As a Houstonian and Astros fan, I can almost assure you they will not. Cheap bastids! :cuss: Oh well, it's good news for LSU fans, I'd say...and that's all that matters to me!:helmet:
Doesn't matter. Just because a team doesn't have a first round pick, doesn't mean that their first player selected will get first-round money. It would be like Ricky Williams having told the Saints, "Ok, since I was your ONLY draft pick this year, I want ALL the money that you were willing to spend on draft picks". Why would the Astros simply just give up millions of dollars on a player that was selected 411th over-all?!?!?!?! That's just insane. The idea of professional drafts is to ultimately get the player you want and do it in a way that it costs you the least amount of money. If Houston was so dead-set on Jones as "their guy", and were in a position where they would be willing to shell out 1st-3rd round money, then they would have selected him as soon as they could have....not wait until the 13th round.... You give Jones top-round money, and the 'Stros will find themselves in a WORLD of trouble with every single one of the players they selected before Jones. They would ALL want the same deal. I'm betting that Houston is simply in a position where they want to really gauge Jones' baseball interests--and hopes he accepts 13th round money simply because baseball is considered his "first love". ...a lot of the MLB draft is so non-risk to organizations simply because there are so many rounds, and it's so common to see even college players get drafted, but decline and return to college till the next time. Now....I'm not saying the Astros can't offer him top round money....it's their money, they do what they want with it, but I'd be surprised because there aren't too many teams out there that would do that.
You obviously aren't very familiar with the MLB draft. Teams generally draft players that have "signability issues" later in the draft and will offer them more money than "slot" money." An example of this with the Astros is when they drafted Jimmy Barthmaier in the 13th round of 2003 and signed him for 750K. Barthmaier was also a two sport athlete. Also, if the Astros gave him more than slot money, the people picked before him wouldn't expect to be paid more than slot money, like I said, that's not how the MLB draft works. Barthmaier wasn't the only instance where the Astros gave more than slot money to someone either. I can think of Troy Patton and Cliff Davis(another two sport athlete) off the top of my head. How much will the Astros offer Jones, I have no idea, but they obviously thought they had a good shot of signing him if they drafted him.
