From ‘not gonna happen’ to the steal of the draft, Marlins excited about Kahlil Watson
DJ Svihlik is still trying to comprehend how it happened.
It’s nearly midnight, almost three hours after the Miami Marlins made their first pick of the 2021 MLB Draft on Sunday and selected a player they never in their wildest dreams would have imagined falling to them.
“No way, not gonna happen,” said Svihlik, the Marlins’ director of amateur scouting and head man when it comes to the MLB draft. “I would have said you’re crazy.”
But the Marlins went on the clock with the No. 16 pick in the draft Sunday night and he was there.
So ... they picked him.
The selection: Kahlil Watson, a high school shortstop out of Wake Forest High in North Carolina and a consensus top-seven prospect this year.
“I was sweating,” Svihlik said. “It was nerve-racking but it was such a great feeling. After we decided to make the pick, I walked into the draft room with all the scouts, all the cross checkers, the front office. To walk up to the board and grab that magnet and too see the expression on everybody’s face was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Did we really get Watson?’ That’s such a great thing, and it reinforces how much the organization really liked the player.”
About two weeks earlier, Svihlik noted that there were maybe seven or eight players he thought had zero chance of falling to them in the second half of the first round. Watson was one of them.
“I spent the last week down here with my staff — and they probably got really tired of listening to me do it — but we constantly stress test our lists and our order, and constantly asked the question of the whole fair catch,” Svilhik said. “We did it again this morning [before the draft]. We went through the top of our board and we said, ‘Who are we going to fair catch?’ We know that a player is going to fall. Who’s it going to be? Is he too high? We evaluate all the way to the very end as more and more information comes in. [Watson] was not a player that we anticipated was going to fall.”
But he fell and his selection set the Marlins up to have what appears to be another successful draft haul under Svihlik’s watch. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel said the Marlins drafting Watson at No. 16 “was a case of highway robbery” while also noting “it’s borderline personnel malpractice for [Watson] to sail through the seven to 15 area without any team snapping him up.”
MLB.com ranked the Marlins’ collection of picks as the fourth-best among the 30 MLB teams.
“We’re very excited about the top of our board,” Marlins general manager Kim Ng said. “Actually, the entire three days, but particularly the top of the board.”
‘An electric type of player’
That starts with Watson, the dynamic high school shortstop that at one point was in discussion to be the No. 1 pick of the draft.
So what exactly are the Marlins getting in Watson?
“A winner,” Michael Joyner, Watson’s coach at Wake Forest High, told the Miami Herald a day after Watson was drafted.
The coach was asked to elaborate.
“When he comes to the field, he is definitely there to compete and to win,” Joyner continued. “An explosive player. He has all the offensive tools in the world. Really good power from the left side and hits well for average for us. And then when he gets on base, he stole 60 some bases for us. So he can really beat you on the bases as well, so when people chose not to pitch to him or whatever, they’d have to be really careful about where baserunners were because he can be at third in two pitches. And then defensively, just a kid that has gotten a ton better since he was 14 the first time we saw him.”
The numbers behind those comments: A .477 batting average across his high school career, 16 home runs, 61 stolen bases in 66 games. As a senior, he hit .513 in 15 games with six home runs, 14 RBI, 24 runs scored, 15 stolen bases, 18 walks and just one strikeout.
MLB Pipeline gave Watson above-average grades for all five tools (hitting for average, hitting for power, running, fielding and arm strength), with his speed and baserunning standing out slightly above the rest for the rising left-handed hitter.
“Watson plays bigger than his listed 5-9 and 178 pounds at the plate,” reads his scouting report. “He has plenty of bat speed and takes a big left-handed cut, giving him plus raw pop. Though he has an aggressive power-over-hit approach that may need toning down against more advanced pitchers, he does make consistent contact and doesn’t chase pitches out of the strike zone too often. Running better than ever as a senior, Watson consistently displays well-above-average speed and is a base-stealing threat.”
Joyner’s simplified scouting report: “Just an electric type of player.”
Joyner had that feeling about Watson ever since he saw him play as a middle-schooler before making his way to Wake Forest High. His baseball IQ far exceeded his peers.
It got to the point where opposing pitchers tried to stop pitching to Watson when he was batting in the leadoff spot, resorting to Joyner moving him down to the No. 2 spot to give him protection.
