{"id":6705,"date":"2025-07-19T20:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T20:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/6705\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T20:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T20:19:08","slug":"nationals-agree-to-sign-first-overall-pick-eli-willits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/6705\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals Agree To Sign First Overall Pick Eli Willits"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nationals have agreed to sign Eli Willits, the first overall pick of the 2025 draft.\u00a0 The high school shortstop announced yesterday (in an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer) that he planned to officially ink his first pro contract today, and the Nats indeed have a press conference set to mark the event. \u00a0MLB Pipeline\u2019s Jim Callis<\/a> reports that Willits will receive an $8.2MM bonus, which is the highest bonus ever given to a high school draft pick.\u00a0 However, Willits\u2019 bonus is well beneath the $11,075,900 slot value assigned to the 1-1 selection.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s decision to select Willits raised a few eyebrows on draft night, and it would seem like his willingness to take a below-slot deal factored into the Nationals\u2019 plan.\u00a0 With just under $2.876MM saved in draft pool money, the Nats can now re-allocate some funds towards other members of their draft class.\u00a0 To wit, the New York Post\u2019s Jon Heyman<\/a> reports that the Nats went way over slot to sign fourth-rounder Miguel Sime Jr., who had committed to LSU.\u00a0 Sime will now instead start his pro career after getting $2MM from the Nationals \u2014 Sime\u2019s draft spot of 111th overall has an attached $687,800 slot price.<\/p>\n

Several teams have adopted this tactic in the draft pool era, opting to spread around to their available money to multiple highly-touted players rather than commit the bulk of the draft pool towards its top pick.\u00a0 Willits will still end up with just under half of Washington\u2019s $16,597,800 total pool, and the $8.2MM figure seems purposeful, as Willits can at least claim to getting the biggest draft payday of any high schooler.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that the Nationals necessarily reached by picking Willits, who still well-regarded even if he didn\u2019t top the boards of any of the most notable pundits.\u00a0 ESPN\u2019s Kiley McDaniel and Baseball America were highest on Willits as the third-ranked player in their pre-draft rankings, MLB Pipeline and Fangraphs each had Willits fifth, and The Athletic\u2019s Keith had Willits eighth.<\/p>\n

Willits is viewed a relatively safe, high-floor type of pick, as the evaluators agreed that Willits looks like a big leaguer, even if he could top out as a regular moreso than the type of star usually associated with the 1-1 selection.\u00a0 That said, there\u2019s still a lot to like about Willits\u2019 upside given his contact skills and mature approach at the plate, especially if he can add more power.\u00a0 Willits has plenty of other tools, including plus speed, and a plus throwing arm and good defensive range that should make him a solid shortstop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals have agreed to sign Eli Willits, the first overall pick of the 2025 draft.\u00a0 The high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,8546,591,85],"class_list":["post-6705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-eli-willits","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}