MLB Draft Thread

The Rule 4 draft (AKA baseball’s amateur draft) will be held on Tuesday, June 6 and Wednesday, June 7.

MLB.com will be doing a live feed this year, beginning at noon on Tuesday. The entire first round will be announced live by MLB’s exec VP for baseball operations, Jimmie Lee Solomon, exclusively on MLB.com beginning just before 1. MLB.tv will be covering the first five rounds of the draft, and MLB Radio will have the entire draft. (IIRC, XM channel 175 had the whole thing last year, and will probably carry it again).

John Sickels and the regulars conducted their five-round mock draft over at Minor League Ball over the weekend.

First round.
Supplemental 1st round.
2nd round.
3rd round.
4th round.
5th round.

Some interesting choices in there.

BA’s Will Lingo speculated that KC may (again) be moving away from Andrew Miller for the #1 overall pick. The sticking point appears to be financial, of course:

Miller reportedly wants a major league contract, the price of which started at $6 million and may now be eight figures. At the same time, Kansas City doesn’t want to exceed the $4 million bonus it paid a year ago to No. 2 overall pick Alex Gordon, considered a superior talent to Miller.

I certainly wouldn’t want to pay more for Miller than Gordon.

Lingo also comments on a possible reason why some high-profile draft-and-follows (hello, Beato) didn’t sign:

MLB, which has established a system of recommended bonuses for every pick through the first 10 rounds, also provided bonus recommendations for significant draft-and-follows this year, sources said.

Those recommendations apparently played a big role in the Mets’ decision not to sign righthander Pedro Beato, and the Devil Rays’ decision not to sign righthander Bryan Morris. Both are potential first-round picks in this year’s draft.

BA has its complete list of confirmed draft-and-follow signings from the 2005 draft, along with fifth-year seniors who signed.