2021 Amateur Draft

Major League Baseball has settled on a 20-round draft for the 2021 season, J.J. Cooper of Baseball America reports. That outcome has long seemed likely, as it is the minimum number of rounds required in the 2020 agreement between MLB and the MLBPA. While it’s obviously a step up from last year’s five-round event, the 20-round length still clocks in at half the length of the standard 40-round draft.

This year’s draft was already set to look quite a bit different. For starters, it’s been known for months that the event will be moved back to July. Major League Baseball also announced back in November the formation of the MLB Draft League — a six-team showcase league that will offer some of the country’s top amateurs the opportunity to compete against one another in the weeks leading up to the draft. There’s also been talk of an NFL-style combine of sorts, which would give clubs more up to date medical information on potential draftees. Pushing the draft back until after the College World Series and state high school tournament completions also avoids injury risk for top talent after the draft.

Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo, meanwhile, has a full breakdown of each team’s league-allotted bonus pool for this year’s draft. The Pirates, picking first overall, lead the way at $14.394MM. The Tigers check in with the second-largest pool at $14.253MM and stand as the only other team north of $13MM. The Astros, who had their first- and second-round picks stripped as part of the organization’s punishment stemming from the 2017 sign-stealing scandal, have just a $2.94MM bonus pool. As Collazo observes, the individual slot values of the first 22 picks in the draft are all greater than Houston’s entire bonus pool. The Astros do not have a selection until the 87th overall pick.

On that note, it’s worth reminding that the assigned slot values for selections in the top 10 rounds have not progressed from 2020 — another element to which the union agreed in last year’s negotiations with ownership. That means the top slot will again be valued at $8,415,300, and values will gradually descend from there. There are no slot values after the tenth round, as usual. Teams can spend up to $125K per pick in Rounds 11 through 20 without any money counting against their pool. Any dollars over that mark will count against a team’s pool. Undrafted players can again become free agents who are free to sign with any club, but those bonuses are capped at $20K apiece.

Major League Baseball has determined the orders of Competitive Balance Rounds A and B for the 2021 amateur draft, Mike Rosenbaum of MLB.com reports. Comp Round A takes place after the first round of the draft, while Comp Round B goes down at the conclusion of the second round. The selections are comprised of picks awarded to teams that are considered in the bottom 10 in terms of winning percentage, market size and/or revenue.

Here’s the 2021 order as of now:

Round A

30) Marlins
31) Tigers
32) Brewers
33) Rays
34) Reds
35) Twins

Round B

65) Pirates
66) Orioles
67) Royals
68) Diamondbacks
69) Rockies
70) Indians
71) Cardinals
72) Padres

These draft choices can be traded, which means the order listed above isn’t necessarily set. However, these picks can only change hands during the regular season, and they can do so just once. Furthermore, qualifying offer decisions from this offseason will shake up the draft order to some extent. The Reds (Trevor Bauer), Phillies (J.T. Realmuto), Astros (George Springer) and Yankees (DJ LeMahieu) each handed out a QO at the beginning of the offseason, but they were rejected. The Reds and Phillies stand to earn the highest compensatory picks if their players walk away, Rosenbaum notes.

Thanks to the pandemic-shortened regular season, it was unclear before Monday how Major League Baseball would handle the 2021 amateur draft. It’s now known that the league plans on going the traditional route and determining the order according to teams’ 2020 records, per Alex Speier of the Boston Globe. Jeff Passan of ESPN previously reported that MLB was likely to take this path.

This news means the Pirates, who finished with the game’s worst mark at 19-41, will pick No. 1 overall for the first time since they selected Gerrit Cole in 2011. As of now, Vanderbilt right-handers Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter are among the favorites to come off the board at the top of the draft, so either could wind up as the Pirates’ next prized prospect.

Here’s how the top five’s slated to look next summer:

• 1. Pirates
• 2. Rangers
• 3. Tigers
• 4. Red Sox
• 5. Orioles

We already know that the 2021 draft will undergo one notable change, as the draft will be held during the All-Star break in July rather than its normal spot a month earlier in June.  In regards to the draft order, however, it appears the status quo will be in effect, as ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan reports that teams’ 2020 records are “highly likely” to be used to determine the order of selection.

