When the players and the owners set up an interim deal to cover the financial side of this season, draft-related considerations were included as a cash-saving measure.
In short: teams were granted the right to push the draft back into July, bonuses to players could be spread out over several years, and – the big one – the draft could be slashed to just five rounds.
We still don’t have a final decision from the league on how short this year’s draft will be (keep in mind, with MiLB losing upwards of 40 teams, the draft is going to shrink from 40 rounds permanently even after this year (probably to less than 20 rounds)). But we do now have word on when the draft will be, and it’s sticking in its pre-planned spot:
2 sources confirm that MLB is closing in on making June 10 draft day as @JonHeyman reported. What is still not finalized is if the draft will be 5 or 10 rounds.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) April 28, 2020
There was some hope that a delayed draft, in addition to deferring some costs, would allow for the possibility of showcase games/events to take place in May/June/July, permitting a little more scouting. I reckon everyone has sagely concluded at this point that such a hope is now implausible.
So the draft will go forward in June, and it’s gonna be very short and pretty odd. Then again, the MLB Draft has always been less of a “big event,” so maybe the change won’t feel all that dramatic. The league had planned on trying to make the draft a bigger event by hosting it in Omaha at the College World Series, but that’ll have to wait for another year.