Minnesota took Lackey with the No. 3 overall pick and wasted no time getting him signed, sealed and in the organization. Jim Callis broke the number first: $9,497,500, just shy of the $9,740,100 slot value attached to the pick.
Jim Callis confirmed the bonus figure and where it ranks all-time.
That figure puts Lackey behind only this year's No. 1 pick, Roch Cholowsky, who set the all-time draft bonus record at $10.35 million when the White Sox signed him. Before this draft class blew the doors off the record book, the ceiling belonged to Paul Skenes at $9.2 million and the tied mark of $9.25 million shared by Chase Burns and Charlie Condon back in 2024. Lackey now slots ahead of all of them.
The bonus makes sense once you look at what Lackey did at Georgia Tech this spring. He hit.397 with 20 home runs, 78 RBIs and 85 runs in 61 games, numbers that got him the Johnny Bench Award as the best catcher in Division I. He's also the first catcher Minnesota has taken in the first round since a guy named Joe Mauer went No. 1 overall back in 2001 — which is either the best omen in franchise history or the most pressure a 21-year-old backstop has ever walked into.
Scouts love him for more than the bat, too. Reports pegged his arm and defensive tools as legit plus grades, and he's shown enough athleticism to line up all over the field when needed, not just squat behind the plate. For a Twins org that's leaned heavily on pitching development in recent drafts, landing a potential everyday catcher with this kind of offensive upside at No. 3 is the rare best-player-available slam dunk.
Locking up a top-3 pick this fast, and this close to slot, also matters for how Minnesota builds the rest of its draft class — bonus pool math means every dollar saved elsewhere can get spread around to under-slot senior signs or bigger swings later in the draft. Whether Lackey ends up justifying the record-adjacent price tag is a years-away question, but for one afternoon, the Twins just made the loudest financial statement in franchise draft history.