Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, there is no telling whether we’ll even get a Major League Baseball season this year. That uncertainty also affects important off-field events that include the amateur draft. The draft is still slated to take place from June 10-12, though nobody knows if it will actually occur this year.
As we noted last week, carrying on with the draft as scheduled would be the ideal scenario for the sport. Otherwise, the lives of many draft-eligible players could be thrown (even more) into chaos. How would a cancellation or postponement impact college juniors and seniors? How would it affect prospects who are about to graduate high school? Those players’ seasons – including those who would have participated in the College World Series – have already come to a halt because of this global catastrophe that has has put a stop to scouting.
Teams have less information on prospects than they normally would, but at least one executive is unfazed. That person told Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark of The Athletic (subscription link): “We’re not going to have an opportunity to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s. But we’ve got a lot of information. We’ve seen these guys play for a long time. We know who the top players are. Let’s just get ‘em in our system.”
A shorter draft (two to three rounds) could take place, as Rosenthal and Stark write, but such an event would require teams to readjust their draft pools and how they handle undrafted players. The players may not be gung-ho on the idea, anyway. One person on the union’s side told Rosenthal and Stark that it would be a “colossal error” to go in that direction.
How to proceed with the draft is one of numerous difficult situations for which the league is going to have to find an answer. We’d all like to see the draft happen on time. Otherwise, though, MLB will have to push the festivities back to later this year or perhaps even combine this draft with the 2021 version.
(Poll link for app users)
Hold it on time. Just make it be online via Skype with players or something
The issue is more about players losing a year of showing their talents. High school and college seasons have been cancelled. If you were a senior in college, coming off 2 no show freshman/sophomore year and had a decent junior year, you’d be looking forward to this year to boost your stock. It’s not gonna happen now. There is just a lot of uncertainty with everything, including the schools
JUCOs are right there waiting for you.
is its combined with the 2021 draft, any draft-eligible player should be allowed to declare free agency.
Any college player*
Only if they have a special pool for each team based on last year’s record. Otherwise, Yankees and Dodgers would just get all the top picks because they’re the wealthiest.
these teams are all worth billions of dollars, and even established players only average a few millions a year. if a team likes a guy enough they can have him at a resonable price – not some arbitrary “pick price” that’s been determined by the MLB.
Yoan Moncada cost the Sox $63 million to sign. $31.5 in salary and the same amount in penalty. Luis Robert cost the other Sox $52 million. Do you really think mlb will let a whole draft full of players get paid like that? No way mlb lets a whole draft load of prospects go with no limits on prices. No chance.
Nailed it DS ! That’s the only fair viable solution. Maybe make the money count towards salary cap too if possible.
No way they draft on schedule and spend 100s of millions on kids they didn’t see pay this year after the owners all just got hammered in the market.
Smarter move would be
Let the draft continue, decrease slot amounts by 15%, any player that doesn’t sign you recoup a pick next year at end of the round, 1st 10 rounds only, but must offer at least 60% of the slot value to get the pick
So many players could choose to go back and increase draft stock. Only makes sense to let teams recoup value the following year.
Push it back later in the year. Maybe have in the fall or winter.
I think it would be cool to put together some fall ball type league as a show case and push the draft back to the Winter Meetings.
I think they should just sim the season on Baseball Stars for NES.
The greatest game of ALL TIME!!!
Ken Griffey Jr on SNES baby!
Another solid entry but my heart will never waver from BS. it was just the true groundbreaker for stuff like creating players, trades, salaries, etc. as a 10 year old this blew my mind
Rbi baseball. That triple play was decent. I also liked the futuristic home rum derby option in one of the early PlayStation games. Hr derby in outer space and as minutes people in a living room. Lol
When is it? When it is.
What is a pandemic? A reality.
I liked Baseball Stars, but I absolutely loved Base Wars for NES. I spent most of a summer making teams with my baseball cards and playing out whole seasons and charting stats one game at a time. It was a lot harder to do without a computer.
Wow they did a draft on Sleeper and the Bust on sports videos and I couldn’t believe the most revolutionary game of all time wasn’t on there. I spent hours putting in teams on that thing. Loved it
If a team doesn’t have their draft figured out by now, they never will. Although the draft room cranks up a few weeks before the draft, those boards are pretty solid at this point.
I vote for fourth option, ask those it affects the most which is not us fans.
I’d push it back by about a month or so. Hopefully by June, COVID-19 dies down, and life can return to normal hopefully. What I would do is open that month up to visits and workouts, then do a draft around July 15th or so.
Hold it this year, whether on time or pushed back a bit. And truncate it a bit if needed. There will be a lot of college kids who will go back for one more year if granted that eligibility. There will be HS kids who might rather go to college now given they lost their senior year. 40 rounds probably not necessary.
If this season is lost, do the tigers get the number 1 pick for both drafts?
They would never let that happen.
