The stakes will be high on draft day
With 40 rounds reduced to five, picks will count more than ever
The Blue Jays’ decision to keep their full-time staff on payroll through at least Oct. 1 should provide the club with a bit of an edge heading into next month’s MLB draft.
The Los Angeles Angels previously announced cuts to almost every department in their organization, including scouts, despite the June 10 draft being less than two weeks away. The Washington Nationals and Miami Marlins are placing some front-office workers on furlough at the start of June, and others such as the Oakland A’s announced plans to follow suit later that month.
A lot of teams are trying to cut costs wherever possible, but to date the Jays haven’t been among them. Thanks in large part to the federal government wage subsidy, they have been able to keep all full-time Canadian staff employed while similar emergency measures have been explored for the American side of the business.
With baseball’s season postponed, some employees have more time on their hands than normal, so they volunteered for duties outside their job descriptions. Pitching coach
Pete Walker, bullpen coach Matt Buschmann and multiple minor-league staff members are among those who signed on to help director of amateur scouting Shane Farrell with his first draft.
“We are able to deploy resources that are always a part of our process. They just normally aren’t as available to us as they are right now,” Jays general manager Ross Atkins told the Star this past week. “Even if we were trying to take an all-hands-on-deck approach, we have other things that are full steam ahead in a normal year. Whereas this year, a lot of our player development staff is by no means full steam ahead. Their ability to tap into their networks — hard to put a percentage on it, but I would say it has easily doubled (resources).”
Under normal circumstances, the Jays have a draft war room set up at the Rogers Centre, which serves as the place to pour over video and hold indepth meetings about potential targets. That’s no longer possible because of COVID-19, so they moved draft preparations to Zoom instead.
With no baseball being played, even on the amateur side, one might assume teams are working with less information on prospects than normal, but that’s not necessarily true.
Teams put in a lot of work the summer before each draft to start compiling data and watch lists. For college players, that’s the Cape Cod League; for high schoolers, it’s the top prep tournaments.
The work continues the following year, but sometimes that causes teams to have a recency bias. Instead of looking at the full body of work, more attention is paid to the performance in April or May. The small sample size can be misleading, and it occasionally leads to confusion in the draft room with players soaring up the board or falling completely off. There likely won’t be as much of that this time around.
“We’re normally analyzing around 800 players,” Atkins said, in reference to the draft being shortened from 40 rounds to just five this year. “In this case, the pool is much smaller. That presents a couple different opportunities: the ability to drill down on guys sooner and more in depth. It also takes out the bias that normally occurs with recent performance and things that are happening right before our decisions, which can influence human beings.”
The timing of the abbreviated draft is particularly disappointing to the Jays, who own their highest pick since Vernon Wells went fifth overall in 1997. Instead of picking fifth in 40 rounds, they will have that advantage in just five, with far fewer dollars in the bonus pool to sprinkle throughout the draft. It’s an unfortunate setback, and one that somewhat offsets the advantages that came with such a poor finish in last year’s standings.
The changes might lead to some new trends.
Signability is an issue every year, but teams will have to be extra careful in the coming weeks. Missing out on one guy might be OK when there are 39 other players entering the system, but it will be a much bigger setback when there are only four other picks.
Another thing that works in college players’ favour is the amount of data teams have compiled. High-quality video, reliable stats and larger sample sizes for scouts to evaluate provides teams with more clarity. High schoolers typically have more upside, but they also come with more risk. That could lead to a run on college players once some of the can’tmiss high schoolers come off the board in round one.
“I think that’s a fair hypothesis, and the potential is definitely there,” Atkins said about the possibility of a collegeheavy draft. “I think it depends so much on each organization’s approach, but I also think this industry is so agile … trends, as soon as they’re happening, they’re changing, and a new trend starts after that because teams and executives adjust. When those strong trends are happening in one direction, it opens up opportunities in other areas.”
In his latest mock draft, The Athletic’s Keith Law had the Jays taking college right-hander Emerson Hancock. MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo, another expert in this field, had Toronto going with high school centre-fielder Zac Veen. Other names to keep an eye on are New Mexico State second baseman Nick Gonzales and right-hander Max Meyer out of Minnesota.
With most of these guys at least a couple of years away, the priority as usual will go to whoever the club deems the best overall player, instead of zeroing in on someone to fill a specific need. Having more bodies than normal in the virtual draft process should help the Jays make sure they pick the right ones.