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Draft Trivia: what’s our best ever Senior Sign draftee?

July 25, 2025 by Nationals Arm Race

With so many “senior signs” this year (five), I thought it’d be interesting to see our history with these guys and how they’ve turned out.

For definition purposes, a “Senior Sign” is a College Senior or a college player with no remaining eligibility who is drafted usually in the 8th, 9th, or 10th round entirely to save bonus dollars on their pick to allocate that money elsewhere in the draft. Usually these players sign for $10k these days, though in the early days we often gave them $25-$30k. The deck is already stacked against these guys: the team has almost zero bonus dollars invested in them, they’re already “old” the moment they arrive in Florida, and they have to be doubly as good as a guy with even a slot bonus in order to stick around.

Not only that, but (as a senior sign himself once told me), these guys generally have finished four years of college, may even have a degree, and find themselves at 22 or even 23 heading to a spring training facility full of 18-19 yr olds coming over from the DSL who barely speak English, are just as good but 4 years younger, and who are killing themselves for a few hundred dollars a week. These guys may say to themselves, “man, these guys are just as good as me but 4 years younger and with a ton more bonus dollars” and just hang ’em up.

The concept of these senior draftee draft picks in the back half of the top 10 rounds really only begun existing and being important starting with the draft slotting/bonus cap timeframe, which was implemented starting with the 2012 draft. So, we’ll go through these Senior signs starting with the 2012 class.

2012:

  • Craig Manuel, C. 10th round $25k from Rice. Played for 4 years, made it to AA as a mostly backup catcher. had some local ties (born in Rockville MD). Decent career.
  • Derek Self, RHP Reliever 9th round $25k from Louisville. Played out his entire 6-year ML contract with us, made it to AAA as a solid middle reliever. That’s a great outcome.

2013:

  • David Napoli, RHP reliever 8th round $15k from Tulane. Couldn’t make the jump to High-A released after three seasons.
  • Jake Joyce, RHP reliever 9th round $15k from Va Tech. Got one season in Short-A bullpen, released. This is basically the floor for a senior sign; one season in the pros, then cut.
  • Brennan Middleton, SS 10th round $15k sign from Tulane. Two years in Low-A, released.

2014:

  • Matthew Page, OF 10th round $30k from Oklahoma Baptist: Hung around for four years, got to High-A before released.

2015:

  • David Kerian, 1B 9th round $25k from Illinois: released from Short-A after two seasons in Auburn.
  • Taylor Guilbeau, LHP 10th round $25k from Alabama: turned into a decently effective LHP reliever for years, flipped to Seattle to help acquire Hunter Strickland in 2019. Got called up to Seattle’s MLB team, then got hurt. Waived, claimed by AZ, outrighted in 2021, then released. Shoulder injuries are brutal sometimes. First of our Sr. Signs to make the majors, though not with us.

2016:

  • Joey Harris, C 9th rounder $10k from Gonzaga: played a year in rookie ball, got hurt and missed all of 2017, then released at the end of 2018 from low-A.
  • Paul Panaccionne, SS 10th rounder $10k from Grand Canyon. played parts of 3 seasons and retired.

2017:

  • Jared Brasher, RHP 8th rounder $10k from Samford: a weird one: he was in his 3rd season in Low-A and was pitching decently mid 2019 season when he was suddenly released. He had a sub 3.00 ERA but a lot of walks just prior to being released. I wonder if this was off-the-field related.

2018:

  • Cropley, Tyler, C 8th rounder 10k from Iowa; we released him in 2020, but he got picked up by Kansas City and made it to AAA with them, even getting an NRI to MLB camp in 2024. Released ST 2024. Not a bad career.
  • Driskill, Tanner, RHP 9th 10k from Lamar; missed two full years to injury and Covid, then got shelled in 2021 and was released.
  • Shaddy, Carson, 2b 10th rounder 10k from Arkansas-Fayetteville. had one short-A season then retired the next spring.

2019:

  • Pratt, Andrew, C, 10th round $10k from Lubbock Christian: missed Covid year, played in 2021 at HighA, and was probably released at the end of the 2021 season. MILB.com never recorded his official release and has him officially still active.

2020:

  • Lindsly, Brady, 5th round $10k Ca signing from Oklahoma: Ironic that we signed Cavalli’s college catcher to an underslot deal so we could pay him overslot the same year. But, Lindsly is active to this day, performing classic org-guy backup catcher duties with two NRIs the last two seasons to help with Spring Training catcher duty. He’s 27 now, but still has one more year before hitting 6years in the org.

2021:

  • None: we didn’t have a single throw-away signing this year, likely because of the Covid year. We did sign a slew of college “seniors,” but they all likely had another year of eligibility due to the lost season.

2022:

  • Stehly, Murphy, 10th round 3B from Texas $10k: As we speak, the starting 3B in AA Harrisburg (thought he just hit the DL) and is slashing .328/.417/.500 there this year. Impressive. Might be one of our best Sr. Signs yet.

2023:

Our first real major foray into draft dollar manipulation, as we needed to find an extra $1.5M or so to sign Sykora. So we punted on 5 picks and got him. Looking like a great decision so far, at least as far as Sykora’s development goes.

  • Dugas, Gavin, 6th round 2B from LSU $20k; destroyed low-A pitching in 2024, hasn’t been able to keep it going in High-A but still active.
  • Snell, Ryan, 7th round C from Lamar $20k; barely played in rookie league in 2023, then retired mid 2024 before taking the field.
  • Simpson, Jared*, 8th round LHP from Iowa $20k: missed almost all of 2024 with injury, but has been a decent middle reliever for High-A this season. Needs to cut down on walks.
  • Schultz, Thomas, 9th round RHP from Vanderbilt $20k; has earned two promotions in 2025 and is now in AA bullpen.
  • Glasser, Phillip*, 10th round SS/2B from Indiana $20k. Promoted twice in 2024, now hitting .300 starting in AA as a “play anywhere” kind of guy (SS, 2B, LF, etc).

2024:

The Nats took these draft bonuses to a new low, paying two guys just $2k. I mean, did that even cover their flight to Florida?

  • Ross, Jackson, 3B 9th rounder from Ole Miss $2k: Bashed his way out of Low-A in a month, struggling in High-A as we speak.
  • Johnson, Luke, RHP 10th rounder from UMBC: $2k. Weird usage for Johnson so far; he’s 23 and is basically unhittable in the FCL, was promoted for a spot start (4ip, 2h, 0r) and then was sent back down. He’s just been called back to Low-A to presumably take a spot in the rotation, so we’ll see what he’s got.

2025:

Taking a page out of 2023, we have five senior signs to shake out enough cash to sign three prep kids to overslot deals. Technically Boston Smith getting $50k likely disqualifies him based on my own criteria, but it was still a huge haircut off his $386k slot.

  • Boston Smith, C/OF from Wright State $50k; some scouts liked him, and the $50k versus the $5-$10k figure may have factored in here; we probably were competing with other teams looking at him as a senior sign and threw some extra dollars here.
  • Julian Tonghini, RHP from Arizona $10k
  • Riley Maddox, RHP from Ole Miss $10k
  • Wyatt Henseler, 2B/3b from TAMU $10k
  • Hunter Hines, 1B from Miss State $5k

So, who has been the best? Probably Guilbeau, the only guy on this list to make the Majors.

The best career might be Derek Self, playing out his entire ML contract. Cropley made it to AAA for another team. Lindsley has been in AAA for a couple years now. Perhaps Stehly has the best shot right now. Clearly the deck is stacked against them.

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