Feb. 19--The college baseball season starts Friday, but the Cubs won't have the luxury of selecting a college player with a premium pick unlike the past three amateur drafts during the Theo Epstein regime.
That's the price the Cubs are paying for their success in 2015, along with the signing of free agents John Lackey and Jason Heyward last winter.
Because Lackey and Heyward received qualifying offers from the Cardinals before rejecting them and signing elsewhere, the Cubs will lose their top two picks in the June draft.
They will get a compensation pick should center fielder Dexter Fowler sign with another team since the Cubs did tender a qualifying offer to Fowler, who rejected it.
But that pick will occur well after the 34th overall selection that the Cardinals received in compensation for losing Heyward.
As of now, the Cubs will make their first selection in the third round with the 104th overall pick. Their current amateur bonus pool for the June draft, according to Baseball America, is $2.2451 million.
That figure is $754,000 less than what the Cubs gave Ian Happ as the ninth overall selection in the 2015 draft. Happ has received impressive reviews after his first professional season after leaving the University of Cincinnati and hopes to follow in the Cubs' recent success of college players that includes Kris Bryant (University of San Diego) and Kyle Schwarber (Indiana).
