‘Sitting and waiting’: Wednesday’s MLB Draft brings big questions for local prospects

For draft-eligible college baseball players, what has normally been a pretty straight forward process is now uncharted territory.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s MLB Draft will be just five rounds and 160 picks, the fewest since it started in 1965. The first round of 37 picks is Wednesday, with rounds two through five on Thursday.

It’s not only the shortened draft that adds uncertainty for players. With the minor league seasons in jeopardy, what happens after a player is picked — or becomes an undrafted free agent — is quite unclear.

“I figure they’ll probably figure out the big leagues before they worry about us,” N.C. State catcher Patrick Bailey, who is projected as a first-round pick, said in a recent virtual press conference. “Pretty much anything right now is a lot of speculation, so I don’t think anything’s for sure.”

Bailey will be one of 23 prospects to appear virtually during coverage of Wednesday’s draft. He was slated as the No. 11 pick in a June 3 MLB.com mock draft, which would send him to the White Sox. Bleacher Report’s mock draft also has Bailey at No. 11, and CBS has him at No. 9 going to the Colorado Rockies.

While Bailey’s chance of hearing his name called during the draft seem to be secure, the general consensus among players is that they have no clue what will happen after the draft.

Duke catcher Michael Rothenberg and pitcher Bryce Jarvis recently spent 12 weeks among fellow prospects and current MLB players — including Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — training at Cresse Sports Performance in Boca Raton, Florida. Rothenberg said everyone’s in the same boat: “sitting and waiting.”

“They’ve all but decided the minor league season is not gonna happen this year, which is definitely unfortunate, not only for this year, but for the game in general,” Jarvis said. “A lot of people are affected by that. Definitely will affect seasons to come.”

Jarvis is No. 25 on the top-200 list, and could become the second Duke player to be drafted in the first round. Current New York Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman was the first in 2012.

“The draft is not a checkered flag for me, it’s more of a green flag,” Jarvis said. “It kind of kicks off something I’ve been working toward for a long time.”

N.C. State pitcher Nick Swiney is No. 78 on the top-200 list. He said none of the teams he’s talked to have indicated where they’d take him in the draft, but that he’s seen plenty of speculation placing him anywhere from late in the first round through the second. He also said teams haven’t revealed much about what happens after the draft. All Swiney knows is that “spring” training will take place in Arizona or Florida.

“I just have to move forward and prepare for whatever the next step in my career looks like and I just have to continue to keep getting ready, staying to the plan I had put in place when all this first started,” he said.

Sticking to a plan isn’t the easiest these days, but it’s also a sentiment teams have emphasized to University of North Carolina’s Aaron Sabato.

As the 20-year-old first baseman put it, he hasn’t had a May or June off pretty much his entire life.

“They wanna make sure you are still working, still lifting, you’re still hitting just to kind of keep your body in shape and just be ready,” he said.

The expected cancellation of minor league baseball means that players who aren’t drafted this week have less of a chance of signing as undrafted free agents. Even if they do, their signing bonus would be limited to $20,000, significantly less than what prospects drafted after round five would normally make.

No minor league games also provides more incentive for players to stay at school, where they could continue to train and play another full season before springing to the big leagues. The NCAA has said that schools may allow this past year’s seniors to return for an extra year of eligibility. Most ACC schools have said they will allow that option.

That might be especially attractive for players who aren’t picked.

While Swiney is likely to be selected, teammate Tyler McDonough, an infielder, is less likely to hear his name called. Swiney said he’s recently talked to McDonough, a draft-eligible sophomore, about the option of returning to school.

“If his name is called, he’s gonna have to weigh every single option just cause he is in a different circumstance,” Swiney said. “He still has two more years that he could really have leverage with.”

Despite all the uncertainty, most of the prospects said they are still anxious for the draft to begin.

Sabato is back home in Rye Brook, New York, where he has a batting cage in his backyard and a set of free weights he got from his grandparents. Westchester County, where Rye Brook is located, entered Phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan on June 8.

When his family gets together to watch the draft, it’ll be the first time he’s seen some of them in almost three months.

“It’s gonna be a dream come true,” he said. “I’m just really excited.”

Bailey agreed. While this year’s draft won’t be happening the way the prospect might have imagined growing up, he doesn’t think it will be any less magical.

“It’s been a dream of mine since I was a kid playing t-ball and just growing up, that’s kind of the starting line, starting flag to my dream to play in the major leagues,” he said. “I think it will be a pretty special moment.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 3:14 PM.