SI's Bri Amaranthus and Chris Halicke discuss the impact a five-round draft will have on the Texas Rangers and all the teams in Major League Baseball.
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00:00 MLB's decision to cut down the draft from 40 rounds to five is insane.
00:05 Apparently there was a huge divide between front offices. Some were pushing
00:10 for a longer draft while others really wanted the draft to be as short as
00:14 possible. The cost-cutting decision is of course going to affect all of the
00:18 players who would otherwise be drafted after round five, but Chris how does this
00:23 specifically affect the Rangers? Yeah the draft is going to look very very
00:27 different this year. Instead of the traditional 40 rounds there's only going
00:31 to be five rounds. That obviously cuts things way down the normal but this is
00:37 one measure that MLB is taking to prevent you know to implement cost
00:42 savings. They're having no money come in right now, no gate receipts, no ballpark
00:47 money, no I mean no TV revenue right now because there's no games being played. So
00:54 obviously this is a you know a drastic measure that MLB had to take but you
01:00 have to think about the effect that this is going to have not just on the Rangers
01:03 but on teams all over Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball and
01:07 it's gonna have major effect on players coming out of high school. For players
01:12 you know normally playing their last year of college what do they do? There's
01:16 there's a lot to consider here and you look at like players on the Rangers
01:20 roster right now a player that I look at like Jose Trevino who was a sixth round
01:25 pick and he even tweeted about it a few days ago saying you know like this hits
01:30 different because I would have been drafted if this would have happened the
01:33 year that I was I was drafted. And that's a pretty you know whenever you look at
01:37 it from that perspective this is a very you know unprecedented situation that
01:43 baseball is in right now. Obviously it's not anything that they wanted to do but
01:47 this is something that they feel like they have to do in order to prevent the
01:52 amount of the amount of money that's going to be spent that's normally spent
01:55 on all of the prospects that come out of the draft. MLB teams will also have the
02:02 ability to sign players after the fifth round but to a maximum bonus of $20,000.
02:08 It's not a lot of incentive for players to you know turn down a scholarship to
02:13 go sign for $20,000 when they would normally be a sixth or seventh round
02:17 pick and get a higher bonus probably. So it's definitely an unprecedented
02:21 situation. There's a lot of there's more losers than winners in a
02:26 situation like this but unfortunately whenever a pandemic shuts down the
02:30 baseball world and there's no money coming in drastic steps have to be
02:34 have to be taken.