White Sox, Cubs gear up for shortened draft
If major-league baseball plays at all this summer, it's going to be a shortened season.
Minor-league baseball? Nothing is official yet, but we'll see you in 2021 with far fewer teams.
The coronavirus pandemic has ripped through the game and caused widespread damage everywhere you look.
That includes the amateur draft.
MLB's annual talent search is still going to be held this week, but the draft has been chopped from 40 rounds to five, a move designed to save money.
The reduction should save each major-league team around $1 million.
The first round of the draft is Wednesday and the final four rounds will be held Thursday.
The White Sox hold the No. 11 overall pick and the Cubs have the No. 16 pick in the first round.
COVID-19 stopped play at all levels in mid-March, so Sox amateur scouting director Mike Shirley and Cubs counterpart Dan Kantrovitz have much less player information heading into the draft.
"Obviously, it's completely different," said Shirley, who is in his first year as amateur scouting director. "It's been different due to the fact that obviously the world stopped, about the middle of March, in terms of baseball and our ability to actually be boots on the ground in a typical cycle means we're grinding every day at the ballpark, and that was eliminated from us."
Kantrovitz is also in his first year on the job. Like Shirley, he has no choice but to make the most of a difficult situation.
Fortunately for both talent evaluators, they were able to see some college games before play was halted, and there was also some high school baseball played in the southern United States.
"We felt like we had prepared extremely well heading into this spring," Shirley said. "In a lot of ways, we didn't get what we needed. But we are prepared to make five rounds. It's different having five rounds but we feel really good about this draft."
Even with almost three months of inactivity, scouts like Shirley and Kantrovitz realize this is a deep draft and both the White Sox and Cubs should get very good players on the first round.
Last year, the Sox drafted Cal first baseman Andrew Vaughn with the No. 3 overall pick. The Cubs had the 27th pick in the first round and they selected a pitcher, Ryan Jensen out of Fresno State.
This year's draft is loaded with quality arms, so don't be surprised if the White Sox and Cubs take pitchers on the first round.
"The talent, you feel good about the selections you're going to get to make in five rounds because of the depth of this draft," Shirley said. "It's a heavy pitching draft and it's a depth of college pitching draft. And there are high school pitchers that we really like. So the bulk of what we think the depth of this thing will be in five rounds, the pitching is definitely out front and we've just worked our tails off to make sure we have our board up to pick 142 because that's where our fifth-round selection is."