Sign up for an annual HawgBeat subscription and get $50 for Arkansas gear on the Rivals Fan Shop ––> details
College Students, get a year of HawgBeat coverage for just $11.95. Request details via email from your school account (.edu) to nchavanelle@yahoo.com.
Last week’s report by the Associated Press that Major League Baseball is considering skipping its amateur draft this year gave Arkansas fans a glimmer of hope.
With the start of the season delayed indefinitely and details of what it might look like when it finally does begin still up in the air, MLB is preparing to take a large financial hit and, according to the AP’s Ronald Blum, might cancel the draft to save about $400 million that would go to draftees in the form of signing bonuses.
If there is no draft, the Razorbacks’ talented juniors - such as Heston Kjerstad - would seemingly have no choice but to return to Fayetteville and their highly touted 2020 class would also have to come to school.
However, head coach Dave Van Horn said in an interview on 103.7 The Buzz that he would be “really surprised” if that is the route MLB took. Instead, he sees the league just altering the draft.
“I’ve stayed as close to that as I can, talking to a couple of big league general managers of a couple organizations and I really believe that there will be a draft,” Van Horn said. “I think it might be a little shorter - instead of 40 rounds, maybe it’ll be 20, maybe it’ll be 15, I have no idea.”
In that scenario, it is a virtual lock that Kjerstad - a projected first-round pick - would be drafted, as would Casey Martin and Casey Opitz. Van Horn has said since last week that he believes those three players have played their final games as Razorbacks and maintained Tuesday that the scouts love them.
Even if the NCAA goes through with legislation that would grant them an extra year of eligibility, making them juniors again in 2021, that trio would have to turn down high six- or seven-figure signing bonuses to come back to school.
“They’ll draft those kids high and - whether they go in the first round, second, third, fourth, fifth - they’re going to go high enough to get paid pretty good and I don’t see any of them coming back unless something crazy happens,” Van Horn said. “If they’re awarded their year back, they could come back and have some bargaining power next year and (if) they didn’t get the money that they wanted, it’d make it a lot easier for them come back, but I don’t see that happening.”
A shortened draft and extra year of eligibility would, however, make it more likely for players such as Zebulon Vermillion, Matt Goodheart, Kole Ramage and Braydon Webb to return in 2021.
In a normal year, those four players would almost certainly get drafted and begin their professional careers this summer because they are juniors who’d still have leverage to get the biggest signing bonus possible. Seniors in college baseball, on the other hand, can’t leverage going back to school and routinely get a fraction of what underclassmen receive, regardless of their talent level.
“It’s the ones that are in the middle, it’s the ones that are not sure yet - are they going to be a 10th-round pick, 15th-round pick?” Van Horn said. “It’s really hard to say.”
Another reason an MLB Draft probably happens this year - whether it begins as scheduled or not - is that canceling it would create a logjam of talent for the 2021 draft. That deeper talent pool would lead to some first-round picks becoming second-rounders, second-rounders getting pushed back and so forth.
It could also impact the free-agent market next offseason, as pointed out by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark. Teams that already don’t like sacrificing draft picks to sign free agents who receive qualifying offers would be even less likely to do so if there is a loaded draft class.
What Van Horn is more concerned about now is the timing of the draft. It is currently scheduled for June 10-12, with the signing deadline in mid-July.
If the draft gets pushed back much more than that, it could leave college coaches scrambling to replace unexpected departures or make the scholarship numbers work for unexpected returners.
For teams like the Razorbacks, the timing and length of the draft could also have an impact on their high school signees. Arkansas’ 2020 class is ranked fourth nationally by Perfect Game and features six top-100 prospects. Van Horn has routinely said it has a chance to be special depending on how many kids make it to campus.
“I want them to have a draft,” Van Horn said, “and I want them to have it as close to normal as possible and get these kids signed so we know where to go from there.”