With only 60 games in the 2020 season, there had been speculation that the 2021 draft order could be based on a larger timeframe, such as perhaps a combination of teams’ records from both the 2019 and 2020 seasons.  The league had the right to change the order as part of the agreement reached last March between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA about a wide range of issues related to how baseball operations would proceed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, though Passan notes that a change to the normal draft order might only have occurred had the 2020 season been interrupted or halted from proceeding whatsoever.

The Pirates carry a 15-39 record into today’s action, four games “ahead” (so to speak) of the 19-35 Rangers for the game’s worst record.  This would be the fifth time Pittsburgh has held the first overall pick, previously selecting first in 2011 (Gerrit Cole was their pick), 2002 (Bryan Bullington), 1996 (Kris Benson), and 1986 (Jeff King.  Should the Rangers finish with the second-worst 2020 record, picking second in the 2021 draft would represent the team’s highest draft selection since way back in 1974, when Texas took right-hander Tommy Boggs second overall.

The Pirates and Rangers are followed in the standings by the Red Sox and Diamondbacks at 20-34, with Boston earning the #3 pick in this tiebreaker since the Sox had a worse record in 2019.  The Nationals round out the current top five with their 21-32 ranking, perhaps benefiting the most of any team from the unaltered draft order since naturally they would have been picking much lower in the first round if their 2019 record was factored into the determination.

On the other side of the equation, the Tigers (currently slated for the seventh overall pick) probably feel dismayed that 2019 records won’t be a consideration.  Detroit’s league-worst 47-114 mark last season earned them the first overall pick in the 2020 draft, and they would still be in line for the first overall pick in 2021 had the 2019-20 records been combined.  Though the Tigers are surely pleased to have landed Spencer Torkelson first overall in this year’s draft, the team didn’t really achieve full value from their prime spot in the order given that the 2020 draft was only five rounds long and .  As per the March agreement, the 2021 draft will be at least 20 rounds long and teams should theoretically have something of a more normal scouting and evaluation process for prospects.

The 2021 MLB Draft will be pushed from June to July 11-13 and take place in conjunction with next year’s All-Star festivities in Atlanta, as first reported by Carlos Collazo of Baseball America. The length of next year’s draft still is not set in stone, but it will be longer than this year’s heavily truncated five-round event. The March agreement between the league and the MLBPA which called for the five-round draft also stipulated that the 2021 draft be at least 20 rounds, per the report. The same deferral of bonus payouts — $100K up front, followed by 50 percent of the remainder in each of the two subsequent years — will remain in place. Undrafted players will again be limited to a maximum $20K signing bonus.

The move to All-Star week gives MLB considerable marketing opportunities for the event, placing it at a time when much of the national spotlight will already be on Major League Baseball. The NBA and NHL aren’t currently scheduled to be in season at that time, and the delayed Summer Olympics aren’t set to begin until July 23. Also, because the draft will be distanced from the end of the college and high school seasons, more of the event’s top names should be able to attend in person.

Carlos Collazo and colleague J.J. Cooper point out that Major League clubs have long sought a pre-draft medical combine to gather more information on players in order to avoid scenarios that can play out when a draftee’s physical exam reveals medical red flags that prompt the team to alter its offer. Such instances — recall the ugly scene in 2014 when the Astros took issue with No. 1 overall pick Brady Aiken’s elbow — can be more public-facing than all involved parties would prefer and can have substantial trickle-down effects in a draft class. With the draft taking place weeks after the conclusion of the amateur season, however, some sort of medical combine seems much more feasible. Other promotional and scouting opportunities, such as tournaments or showcases involving the draft’s top names, could potentially be scheduled leading up the event as well.

BA also notes that the later nature of the draft date will lead to an uptick in the number of players who are eligible to be selected. Players are eligible if they turn 21 years old within 45 days of the draft’s scheduled completion, which pushes the cutoff threshold to Aug. 27. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel tweets out a series of prospects who would not have previously been eligible but now stand out as potential selections in the top five rounds of next year’s draft.