Like the NFL elected to, the 2020 Major League Baseball Draft next week will be held virtually for the first time in its history. The decision was made after the NFL hosted a successful virtual draft last month, bringing in record ratings for the TV networks.
While the 2020 NFL Draft was a huge success, it remains to be seen if that will be the case for the MLB version, and that was a topic of conversation during a recent Los Angeles Dodgers Zoom Party.
Joc Pederson got the conversation started with the blunt comment that he doesn’t believe the MLB Draft will ever be as big as that of the NFL. “I don’t think so. Well, I know so,” Pederson said.
“You have guys that go straight from college basketball and football and make huge impacts in their first year. That doesn’t ever really happen in baseball. There’s usually a process of the Minor Leagues that makes the baseball draft less interesting because it’s not as relevant.
“College football is a really big event and so is March Madness. Zion Williamson for example. Everyone watched him at Duke and then watched to watch him with the Pelicans. It’s hard to compete.”
The Dodgers drafted Pederson in the 11th round in 2010 out of high school. His teammate, AJ Pollock, played in college at Notre Dame, so he brought a different perspective despite ultimately agreeing with Pederson.
“I kind of agree with Joc. When I was playing at Notre Dame, if you were to televise our games, they were about 33 degrees the whole season. You’d pan into the stands and there’s like four people,” Pollock explained.
“I think Joc is totally right. You have to pay your dues a lot more in baseball. You have to go prove yourself in multiple levels of the Minors most of the time. It just makes it hard for a fan to sit there and wait that long for a guy they just watched on TV get drafted.”
Ross Stripling grew up in Texas and played his college ball at Texas A&M, which is a big football school. He believes that football and basketball’s ability to market their collegiate players is a big reason why fans are more drawn to those drafts as opposed to baseball.
“I think college football and basketball build brands,” Stripling said. “Think about Kyle Murray and Joe Burrow. More people probably know Joe Burrow’s name than know Mike Trout’s name. It’s just the ability to build a brand for college football and basketball compared to baseball, which is probably impossible to do.”
Everyone in the Zoom Party brought valid arguments to the conversation, even if they weren’t speaking in favor of MLB.
Although it may not reach the heights of this year’s NFL Draft, it won’t be surprising to see the 2020 MLB Draft draw record ratings considering there aren’t any other sports going on during this difficult time.
This year’s draft will be shorter than usual though as the league decided to cut it from 40 rounds all the way down to five due to the financial losses caused by the pandemic.
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