Pirates farm director Larry Broadway calls 5-round MLB draft 'a challenge' for club

Pittsburgh Pirates senior director of minor league operations Larry Broadway called reports the 2020 MLB Draft will be reduced to five rounds “a challenge” Saturday morning in an interview on 93.7 FM.

MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed in March to allow the league to reduce the draft from 40 rounds to a minimum of five rounds because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think it’s a challenge. It’s definitely a challenge. It’s a challenge everybody is going to face,” Broadway told The Fan’s Dan Zangrilli on Bucco Talk. “We’re typically used to ingesting 30-35 players out of the domestic draft and undrafted free agents. To have potentially five, or less than five or five to 10 out of the draft and potential free agents, that’s very different and that will also impact that landscape of what it will look like next year.”

The Pirates will have six picks in the five-round draft, including the seventh overall selection and No. 31 overall in the competitive balance round. They have an $11,154,500 draft pool to sign those picks and can give $20,000 signing bonuses to undrafted free agents. The virtual draft is expected to be June 10-11.

Last year, the Pirates signed 38 draft picks to bonuses estimated at about $12 million, including seven players in the first five rounds. No. 1 pick Quinn Priester, a right-handed pitcher, signed for $3.4 million. With the unknowns surrounding whether there will be a minor league season, the Pirates are awaiting MLB directives.

“There’s a lot of questions to be answered,” Broadway said. “It’s going to be a fun challenge to be able to think about things differently, a challenge we have a bunch of people ready to take on as soon as we can understand what the constraints are a little bit better.”