Major League Baseball has determined the orders of Competitive Balance Rounds A and B for the 2020 amateur draft, Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com reports. Comp Round A takes place after the first round of the draft, while Comp Round B goes down at the conclusion of the second round. The selections are comprised of picks awarded to teams that are considered in the bottom 10 in terms of market size and/or revenue.
Here’s the order of the two rounds, per Mayo:
Round A
31) Baltimore Orioles
32) Pittsburgh Pirates
33) Kansas City Royals
34) Arizona Diamondbacks
35) San Diego Padres
36) Colorado Rockies
37) Cleveland Indians
38) St. Louis Cardinals
Round B
68) Miami Marlins
69) Detroit Tigers
70) Tampa Bay Rays
71) Milwaukee Brewers
72) Cincinnati Reds
73) Minnesota Twins
Unlike the typical draft pick, these choices can be traded, which means the order listed above isn’t necessarily etched in stone. However, these picks can only be traded during the season, and they can change hands just once. Furthermore, qualifying offer decisions from this offseason will shake up the draft order to some extent. White Sox slugger Jose Abreu and Twins right-hander Jake Odorizzi accepted those offers, but the eight others who received them rejected. Each of those calls will have an impact on the 2020 draft order.
*This is an updated version of a prior post from MLBTR’s Jeff Todd.
Tigers got a competitive balance pick this year? God is good
means there’s another recession on the door, later Ford!
You’re two for two
If God “helps those who help themselves”, He had nothing to do with the Tigers’ draft subsidy.
K kiddo
You should learn to take a joke
The real joke is the Cardinals getting a pick at all.
So does my Orioles
Cards and Pads are lucky the league is generous. neither team should need the league’s help to stay competitive.
or the reds – cards though bug me every year when they get one.
reds draw half the fans and have the smallest market
Yup but their fans will hear nothing of it. Cardinals are just a step below big markets as far as moves they can make. Padres have been tanking for years and just handed out 2 mega deals. Neither of those teams deserved a free picks.
Cards getting a pick is a joke. What the heck is the threshold. It can’t be payroll or earnings
It’s market size. Cant blame the teams because the fans show up. Cardinals are consistently 2nd in attendance behind only the dodgers who have a population of 10x more to draw from.
Ever been to St Louis? Other than touring budweiser, riding up the arch, or fighting emminent domain, not much else to do….
If you havent been there….dont.
Yes unfair! Cardinals and Brewers get extra draft picks for free, without them the Cubs would blow them out of the water the past few years on the division race
It’s a joke. I don’t mind the Brewers but the cardinals are consistently near top in payroll and they have a huge market in multiple states.
1 billion dollar tv contract. I can’t believe they don’t get 2 free high draft picks
STL metro area population is 3 Million. Chicago is 10 million. Cry more.
Cards area is far greater than the SMSA and they’re virtually the only game in town.
You are right. The poor cardinals deserve a free first rounder every year. Hopefully the cardinals loophole gets closed in 2021
It won’t. And the fact you get so upset by it makes it even better. You clearly don’t understand how market size works
It would make more sense if they had low attendance like TB or Miami.
What we do understand is that St. Louis getting a pick is a total joke and everyone who is not a Cardinal ‘homer’ knows it.
It’s market size, period. Can’t dispute a fact. Cards fans show up. Not the team’s fault they have the strongest fan base.
Except the Padres need more than the league’s help to stay competitive. Sure they do well on farm system strength rankings and prospect lists, but have you seen their won-loss record? That is still the only way to determine competitiveness. At least for now.
Refuse to believe OAK isnt a bottom 5 in revenue!
Just bc the owner acts like they’re a bottom team doesn’t mean they are
Oakland is disqualified by market size. It’s the same reason they were phased out of the revenue sharing.
How in the world are the Padres awarded a pick??? Last time I check they handed one guy a $140M contract and another guy a $300M contract. There are some other teams here too that don’t deserve an extra pick. Seriously how are these decisions made and by who???
Deserve? You would rather them not get a pick than hand out 50M of guaranteed contracts? Cool
Oh good, the Cards get a competitive balance pick. And Warren Buffett needs food stamps.
Clearly you don’t understand how the process works.
On the contrary, I think he does…
This is a joke. The Cardinals have the 38th pick and the Marlins the 68th pick? The Cardinals have a huge fan base. Just because the city of St Louis isn’t a large metropolis, doesn’t mean they have low revenue. The Cardinals have no business getting the 38th pick.
Cards have a huge fan base and it’s virtually the only game in town., Can’t imagine how MLB determines market size but it’s definitely not accurate.
