PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) - Pittsburgh Pirates Assistant General Manager Steve Sanders joined Dan Zangrilli Saturday morning on Bucco Talk and they began their conversation looking ahead to the 2020 MLB Draft and what were some of the challenges preparing for this year's draft during a pandemic.
"It's certainly been a new experience for all of us," said Sanders. "No matter how long you've been involved in the draft or baseball for that matter. This is certainly a new way of doing things, being over Zoom, working through technology and not being able to be in the same room and communicate face to face."
The players that are available in the draft have been scouted for the past couple years so they have video on the players, but one of the biggest differences preparing for this year's draft is that they have just listened to each other more.
"What we hear, listening to one another, you know obviously having virtual or remote draft meetings and talking to each other through telecommunications, it's forced us all to be better listeners and talk though things a little bit more," said Sanders. "While we've seen less, ultimately we still got to get to the same endpoint of lining these players up. So, it's quite possible that things we may have seen over the course of the last 8, 10 or 12 weeks of normal season that would have played themselves out on the field. We're forced to put together the pieces a little bit and talk our way through it more."
With only five rounds in this year's draft, what effect will that have on the undrafted player market? Will more college juniors who aren't drafted be more willing to go back to college for another season?
"It really is a personal decision," said Sanders. "I think the circumstances, the changes to the draft, the changes to college baseball and the changes to the world are impacting everybody differently. I think what we are trying to avoid is sort of making assumptions or really trying to anticipate how this is going to change not just the draft, but how people make decisions about signing a professional contract, about returning to school because ultimately there's a lot of things that go into those decisions."
Dan and Steve also take a look at what the undrafted player marked could look like this year with teams only being allowed to spend up to $20,000 on each player that they sign and will that be a factor in whether a player signs a contrat or goes back to college for another year.
Listen to the entire interview with Pirates Assistant General Manager Steve Sanders below: