Major League Baseball sent a memo to clubs last week announcing several substantial changes to the 2021 draft, the most significant of which is that the draft will take place on July 11 — about a month later than usual — and will be in Atlanta, where the Futures Game and All-Star Game will be. In theory, those of us who attend the Futures Game will be able to walk over to watch the first round or two of the draft take place that evening. (There was no further news on the 2021 draft order, so stop asking.)
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Many teams have pushed for this change for years so they weren’t drafting college players who were still playing. The draft has typically fallen between the Regionals (with 64 teams still playing) and Super Regionals (with 16 still playing) of the NCAA baseball tournament, which would lead to just-drafted players playing in the College World Series for coaches who had no incentive whatsoever to protect players they knew would leave campus for good in a few days.
“The timing allows for a medical combine, more predraft workouts, more publicity, and not having to watch your second-round pick throw a million pitches in the College World Series,” said one GM when asked about the plan.
We’ve seen multiple pitchers overused in those situations, and the teams that drafted them would have no recourse because the pick was already gone. It could help those same players if coaches are aware that overusing a player might hurt his draft stock and cost him money in the very near future.
“Some people wanted to push it back for two reasons — MLB to align it with the All-Star Game, which will be cool, and some organizations because they feel they were unable to see (draft-eligible players) enough this summer and worry that spring seasons may be shortened or canceled,” said one scouting vice president.
That can cut both ways, however, for two additional reasons. “The huge gap of time between the end of the season and draft date will be the key,” said one director. “MLB must provide proper guidance and rules” on how teams can work with players, such as inviting them to predraft workouts, given the long layoff.
“Too much time passes between the end of most high school seasons and the draft. That’s two and a half months between when we see some of them play and when we actually get to select them,” said another scouting director, who said the later draft means teams will end up scouting two draft classes at once for about a month after high school and most college seasons end.
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“There will be a good amount of overlap between draft classes. We’ll need to have some of our staff covering future draft classes before we draft players in the current one. You can’t wait until the end of July to go to the Cape,” and thus risk missing players who’ll be critical for the following year’s draft.
A medical combine of any sort would be enormous news (“an impactful piece,” in one scouting director’s words), as teams have long been at a disadvantage compared to those in other major sports because they received so little information on player health before the draft. That’s why we’ve seen high picks flunk their post-draft physicals and teams decline to sign them. A combine would also help some players if they have the kind of injury or underlying issue that might lead the teams that drafted them to try to cut their bonus or walk away entirely after the draft. Armed with the information beforehand, the players or their advisers could shop around and still try to strike the best deal, rather than face a situation in which they have no leverage with just one buyer.
It’s not entirely a win for teams and players, of course. “A medical combine would be the most exciting thing, if they can pull it off,” said one scouting director. “There’s some talk of doing it in June to give teams enough time to digest and react to the results — but if we do it in June, how do we get players in the college postseason to attend?” There will also be players who go to the combine and get results that harm their draft stock irreparably. Had Brady Aiken gone to a medical combine and found out he had the elbow malformation that ultimately led to him losing out on a No. 1 pick bonus and signing for much less a year later, he could have shopped the report around, but he was never getting back to No. 1 pick status.
According to one vice president, the proposal will change how teams decide to scout events like the Perfect Game National Showcase or the Cape Cod League prior to the draft. The Cape Cod League has typically started within two weeks of the end of the draft and often included players who’d been drafted but hadn’t decided whether to sign and players who were passed over and could sign as free agents. Both could try to improve their stock by playing in summer leagues, especially the Cape, which is the most heavily scouted and offers the highest caliber of competition. Those leagues could have their player pools change significantly, with more draft prospects trying to play there for the first halves of their seasons then choosing to leave after the draft, after which that playing time might go to underclassmen or other undrafted prospects. That would, in turn, change the way teams scout those leagues, and could lead to teams sending in two waves of scouts — one wave before the draft for final looks at players and then a second wave after the draft to start scouting for the following year.
That part of the plan dovetails with MLB’s plan to realign the minor leagues and eliminate the short-season leagues between the complexes and full-season ball. One part of that plan was to keep some of the stadiums that have lost affiliated baseball operating with teams of collegiate players. Under the new schedule for the draft, such teams could fill their rosters with players from the current year’s draft class, whether players who know they’ll be drafted but are trying to improve their standing, players who are on the bubble and could benefit from playing better competition or players who might not be draft-ready but could find better opportunities at two- or four-year colleges by playing in a high-caliber league. The longer time gap between the ends of most high school seasons and some college seasons and the draft itself would push more players to play in such a league.
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The signing deadline will move back to accommodate the later draft date, to Aug. 1, which isn’t an issue for amateur staffs specifically but could create a conflict for teams that have scouts do amateur and pro work leading up to the trade deadline. “I don’t love the fact that the trade deadline is 25 hours before the draft signing deadline,” said one GM, although he noted that many deals with players are effectively done before the draft anyway.
The 2021 draft can drop to as few as 20 rounds, and will “likely contain between 20 and 30 rounds.” This year’s draft, and the push by certain owners to cut draft expenses as much as possible, suggests it will probably end up at the lower end of the range, meaning 20 rounds. Assuming the existing bonus pool structure remains in place, that won’t have much impact on the 2021 draft class or on individual teams, because nearly all signable prospects in the draft will go in the top 11 rounds. The top 10 rounds are all included in the bonus pool, and most prospects will be drafted in the first few rounds, where the slot values are highest. Any prospects who are undrafted by the end of the 10th round but still willing to sign could be drafted in the 11th round, but after 20 rounds, those guys are either off the board or clearly not signable. I’ve had executives say in the past that the draft doesn’t need to be more than 20 rounds because the greater availability of data, especially on players from small colleges, means fewer players fall through the cracks.
There were, however, some anti-player provisions in the plan that won’t go over well with 2021 draftees or their advisers. Bonuses will be severely deferred as teams look to preserve cash; if you’re drafted in 2021, you get a maximum of $100,000 right away and get the remainder in two equal installments one full year after the draft and one full year after that. That amounts to players giving teams no-interest loans on bonuses that would run up to $8 million for the top pick or two, saving teams millions of dollars in the process. Undrafted players will still face a $20,000 maximum to sign as free agents, although with a draft that runs 20 rounds or more, that’s not a significant issue as most players who are pro prospects and willing to sign will almost certainly be drafted.
One surprising tweak is teams that receive competitive balance picks in 2021 can’t trade them. That would likely hurt low-revenue or non-contending teams, which could try to acquire more picks to get more players and/or spread their bonus pool around to get a second first-round talent by going over slot somewhere. If they’re contending, a team with a competitive balance pick could also trade it for major-league help in lieu of trading a prospect who might help it in the short term — and is a surer thing — or instead of paying more of a player’s salary. It reduces flexibility, which hurts the lower-budget teams more than the higher-budget ones. However, it ensures any team that is, or purports to be, cash-strapped can’t simply sell those picks to other teams for cash or its equivalent in salary relief.
Nobody within Major League Baseball was happy holding a draft while draft-eligible players were still playing, and moving it to All-Star Weekend solves that problem while giving the draft a platform on a night when there will be no competing games and the baseball world is already paying attention thanks to the Futures Game. The new plan has ripple effects that will change how teams scout the summer — and that would seem to reward teams that still have larger scouting staffs — and will also have substantial impacts on existing summer collegiate leagues and high school showcases. If it weren’t for the part where the drafted players have to give their new employers zero-interest loans, I might call it a win-win.
(Photo: Alex Trautwig / MLB via Getty Images)