It’s by population. Not hard to understand. Why should the cardinals be penalized because the fan base consistently buys tickets.
Why should they be rewarded?
It’s not just St. Louis. It’s the entire state of Missouri and a big portion of southern Illinois plus other surrounding states.
Their fan base is much larger than Metro SL and they overlap with KC’s area to the West, South through Arkansas, East through S. Illinois to Tenn and North to S. Iowa.
Exactly!
Because they are in a small population area. That’s the rule.
Nah, Royals, Cubs, Reds, White Sox all draw from the area you outlined. Hahaha!!
That’s not how this works, friend. You forget there are other MLB teams in the area. Cards have small population. Fans just show up.
By population.
How does accepting a Qualifying offer affect market size or revenue?
It just adds other compensation picks.
Giving away free draft picks enables the billionaire pretending to be poor behavior thats plaguing baseball. The Dbacks for example got 3 comp picks last year for losing free agents and deciding they can’t afford Goldy anymore. They don’t need anymore help.
Very good that the Orioles have the 31st overall pick. They need it desperately.
How do the Diamonds get 34? The Cards are at least in a small market. Phoenix is the 5th largest city and 11th largest metro in the country.
The Tigers got pick 69. They’ll screw themselves like usual.
At #69 they might as well use a dart board.
How is that different from all their other picks???
A huge difference. For their regular picks, they use dice.
eenie meenie miney mo
I love when teams like Oakland cry poor and small market but MLB deems them…too competitive to get one of these competitive balance picks?
If you want to talk pure swindling, Beane, Moneyball and the A’s ownership group has put the fanbase through things I didn’t think were possible. Cry poor constantly but have billionaire owners who $50M is like walking around money to; claim to be small market but MLB literally says “you are too competitive to get this draft pick used to balance out talent”.
There’s absolutely zero good reason why they don’t invest in players, but one really bad one: personal greed. MLB needs to ban these owners who are doing nothing but rob the game of money for themselves.
St. Louis is ranked 7th most valuable franchise by Forbes. $2.1B needs a competitive balance pick?
The fact that STL gets a competitive balance pick is an annoying quirk of the system. It’s anti-competitive.
It’s definitely not in the spirit of the rule. New collective bargaining in 2021 will hopefully fix the problem.
It’s not a quirk. It’s population-based. Not exactly a loop hole when it’s at the very heart of the rule.
Franchise value has nothing to do with it. It’s based on size of metro area.
The Rockies pick 36th? The team that draws 3 million plus fans a year!!?? And the Cardinals? That gold mine!!??
This whole system is a little weird if you ask me — like an additional first round pick is a really big advantage. And we’re not even necessarily talking about bad teams here — then on top of some teams getting these extra picks, factor in that other teams will lose a pick for signing a player who rejected a qualifying offer and it’s just rewarding tanking waaayyy too much. By sucking, not getting fans to go to the games and not signing FAs a team can essentially wind up with an extra several million $ in draft bonus $ and 2+ extra picks (if they offer a player a QO, it’s rejected and they sign elsewhere) — idk it just seems to be kind of counter-productive and a little overkill especially given how highly teams are valuing top draft picks and prospects these days.
For example a team like Detroit — the only reason they’re on this list is because of how God awful they’ve been. If they had a competitive team and signed some big name FAs to draw in fans they could essentially be a “big market team” — just look 5-10 years back when they signed Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez, Verlander etc all to big expensive contracts. And now because they’re so bad — they’re getting rewarded for it by being given an extra draft pick. Idk I get it to some extent to balance out for the teams in small markets — but I also think the whole balance of draft-picks and FAs etc is somewhat out of whack across the league.
Yep, it’s an idiotic system
Lysander? you quoted Shakespeare.
MLB and MLBPA need to agree to allow all draft picks to be traded in the next cba
God no. That would be awful. If you think the playing field is unbalanced now, it’ll only get worse then because teams like the Dodgers or Yankees won’t even have to give up their farms to buy players in July.
Boy, if I was taken #69 overall, you’d have to put that on my Tombstone. Nice.
What a Joke this competitive balance pick nonsense is. How about everything be the same for all teams. What a crock
@Bush 1 – you are absolutely right! This is a complete joke. What does market size have to do with a team’s competitiveness? St. Louis continually draws Top 5 crowds in MLB and is one of the most valuable franchises in MLB, but they get an extra first round pick? The entire MLB draft process is broken (including this Qualifying Offer non-sense, where teams get penalized for signing a free agent). MLB needs a complete overhaul of it s draft process, including the international draft too. What a complete sham this is.