Hello everyone. This is just a short post. It is pretty much a certainty now that the 2020 MLB Draft will only go up to 5 rounds and the maximum signing bonus for a NDFA is now going to go to as high as $20,000, a good $100,000 less than the usual. Here's my thoughts on it and how it might affect the prospects and the front offices in general.
The initial fallout might still not be fully grasped by anyone but the initial thought is that unless you are really sure that going to the first round and you are going to command first round money or any other amount of money that he intends to receive, HS prospects will just go to college and wait 3 years, especially those prospects who will go undrafted. In the absolute worst case scenario where a HS prospect's draft stock did not improve or even worse, fall flat after 3 years in college, there's still a greater chance that you will be able to sign a higher signing bonus than you would have by going undrafted this year.
In the case of college juniors returning to their senior year, there's actually a fine line that their agents would have to walk whether to sign or wait for next year. MLB teams abuse, and I really mean abuse, the college seniors where they would be the I don't even know what you would call them, sacrificial lambs? pawns?, to have a flexible bonus pool so that they can sign a prospect in the later rounds over the slot value.
A pretty known example of this is Jake Mangum, who was drafted in the 4th round by the Mets in the 2018 MLB Draft. Mangum had a stellar career at Hail State, where he could have signed last year for the Mets (shocker, huh) in the 32 round and sign a $300,000 signing bonus. Instead, he returned to school for his senior year for a shot at the national championship (in which they fell short) and got drafted and signed for $20,000, yes, the same exact amount that a NDFA can sign if they ever get undrafted this year. Seniors just don't have the leverage because of their age. In the case of Mangum, he would not change a single thing according to this article.
I mean it's true for Mangum, but what about the other, or it might be the majority, college prospects this year that would not have a championship title to chase next year as their reason to go back? Would they just say fine, I'll just finish my degree? That could very much be the case here, as they might possibly expect to sign the same amount of money in next year's draft as they might receive in this year's draft. Either way, it really sucks on a financial standpoint.
It feels like there's not a lot of hope for college juniors, right? However, there's actually a silver lining that I am seeing amidst all of this bullshit. In my time away from baseball in this quarantine, I've become a bigger fan of American football. And there's this guy on YouTube who goes by the name of The QB School (his real name is J.T. O'Sullivan, a journeyman quarterback who started for the Niners over a decade ago so you might know him) that I have been a big fan of because of the in-depth analysis of quarterbacks as well as explaining the X's and O's of football, both on offense and defense, in a really deep way. I was listening to his post-draft live stream and he got a question from the chat about undrafted rookies. His reply is very applicable to the situation that baseball is in. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that it's better to be undrafted rather than be a 7th round draft pick because you have the freedom to choose where you want to go if you got multiple offers and you can gauge which team will give you the biggest opportunity to have a shot of earning a starting job in the NFL.
And for me, that's the thing. Opportunity. It would just be like cool, the Dodgers and the Yankees have these player development programs where they just churn out waves after waves of potential future Major Leaguers while sustaining their dominance of their division at the present, or any other team that might suck right now but you can see that they are on the upswing and with the right development, you might get a shot at an everyday Major League roster in a couple of years. Or you know, you can get both with the Giants where they are on the upswing in the couple of years, an overhauled player development program and a little higher salary with a house stipend so you might feel that you are going to be taken care off better with them than with the other teams *wink wink*.
Obviously, I'm a bit of a sellout there for the Giants and NFL is completely different from MLB where you can get thrusted right away in the NFL where in MLB, you have to grind it out for at least a year. But that's mostly true for the top picks, because you are drafted that high so that you can make an impact as soon as possible and that's true in both sports. However, while football does not have a farm system that baseball has, they have practice squads that act in kind of much their version of the farm system where they take some undrafted rookies or their lower round draft choices and let them develop their skills there and maybe, get a spot as a special teamer in every Sunday.
I am always pro-player when it comes to issues that would both affect the player and the organization as a whole so I really feel bad for the draft prospects for a situation that it's 100% not their fault.
However, the front offices have this one bad as well. In context, every year, they typically eat one whole pizza. But for this year, they can only eat one slice. A team only have at the very least 5 picks to work with (a pick per round). They have hundreds of area scouts working tirelessly to have their fruits of their labor be evident in a 40-round draft where they try to unearth a goodie in the later rounds. But now, their eyes are now only fixated to only a small fraction of the crop and they might just disregard a whole lot of the HS players. It really sucks for the scouts, really sucks for the front office because they only have little flexibility in terms of maneuvering the draft.
There are two things that I could unfold in this year's draft. One, is that the teams play it safe, draft mostly college guys, sign them close to slot. There could still be overslot or underslot signings but not really far away from the slot value. The other one, which might be very intriguing is the Matthew Allan path, drafting a high-caliber prospect that is dropping to round 3-4 due to signability issues, giving him a huge wad of cash and trying to round out the rest of the draft with seniors. That one is a very risky move because you entrust your draft class to potentially 3 guys. But, if you are a team with only 1 pick per round and you took this approach, that's 60% of your draft class compared to 7.5% in a normal 40 round draft. And, you might get plenty of value with the undrafted signings given that you will only pay them for a small fraction of what their supposed value would be.
It's just an interesting thought exercise but hey, I've seen crazier things so if this one happens, I'm going to give myself a 5Head (a Twitch emote).
As for the owners, it's BuSiNeSs As UsUaL. Hit them with the mocking Spongebob meme!
As for the owners, it's BuSiNeSs As UsUaL. Hit them with the mocking Spongebob meme!
Again, I have not read any baseball articles or so for the past month and a half so the ideas that you might read here might have actually been written before by someone else. Also, there would also be more news in the future about the draft so let's all try to stay on top of things. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed reading this one!
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