NEWSLETTER
Today, MLB officially unveiled the particulars for its 2020 amateur draft, which will commence with the first round on June 10, and conclude with rounds two through five on June 11. That’s the whole draft.
More of the particulars:
2. Teams will not be allowed to contact undrafted players, their family members or any player representative from the moment the draft ends until 9 a.m. ET on June 14 and no promises/conversations about signing an undrafted player can take place before or during the draft.
— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) May 15, 2020
4. Signing deadline pushed back to Aug. 1 in part because of concerns about post-draft physicals for players. But there are acknowledgements that there may be issues with players receiving physicals and MLB is working on potential local options for draftees to avoid travel.
— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) May 15, 2020
Like the NFL Draft, the head of baseball operations for every team — either president or GM — will be sent a video it and will be on camera with no audio during the MLB Draft, according to the memo
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 15, 2020
Bonus slot values will be the same as they were last year, and teams will have a bonus pool made up of those slot values. Since those five rounds are the only rounds that you’re drafting, though, it’s going to be very difficult to play around with going under slot here to go over slot there.
As far as payouts go, when they sign, players will get just $100,000 of their signing bonus, and then will have the rest deferred into two payments over the next two years.
By limiting contact during and right after the draft, the league is trying to eliminate the risk of shenanigans – the lure of getting a quality prospect for a mere $20,000 bonus (the maximum permitted for undrafted free agents this year) is going to be so strong that some teams will almost certainly try to get around the rules as best they can. I really have no idea what that frenzy is going to look like on June 14.
Meanwhile, as for the draft, it’ll be all at a distance, a la the NFL Draft. I wonder if new Cubs Scouting Director Dan Kantrovitz will be the one announcing the team’s picks. It doesn’t really matter, and obviously he reports to Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein, but this was always supposed to be largely Kantrovitz’s draft. It’s why the Cubs brought him in. (More on him here.)
The Cubs will pick 16th in the first round, and in the same spot in each of the ensuing four rounds. They haven’t lost any picks, nor have they picked up any compensatory picks (and they aren’t eligible for competitive balance picks). So it’ll be a pretty standard – yet completely bizarre – draft for the Cubs.
