The MLB draft has gone from 40 rounds to five and teams will only be allowed to offer a maximum signing bonus of $20,000 per player.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00The sports world has taken a hit from the coronavirus pandemic, and it's forced Major
00:05League Baseball and its clubs to make a number of cuts to save costs.
00:10The draft has gone from 40 rounds to five, and although clubs will be able to pursue
00:15and sign an unlimited number of draft prospects, it comes with a cost.
00:20Joining me now from inside the Rangers is Chris Halleck.
00:23Chris, teams will only be allowed to offer a maximum signing bonus of $20,000 per player.
00:30For high school athletes and underclassmen, that's a big decision to make.
00:34I know you spoke with a few players from the Rangers.
00:37What was their take on this?
00:39I spoke with Jose Trevino, who's been in the Rangers organization for several years now,
00:44and he specifically spoke to $20,000 and how it just doesn't go that far in the minor leagues.
00:50There's rent.
00:51There's clubhouse dues.
00:52There's just a number of expenditures that that $20,000 is going to go away really, really
00:57quickly.
01:00When you're looking at that small amount of money and a lot of these high school players
01:04and possibly underclassmen have college scholarships, it's probably a safer bet for them to continue
01:10on that road to go to college.
01:12Jose Trevino also really, really stressed college education, being able to have something
01:17to fall back on in case things don't pan out with baseball, because there's a lot of players
01:21that go through the minor leagues that never end up making it to the majors.
01:25Right.
01:26So what can the MLB do, though, to incentivize players to come and play for only this $20,000
01:32maximum cap?
01:33Well, a lot of big league clubs will look at it as like, OK, this is your foot in the
01:36door now.
01:39Who knows what the situation is going to be throughout the rest of the year or even next
01:42year?
01:43We're still in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
01:45And big league clubs could be like, this is your chance to play professional baseball
01:48now.
01:49Taylor Hearn, another Rangers player who's been in the system for a while, he says that
01:55this kind of looks, you know, he kind of looks at it as like this is an investment.
01:59If you're going to invest only $20,000 into what you're doing right now, then you need
02:03to be really, really good in the short term so that teams continue to invest money in
02:07you.
02:08Because, again, this is a situation where we don't know what's going to happen for the
02:11rest of this year or next year.
02:13We do know that this is going to be very damaging to the game of baseball, possibly both the
02:18short term and the long term.
02:19All right.
02:20Yeah.
02:21Using it somewhat as motivation, it's a hard decision to make, but really appreciate your
02:24insight on this.
02:25Thank you, Chris.