GLENDALE, Ariz. — When Bryce Bush, one of the very best high school senior players in the Detroit area, fell to the White Sox in the 33rd round of this year’s draft in June, it didn’t raise many eyebrows.

Bush had, after all, committed to attend Mississippi State when he was a high school sophomore, and spent most of the previous summer playing travel ball nearby in the southeast (where he became friends with White Sox seventh-round pick Cabera Weaver). If the start of the third day of the draft — rounds 11 through around 15 or so — is where teams take fliers on hard-to-sign high schoolers who will require overslot bonus offers to be swayed out of their college commitments, then the 33rd round is where teams take fliers on players they have almost no shot of landing. Tyler Flowers is the best 33rd-round pick kicking around big league ball by a mile, and it’s close to the territory where sons of front office staff members start getting picked.

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Where things get weird is that Bush never wanted to go to college.

“It was surprising,” Bush said of his slip through the draft. “I told every scout that I talked to, had in-home visits with that I wanted to go straight out of high school because of course it’s quicker, better instruction than college. I really don’t know the reason why but I guess it is how it is.”

Bush, like his buddy and current roommate Weaver, was always steadfast in his belief that working with instructors and nutritionists in professional ball and playing with wooden bats would help him get to the majors quicker than spending three years playing weekend series and worrying about SEC conference standings. He said he never cared about what round he was picked in, and while everyone thinks it’s cool to go in the first round, there’s no reason to think he’s lying.

Scouts don’t assess draft prospects so much in terms of round as much as the bonus value they would be willing to recommend to sign them, and players and their representation in turn approach things the same way. When the price ranges for players and teams don’t line up immediately — especially at the end of the second day of the draft — there can be a significant slide, but it also means the door is never shut if the right offer comes along. As a result, while Bush certainly thought it was likely he would have to start looking into apartments in Starkville, Mississippi when his name still hadn’t been called by the time the rounds got into the 30s, when the Sox came with an offer of $290,000, bonus money more typically seen in the sixth round, his reaction was pretty unambiguous.

“I mean honestly they told me what they would come up with and I was pretty much set with that,” Bush explained matter of factly.

But how did Bush specifically become a guy that slipped? White Sox scouting director Nick Hostetler is always cognizant of players from cold weather areas being underexposed during the months leading up to the draft, and noted that another cold and rainy spring in Michigan delayed the start to Bush’s season. That may have stalled his hype building up to an earlier June draft date than usual. But most expressly it seems like Bush was interested in a certain price point, and only certain teams had an area scout like Justin Wechsler pushing for him at that value, and were willing to double back at the end of the draft and push themselves further over their draft pool to get a deal done (The White Sox exceeded their pool allotment by almost $370,000 per FutureSox).

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“Especially now with the new — I say new, it has been in place now for seven years maybe — the system,” Hostetler said. “I think you see more of this happening later on in drafts. (In the AL wild-card game), turn on the game and there’s an 11th-round pick pitching to a 22nd-round pick, with (Luke) Voit and (Lou) Trivino. With now being able to spread out your money, a lot of these high school kids are realizing that some of them it’s to their benefit to get out and start their careers.”

Of course, this quirky little bit of budgeting and strange creation of the current draft system was not a story on draft day, save for fodder for a tweet solely consumed by draft nerds and other overly enthusiastic insiders. But it became a story when the 18-year-old Bush arrived at the White Sox complex, started playing with other recent draftees, many of whom were fresh off the three seasons of college ball that he bypassed, and hit.

Bush played 14 games in the AZL, at which time proceedings had reached the point of tangible absurdity. He hit .442/.538/.605 and in 52 plate appearances and struck out just four times. The strength is in his sturdy 6-foot, 200-pound frame is obvious on sight, and league scouts say the ability to produce hard contact is real. It’s just a question of whether he’ll add the loft in his swing to tap into his power.

“For his age he’s well-advanced,” Sox minor league hitting coordinator Mike Gellinger said. “He’s got really good hands. He’s got a good swing, which takes care of a lot of problems. He looks to be like he’s got a good awareness of the zone, so having those two things together it’s probably why he’s not going to strike out as much as you’d think.”

His torrid start hit a snag when he was promoted to Great Falls in the Pioneer League, the more advanced of the Rookie Ball levels, as he slumped to .250/.327/.387 in 24 games in what is typically an extremely electric offensive environment. But what he struggled with in terms of teams preparing and scouting for him in a professional way for the first time only laid bare how much he was getting by on raw ability.

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“It was different being in the AZL because they throw much harder but they’ve lost the command and everything,” Bush said. “I got moved up and they’ve got movement on every pitch. They could be throwing 85 mph and it’ll still be hard. That will probably be the hardest guy to hit. That’s what I learned. It doesn’t matter how hard you throw, you can get somebody out pretty easy. 

“When I got moved up, I don’t know if they had a scouting report, because they were shading me up the middle and my first game I hit three balls right into the shift and then they started me off outside corner with sliders. I didn’t really see any fastballs, honestly.”

But a nutty playoff run where Bush reached base 11 times in 18 trips to the plate, homered and smacked four extra-base hits in as many games as the Voyagers stampeded to a championship, cleared away most notions that he would struggle to adjust for a while. Whether it was the complexity of the game or light razzing for being the youngest guy in the clubhouse, Bush shrugged off trouble with a grin.

Of course, that we’ve yet to discuss anything about Bush’s defense is telling. He tried his hand at third base to start his career, and suffered the troubling designation of a fielding percentage under 90 percent. He’s played at the other infield corner in the past and also mixed in the outfield in the last two years and summed up his approach as “wherever we’re winning, that’s where I’ll play,” so he’s open to searching for a defensive home as his bat carries him through the system for now. 

It’s a problem that will challenge his profile going forward, and there are warts and flaws and reasons why he’s not a top-15 prospect in the organization yet, since he’s still four levels away from the majors and all that. But it’s hard to scrutinize right now, because he’s only 18, he’s already pretty good, and no one thought he’d be getting started so soon. From his vantage point, it’s going pretty well.

“Won a championship my first year, it was exciting,” Bush said. “Already what I experienced this year, made some of my best friends. I knew a couple people already but nothing can beat the friendships you make in baseball. They made it 10 times more fun than it was supposed to be.”

(Top photo: Zachary Lucy/Four Seam Images via AP)