I say have it on time. For top picks, they already have video. For others, it’s all projection anyway.
Close the window and there won’t be a draft. College seniors get drafted, all others keep playing next year.
that just creates a logjam that would be not much better than having no draft this year. most top picks are juniors or high school players.
The NCAA has given all players of spring sports an extra year of eligibility
What about high school players? High school seniors will just be stuck without HS sports and full rosters at college since everyone gets an extra year of eligibility. SOMEONE is going to get the shaft regardless of what happens.
Probably, but in most cases, it would be the end-of-the-bench guys or #5 starters who get bumped, the guys who had no real shot of playing pro ball anyway. It would suck for them if they lost their scholarships because of this, but the top prospects from high school would still find their way onto good college teams.
I’d rather have it early, in May. Give us something to talk about while games aren’t happening
Wait a minute… nearly everyone I know is completely freaked out about Covid-19…
And over 50% of voters want the draft to be held on time?
Um…
They can conduct the draft via conference call with all 30 clubs
The teams wouldn’t have scouted the players in months. So what good would holding a draft be if you can’t ever make a properly informed decision on which players to draft?
Most of the people I know have remained calm about this and are concerned about the negative impacts on the economy. There are people all along the spectrum of fear here, but what we should use is logic.
They have video of all the top prospects. For other guys (and high schoolers), it’s mostly about projection, which can be a crapshoot. They can have the draft via video conference and nobody has to be in the same room. Only reason to postpone is a concern that teams don’t have enough research done on these guys, but that’s something that would affect all teams, so the draft would still be fair. If it is postponed, I can live with that, but it’d suck if they canceled it altogether.
Have all 30 teams on a conference call & conduct the draft that way
Hold the draft on time. These kids could use some good news.
If MLB cancels the draft my guess is that college and HS players will file a class action suit against MLB.
I also think that at some point before next spring MLB should host an invitational tryout / showcase event for additional eligible players and hold a supplemental for those players.
That’s like holding a class action lawsuit against an airline when it cancels flights to a war-torn country. The MLB is acting in what it believes is the best interests of everyone and all of these moves are being negotiated with the MLBPA. There will be some upset kids, sure, but I don’t see a lawsuit moving forward.
Have them compete in some type of extended/split squad/simulated game AZFL situation then draft towards latter part of year perhaps?
Great opportunity for mlb to shed a bunch of minor league teams when some 300 new minor leaguers won’t be coming into the leagues. What a coincidence they started the dialog prior to all this going down. Hmmmm…..
I haven’t logged into here in a really long time. Last night I was considering combining the 2020 draft with the 2021 draft. Then all I could wonder is how that would be possible? If you combine eligible players between two drafts then you are essentially having one draft with a deeper pool. You can split the draft into two sections? Having the first draft of 2020 players and then a second draft of 2021 eligible players?
I honestly believe that combining the drafts would be a bad move. It just doesn’t make much sense when you sit and think about it. Let’s see how this pandemic plays out first, then decide. The probably best thing to do is to postpone the draft. MLB can hold a combine like the NFL does. Or have the top national talent form teams and let them play out a shorten season. Like the article said, teams already know who is out there for the most part. Let these kids form teams like in the Arizona Fall League and have a 2 or 3 month season and then the draft could follow that?
Delay it until things get back to normal. Hold a 2 week combine at spring training facilities with drills and scrimmage games. In addition to the top 500 prospects getting an automatic invite, teams can nominate up to 100 players per team they are interested in seeing. MLB pays for travel expenses and room and board for each of the players. All undrafted players receive some compensation for their time. I’d guess the whole thing would cost MLB maybe 5m?
Might as well just consider 2020 a lost year and have a draft in 2021 with the same players that would have been in the 2020 draft. Everyone will be a year older than normal, but after a few years it should get back to normal. It’ll be surreal, but is there anything about 2020 that is not surreal?
The draft is mostly a crapshoot in the first place so have it as scheduled without the benefit of scouting just so we can get some quote from a GM about a 23rd rounder along the lines of “yeah his middle name is ronald, same as my uncle and my uncle’s birthday was Thursday so why not?”
Things will be back to normal very soon. They’re already playing baseball in South Korea and we have a drug that looks promising treating the virus. I’m confident baseball resumes early june.
Let’s be positive people. There will be a season and it will be a lengthy one with world series played in november
Make a decision at the end of April. Hopefully by then we will have a better idea on how to proceed with our current situation.
What would be great is if somehow the NCAA can do a mega-tournament using rankings as things stood prior to Covid-19. A double knockout, bracket tourney. Teams can play a few exhibition games prior to the tournament to prepare, have the draft in mid-July. If-possible.
I think the Government and the people at large should combine to go after the media for causing a mass panic. After that, proceed as scheduled with the June draft, J2 signings, start the season on April 15th, and stop this nonsense.