Rangers have deals with Leiter, Zavala, per reports

The Texas Rangers have agreed to terms with Jack Leiter and Aaron Zavala, their first round and second round picks in the 2021 MLB Draft, per multiple reports.

The Leiter signing is official and John Blake has said there will be a press conference this afternoon to announce that Leiter has signed. Reports indicate that there is an agreement in place for Zavala, but that isn’t quite official and done yet.

Leiter is getting between $7.9 million and $8 million for his signing bonus, according to Jeff Passan on Twitter. That would be more than the $7.789 million slot figure for the second pick in the draft. The Rangers’ signings to this point had them $22,300 below slot, with an additional $622,000 or so that they could spend before incurring draft pick penalties. Zavala and 8th rounder Larson Kindreich are the other two unsigned picks of the Rangers in the first ten rounds, whose slot values apply to the available bonus pool the Rangers can spend.

Unless Kindreich is a well above slot guy, the Rangers would seem to have money available to apply to try to sign players after the 11th round, or undrafted free agents, in excess of the $125,000 cap that such players have before you have to start dipping into bonus pool funds.

UPDATE — At the press conference this afternoon, it was announced that Leiter will not be pitching anymore this year. Given his workload for Vanderbilt after the 2020 COVID shortened season, that’s not surprising.