rotation, or will finances rule and they take the less expensive Joe Mauer, a high school catcher from St. Paul, or right-handed pitcher Dewon Brazelton from Middle Tennessee State?

The word on the street has gone both ways, but the suspicion as the clock ticked into the weekend was that the Twins would choose fiscal sanity and pick Mauer.

As General Manager Terry Ryan said, “We have to be realistic. This was budgeted for a long time ago and there simply comes a time when enough is enough.”

Ryan, however, had also flown to Los Angeles to watch Prior pitch against Pepperdine in an NCAA regional game last weekend and was impressed.

“He’s got all the things you look for at the major league level,” Ryan said. “He’s got size, stamina and durability. He’s got a breaking ball, throws strikes and is a competitor.”

If the Twins chose Mauer, who has the option of a football scholarship to Florida State, the Chicago Cubs are almost certain to take Prior with the No. 2 pick. If Prior is gone, the Cubs probably will pick Georgia Tech third baseman Mark Teixeira.

This draft could be the last in the current format.

As part of their collective bargaining package that will be presented to the players’ union, owners are proposing several changes designed to control the bonus escalation.

Among them: a July 15 signing deadline to prevent long negotiations; restricting college eligibility to seniors, eliminating the possibility of juniors using a return to school as negotiating leverage; expanding the draft’s international boundaries beyond the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico in the hope smaller-revenue teams would have better shots at the top players.

“I wouldn’t call the draft a high priority, compared to other issues that will be on the [bargaining] table,” a leading baseball official said.

“On the other hand, the cost of signing unproven talent has become prohibitive, and the draft in many ways isn’t serving the initial purpose of helping level the playing field. Clubs that finished on or near the bottom in the previous year and have the top picks the next aren’t selecting the players that can help them quickest but the players they can most easily sign.”

According to Baseball America, the top five bonuses in the 1992 draft averaged $770,000, whereas the top five last year averaged $3.35 million.

Stanford outfielder Joe Borchard, the 12th player selected in the first round last year, set a signing bonus record when he received $5.3 million from the Chicago White Sox, but there have been bigger packages, such as the five-year, $8-million deal Pat Burrell received as the No. 1 selection of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1998, or the four-year, $7.7-million deal J.D. Drew got from the St. Louis Cardinals that same year.

Prior might double that. Will the Twins pay it?

The Cleveland Indians were able to put another eraser to Albert Belle on Wednesday night when Jim Thome slugged his 243rd homer, breaking Belle’s club record. Said Thome, “It means even more to me because I did it all with one team.”

Good thinking.