On Wednesday and Thursday, Major League Baseball will hold a drastically abbreviated version of its annual amateur draft. As part of the pandemic-related agreement the players and owners hashed out in late March, this year’s draft will be just five rounds. With the contraction of the minor leagues looming, it’s quite likely that future drafts will be considerably more abridged than the 40 rounds they’ve been since 2012, if not necessarily this short.

Had such conditions been in effect prior to this year, numerous quality major league players would have gone undrafted. While some might have still developed after being signed as free agents, it’s entirely likely that many would have slipped through the cracks, never making a dent in the professional ranks, let alone reaching and thriving in the majors.

What follows here and in Part 2 tomorrow is a round-by-round look at the best players drafted in each round beyond the fifth since the amateur draft was instituted in 1965. With the database help of Ben Clemens, we’ve assembled top-five WAR rankings for rounds six through 25, and I’ve attempted to summarize the career highlights of each player in concise fashion (hat-tip to Baseball America’s Ultimate Draft Book for some of the tidbits on why draftees slipped to later rounds). Additionally, I’ve highlighted one active player who may or may not have cracked the leaderboard yet, but who’s noteworthy, as well as two Hall of Fame relievers who didn’t make their respective leaderboards. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is my second 2020 mock draft. The first pass can be found here and is suggested reading as context for the top 13 or so picks. The full 2020 Draft Board can be found here.

Teams’ boards are entirely built now, and the focus of orgs and scouts has shifted toward assessing the signability of individual prospects so there aren’t high stakes mathematical puzzle pieces being smashed together on the fly on Wednesday. The higher a player is ranked, the more likely it is that someone higher up on a team’s organizational ladder is the one talking to the advisor. Some medical reviews are also underway.

I’ll do one more mock for Wednesday morning and, if necessary, a mock of just names with teams just ahead of the draft.

1. Detroit Tigers- Spencer Torkelson, 1B, Arizona State
No change up top, as the overwhelming industry sense remains that Tork goes here. If something unexpected occurs and negotiations break down, I’d have Lacy the favorite to go based on Detroit’s tendencies. Read the rest of this entry »