The 2021 Major League Baseball draft came to a conclusion on Tuesday after 20 rounds, just half of the rounds the draft had in 2019 but four times as many as the 2020 draft, which lasted just five rounds.
But if there were fewer rounds, there are also fewer minor-league teams to populate, fewer players needed. Conversely, the draft was a month later than usual, giving teams more time to look at players. In one way or another, just about everything was different.
“I feel like in baseball operations, you always want more,” said Cardinals scouting director Randy Flores. “Right? More players, more money, more dollars, more chances, more shots on goal. And this organization has succeeded at all rounds of the draft, so there’s tangible proof of picks, well before I got here and even during my time, that happened after the 20th round that then led to big-league success.
“So a natural answer is to say we want more, but at the same time, the landscape is different now. And so knowing that the landscape and the places where a player can develop and accrue at-bats or innings pitched is just different than before. And so I think we’ll know in time, whether it’s 20 rounds or 18 or 26 or 106, we’ll start seeing how this settles.”
But when it came to more time, that was very welcome to Flores and his staff. The 2019 draft, the last one held in a normal environment, was in early June. This time, it was mid-July, giving teams more than a month more to look at players.
The advantage of that was evident on Day 3 of the draft, in rounds 11 through 20, when the picks come in quick succession and less than three hours were needed to select 300 players. With their 14th-round pick, for instance, the Cardinals chose Andre Granillo, a pitcher from California-Riverside, who threw just 10 1/3 innings in his college season (with a 6.10 ERA) but who has already thrown more than that in the Cape Cod League, with a 2.46 ERA.
“What do you do with more days, what do you do with more looks?” Flores said. “In our case, we really had some confidence in some of these selections because of what they did in the month after a normal season ends. … When you have more information, you have a little bit more conviction in a tiebreaker (between players), and having the opportunity to scout (Granillo) in the Cape, we had live looks that raved about him. … That confidence (to pick him) came from what he did that we were afforded to see by those looks from the later draft.”
Of the Cardinals’ 21 picks, 12 were pitchers, four were outfielders, four were infielders and one catcher. Eighteen of the picks were college players, the other three high-school players.
“Certainly as we were looking at tiebreakers, we did lean to pitching,” Flores said. “But there is also some diversity. … It felt in the room like a blend on Day 3.”
Among the picks on Day 3 were two players who had been chosen in earlier drafts, 15th-round pick Alex Cornwell, a left-handed pitcher from USC (just like Flores was) who had been chosen by the Cubs in the 37th round in 2017, and the 17th-round pick, outfielder Elijah Cabell of Florida State, who had been the 14th-round pick of the Brewers in 2018. Cabell hit 15 home runs this season, including one measured at 489 feet, which would match the longest hit at Busch Stadium III. Cornwell missed two seasons at USC because of an unspecified injury that Flores said “the team is hopeful is in the rear-view mirror.”
One other part of a shorter draft is that it means more undrafted players, players that in a longer draft would have been chosen. The Cardinals now will look at some of those players as free agents.
“We are the beneficiaries of resources,” Flores said. “In coordinating with Gary LaRocque in the player development program, as we see what those needs are in the next few days, we are certainly open to adding away from this draft.”