“Really what the Marlins are getting,” Joyner said, “is just an explosive player that can help them win in so many different ways.”
‘High-stakes poker’
Back in the war room on Sunday night, the Marlins are making their calculations as each passing pick comes in and Watson remains on the board.
Watson, meanwhile, is with about 40 family members, friends, teammates and coaches in North Carolina waiting for his name to be called.
An antsy situation for both sides.
Joyner said Watson was “in and out of the room” on Sunday as picks came and went until the Marlins finally ended his slide at No. 16.
“It seemed like whatever happened with the Marlins happened pretty quickly,” Joyner said.
Watson, 18, said in an interview on MLB Network that the Marlins came out with “a great deal” after he fell to them and that he is grateful for a chance to work with Marlins CEO and Hall of Fame shortstop Derek Jeter.
He walked back into the living room where the watch party was gathered as the pick was announced.
“You just don’t know where I was at,” Watson said. “They made the best fit for me. Right when I walked in, my agent called me and said ‘OK, I have this great deal for you.’ All this time, [other teams] were trying to de-value me. I just went with my head and my gut and took it through.”
For Svihlik and the Marlins, this draft took a lot more work and a lot more patience compared to Svihlik’s first two years running the draft show in South Florida.
In 2019, Miami had the No. 4 overall pick. In 2020, they were in the No. 3 spot. This year, following a playoff run in the shortened 2020 season, Miami picked 16th. They had to wait for half the league to make their first picks before going on the clock.
“Pretty high-stakes poker stuff at the last minute,” Svihlik said. “It’s a little different. When you’re picking at three, four or five, down in that area, where you know where all the best players are going to go, it’s pretty defined. This was the first year that we’ve picked down in this area in a few years — and we hope that we keep picking down this area or lower. It becomes much, much more difficult.”
So the Marlins watched the draft unfold. Most of the anticipated names went off the board over the first 15 picks, even if they didn’t necessarily go in the order most projected. A couple selections — the Baltimore Orioles taking outfielder Colton Cowser at No. 5 and the Kansas City Royals reaching to take prep pitcher Frank Mozzicato at No. 7 — opened the door, at least in part, to Watson’s drop to Miami. The Orioles and Royals were the main two teams projected to take Watson in mock drafts.
“Information changes instantaneously,” Svihlik said. “There’s four minutes on the clock and you’re trying to get information and there are other players that we thought might be available to us and then literally at the last second, that player became available.
“Gotta have a low heartbeat,” Svihlik added.
Will Kahlil Watson sign?
Drafting Watson, selecting what very well might be the steal of the draft, is just the first step.
Now comes the important part: Signing him to a contract.
The Marlins have a bonus pool of $9,949,800 to give to their 11 players selected in the first 10 rounds and to cover any potential bonuses for their final 10 picks should any of them exceed $125,000.
The slot value for the Marlins’ pick at No. 16 is about $3.75 million, but Watson very likely will need to be paid above that considering he was projected to be a top-seven selection. For context, the slot value of the Royals’ pick at No. 7 is just over $5.4 million.
The deadline to sign draft picks is Aug. 1.
“I don’t know that it’s going to be a standard negotiation,” Ng said. “It will be somewhat unpredictable, but hopefully we get it done at the end of the day.”
Can the Marlins afford that extra money? They can, only if they sign some of their other picks from the first two days to bonuses lower than their pick value.
The Marlins have leverage on that front with most of their picks.
Four of those 10 remaining picks — fourth-round pick Brady Allen, sixth-round pick Sam Praytor, eighth-round pick Pat Monteverde and ninth-round pick Jake Schrand — were college seniors, who tend to sign for below-value bonuses because they don’t have the ability to return to school and enter the draft again.
“Every player is unique, every situation is unique,” Svihlik said. “It’s not a one size fits all. You don’t watch a player fall and then all of a sudden call the adviser. A lot of times you’re asking yourself, ‘How much am I willing to spend and if I do that, what happens to my next pick?’ All of those things are being considered in the moment. A lot of times, you just let the player fall, and see what the market’s telling you.”
On Sunday, the market pointed to the Marlins drafting Kahlil Watson.
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