Bird-dogging

Bird-dogging

 

For reasons best known to itself, the players’ association has agreed to allow baseball owners to reduce the number of rounds in the next two drafts, to as few as five rounds this year and twenty in 2021.  Not only that, undrafted players can be signed to a maximum bonus of $20,000 before a penalty set in.  Somewhere, Branch Rickey is stirring.

 

For teams that still believe in scouting, this is a godsend, a way to stock up on cheap talent.  Yesterday’s NYT noted Paul Goldschmidt (eighth round), Jacob DeGrom (ninth) and Albert Pujols (thirteenth) as recent late-round revelations.  The Times being forever New York, it missed the White Sox very own Mark Buehrle, taken in the 38^th round of the 1998 draft.

 

Theoretically, a team could load up on thirty sixth-round draft choices.  That possibility must be stirring Charles Darwin as well as Branch Rickey.  I mean, talk about survival of the fittest.  The team acquiring the lion’s share of this undrafted talent would be stoking position battles up and down its minor-league system.  That’s not terribly fair to players, but it sure helps the organization.

 

Assuming it has enough scouts in the field to identify the undrafted talent, that is.  My guess is that many, even most, teams have quietly gone about the business of reducing the number of scouts in the field as they rely evermore on analytics.  Well, the next two baseball drafts will definitely favor old-school front offices, if there are any.