Later picks agree to lesser bonuses

With the MLB draft abbreviated this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was significant financial jockeying that occurred on the second day of the draft — jockeying that was not in the players’ favor.

“Beginning in round three, the draft went almost wholly underslot value,” one major league agent said. “If you wanted to be drafted after the first couple of rounds, you had to go under (slot value), with obviously some exceptions.”

In an unprecedented year for baseball, the trend was not a surprise to the game’s insiders, especially considering MLB’s rule that undrafted players cannot get more than a $20,000 signing bonus in 2020 or 2021. With just five rounds instead of the usual 40, in pre-draft negotiations that $20,000 cap gave high school and college players incentive to agree to sign for less than the slotted value of their pick.

“There’s kids out there who signed for $40,000 or so in the third round,” the agent said, noting the wide disparity between that bonus and the $689,300 average slot value of a third-round pick this year. “Even if you were a college junior, in a year where you would’ve gotten half-a-million dollars, the good ones got just about half of that, if you got taken.”

The good news for players like Arkansas catcher and Heritage graduate Casey Opitz who didn’t hear their names called as draft-eligible college juniors — a year amateurs have higher leverage in signing bonus negotiations — is they can return to college and repeat their season of athletic eligibility, per the NCAA’s ruling in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Next year’s draft could be as short as 20 rounds.