Some actual baseball to discuss – well, not actual baseball games, let’s not get carried away here – as the major league draft gets started this afternoon at 4:00.

The first round plus the free agent compensation picks will be tonight, selections one through 37. Then tomorrow at 2:00 they will finish the shortened-for-this-year-only five round draft. It will all be televised on ESPN, ESPN2, and MLB Network.

The Detroit Tigers have the No. 1 pick, and the general consensus is that they are going to select power-hitting Spencer Torkelson out of Arizona State University.

Seattle has pick No. 6. The Mariners have six total selections in the five round draft, picking at Nos. 6, 43, 64, 78, 107 and 137.

This year’s draft class is thought to be particularly strong in college pitchers – look for a lot of them to be drafted in the first round. Seattle has selected a college pitcher in the first round each of the last two years (Logan Gilbert in 2018 and George Kirby in 2019).

After the five round draft is over, teams are free to sign undrafted players for a maximum signing bonus of $20,000. This is the most interesting part of the new rules, in my opinion.

There is going to be a lot of potential MLB talent that goes undrafted. How serious is this $20,000 cap? How is it being policed? Will teams that are committed to stocking their farm systems find ways to skirt it?

It hearkens back to the pre-draft days in the 1950s and early 1960s, when good scouting included building relationships with amateur players in order to beat other teams to sign the players. Are the Mariners good at this? Who knows?

Some MLB teams are going to sit out the post-draft free for all, and others are going to go all-in with gusto. It’s a fascinating situation. Over the next few years we’ll be able to look back and see how it worked out.

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