KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The pandemic-shortened MLB draft concluded Thursday night, and thus began a quiet period before an unprecedented storm of free agency.
Under typical circumstances _ a 40-round draft plus competitive balance rounds, such as last year _ the draft would have produced more than 1,200 selections for the 30 Major League Baseball organizations. This year's five-round draft ushered in just 160.
MLB organizations aren't allowed to contact draft-eligible players who weren't selected before 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Sunday morning. Clubs will have no limit on the number of players they can sign, but they're all restricted to offering signing bonuses of no more than $20,000 to each player.
With uncertainty swirling about the future of the minor leagues, given the potential for contraction and an unclear picture of what teams' development programs will look like, clubs could be less aggressive in acquiring undrafted players.
Not the Royals, though.
"Mr. Sherman told us to be as aggressive as we think we need to be," Royals general manager Dayton Moore said, referring to team chairman and CEO John Sherman. "He said, 'I trust (assistant GM/amateur scouting) Lonnie (Goldberg). I trust (assistant scouting director) Danny (Ontiveros). I trust our scouting staff,' and if they believe a player has a chance to play in the major leagues and he'll take $20,000, he told us to sign as many of those guys as we can."
The Royals' signing-bonus pool for this year's draft was $12,521,300. The international signing period is also on the horizon _ it begins July 2.
In a presentation to the MLB Players Association, MLB claimed it will incur estimated losses of $4 billion this year if a truncated season is played without fans in the stands. The Royals were projected to lose $113 million according to those estimations.
"We're going to rely on the judgment of our scouts," Moore said. "And if our scouts feel that this player has an opportunity to someday help us win a championship, we're going to sign him. And so that's how we're going to go about it. But we're not just going to go out there and throw it against the wall."
Moore noted that the smaller draft class coming in this year will receive a "laser focus" from the Royals' development staff.
He also pointed to the Royals' track record of being patient with their own players and investing in them, as opposed to being "highly transactional" when it comes to acquiring and releasing players in their system.
The Royals' decision to not cut any of their minor league players and continue paying them through the end of the minor league season may have earned them some good will.
"There will be some lining up and trying to prioritize the rest of the guys that are left on the board," Ontiveros said. "But I tell you where I think we will have an advantage with these kids that do want to sign is the relationships our scouts had with these guys. The ones that want to play, they want an opportunity and they know getting to the big leagues is the goal. I think what we provide for these kids is something that they're going to be interested in."
This year, each MLB club will take on a role similar to that of a college coach who's attempting to recruit a player to his program.
Pro scouts will be cast in much the same role as the assistant coaches for a college team, who devote large portions of their day to forming bonds with players in hopes of wooing them to their program.
Undrafted players have more options right now than they typically might in a normal draft year. College programs are facing a roster crunch between players leaving via graduation and/or the draft and spots being filled by incoming recruits.
The NCAA has granted all spring sports athletes an additional year of college eligibility, and the NCAA Division I Committee for Legislative Relief recently decided to eliminate the varsity roster limitation of 35 players and increase scholarship limits from 27 to 32 (though scholarship money may be spread thinner without the scholarship minimum of 25%).
"Unfortunately, there's only five rounds and only so many kids that can be drafted, but there's a ton of kids that want a chance to play in the big leagues, and I think we've formed some really good relationships with kids that we still like that were on board," Ontiveros said. "So we're hoping we'll have a chance to sign a few of these guys, but it's kind of unpredictable, at this point, what's going to happen."
