It’s the first day of the abbreviated 2020 MLB draft. The Pittsburgh Pirates will be making their first two selections tonight on MLB Network, with the show starting at 7PM. Here’s what you need to know for today.
Our coverage today will include one article that covers every mock draft put out today and it will be up as soon as we can write up the first mock draft released by a top source. We use Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, Fangraphs, The Athletic (Keith Law) and ESPN (Kiley McDaniel). The article will be updated throughout the day, and to make it easy for you, we will change the title every time something new is added.
We will have our world famous (not really) Tiered Rankings for the draft. It’s the eighth year for this feature and it’s been one of the more popular articles each year on the site.
Tonight we will post a draft tracker so you can follow the draft as it’s happening and read about the players, while also seeing a list of the top names still left on the board. This is different from the normal site draft tracker (see below), which will only have the picks made by the Pirates.
Once the Pirates make their own pick, we will have an article on that player, separate from the tracker. The Pirates are picking seventh and 31st today. They are making four picks tomorrow, starting with the 44th overall selection (seven pick of the day) and that will also be televised on MLB Network at 5 PM. We will also have our player pages for each draft pick, as well as our draft signing tracker, which will be live soon. The signing deadline is August 1st this year.
After the picks are made, the Pirates will likely hold a conference call so we can get more information on the players selected.
After that, we wait to see who they will sign. I don’t think I’m forgetting any important details as we prepare for what could be the busiest day on the site this year. It’s usually up there with the trade deadline every year, so I expect it to be even busier today.
** Baseball America has a link to check out for potential sleepers in this year’s draft. All top 500 prospects, but there’s a reason to think they could be better. Also from BA, here are 13 draft prospects who impressed this year.
SONG OF THE DAY
Despite the song title, it’s a different song
DAILY QUIZ
RANDOM STUFF OF THE DAY
I’m hooked on this series. Love seeing old Americana, even though most of the towns in these videos were once bustling and now barely exist.