Here’s the 2022 Draft order

It marks the second time in four years the Orioles have the top pick after they selected Adley Rutschman, currently the No. 1 prospect in baseball, in 2019. Baltimore also had the top pick back in 1989, taking Ben McDonald.

The D-backs (No. 2), Rangers (No. 3), Pirates (No. 4) and Nationals (No. 5) round out the top five. The Nats haven’t had a top 10 pick since 2011, when they took Anthony Rendon at No. 6, a year after nabbing Bryce Harper No. 1 overall in 2010 and Stephen Strasburg with the top overall selection in 2009. The Cubs, picking at No. 7, are in the top 10 for the first time since taking Ian Happ at No. 9 in 2015, the last of four straight top-10 picks.

The Mets will pick twice in the top 15, getting the No. 11 pick as compensation for not signing 2021 first-rounder Kumar Rocker, the No. 10 overall pick, as well as their regular pick, now at No. 14. The Astros will be back in the first round for the first time in three years after forfeiting their first-round pick in 2020 and 2021 as punishment for sign stealing.

BA: Too Much Of A Good Thing? Pairing MLB Draft, Futures Game Creates Sensory Overload

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But when the draft wrapped two days later, it seemed that many in the industry were saying that maybe it’s possible to have too much of a good thing, after all.

The combination of a longer prep time for the draft—compared with its traditional June date—plus the Futures Game, plus the draft itself, plus the three-week signing period leading up to the Aug. 1 deadline, plus the MLB trade deadline, left many front office executives we talked to wondering when they would next get to take a breath. As a result, they worried that maybe something would be missed along the way.

It has meant that the scouting season for the 2022 draft is being compressed and disrupted. On the Friday before the Futures Game, the High School All-American Game was played at Coors Field. Elijah Green, Termarr Johnson, Druw Jones and Nazier Mule were among the players showing what they could do in a preview of next year’s draft.

There were plenty of scouts there, but not many scouting directors. As one director noted, it was difficult to bear down on the class of 2022 until they had the 2021 class drafted and signed.

With the July draft date and Aug. 1 signing deadline this year, most of the premier summer events, including the Cape Cod League and USA Baseball’s Collegiate National Team, were either winding down or already done by the time the 2021 draft cycle was complete.

What Goes on in Draft Rooms

Chairs are thrown?
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Look, draft day is just plain fun and exciting. Some teams have their entire staff in suits; good food is brought in. It’s a celebration of a job well done and the anticipation of adding new players to your organization is palpable. Behind the scenes, agents have been ringing scouts and executives all day to politic and posture for their clients. Some take the calls, others let them go to voice mail; I know of one executive who turns his phone off from the morning of Day One until the first pick is made. By this time, the board is lined up and teams have spoken to the clubs ahead of them to help assess who might and might not be available by the time they are put on the clock. Some teams are forthcoming with such rumor-mill level information, others not so much. The day drags, and it feels like it takes forever for the draft to actually start in the early evening. For teams with late first round picks, there’s another two or three hours to wait between the first pick and their selection.

Then the draft finally begins. Some people are assigned magnet duty, removing each player’s magnet from the board after their name is called in order to avoid the massive embarrassment of selecting a player who has already been drafted. Picks are entered on a computer via MLB’s eBIS system, then confirmed, then announced to the public. As picks come off the board, the set of players teams are thinking about for their first pick starts to dwindle. Sometimes there are still multiple options, sometimes just one, and sometimes teams have to improvise, though rarely to the point of desperation. Everyone lines up players differently and if a team picking 15th lines up their top 15 players, chances are good that between evaluation differences and signability picks ahead of them, three to seven of those first 15 are going to be on the board for them.

As a team’s pick approaches, it’s almost time for outgoing calls to begin. There is a strategy to timing here: you don’t want to start too soon and give an agent too much time to shop your offer around, but you don’t want to start too late because you need to allow some room to get a deal done. And let’s be clear. The overwhelming majority of picks you hear on Day One of the draft are made with both sides having already agreed upon a bonus before the selection. There are reasonable rules provided by MLB as to how you’re allowed to frame those negotiations, but there is still plenty of room to allow the process to play out as it does. With somewhere between five and 15 minutes to go, the calls begin. Messaging from both sides of the table can vary wildly, but most parties are honest in their responses. Often, subtle pressure is applied by teams in the form of, “We have three guys lined up and we’re offering X dollars. You’re our top guy for this offer, but if you decline, we’re going to move to the next player on our list.” The most frequent response from agents is, “I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.” From there, agents can respond with “yes,” “no,” a counter offer, or more information, such as “Don’t worry about my player, he’s going to go a couple picks ahead of you,” or “Don’t take my player, he has a better offer in terms of money behind you.”

Whoa – MLB “Expected” to Add Trading of Draft Picks in the Next CBA?!

Buried in a very long (and very good) roundtable-type piece on the state of baseball at ESPN, Kiley McDaniel slipped in this little nugget on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (emphasis mine):

There’s also a cascading set of secondary issues that will greatly affect young players who are increasingly the most valued and important players in the game.

On the simple end of things, changing Super Two arbitration and ending service-time manipulation will change when you see young potential stars on the field (hopefully sooner) and how good your team will be. One step deeper than that, the expected addition of trading draft picks, the addition of an international draft and the trading of picks in that new draft could completely change team-building strategies for years to come while solving some of the competitive-balance issues that have plagued the sport. If a new GM steps into a farm system with a big league club full of players who aren’t their type, or an existing GM wants to change strategies on a dime, this additional talent-based liquidity will make trades much easier to pull off while also empowering scouts to have a real reason to scout every player on Earth.

I’m sorry, did you say the expected addition of trading draft picks? As in, the inside dish expectation right now is that the new CBA will include the ability to freely trade draft picks? Like, tradable next year? Hello!