Major League Baseball, like many sports leagues around the world, has been shut down indefinitely because of the growing threat that is the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Spring training has been suspended Le'Veon Bell Jersey since March 12 and Opening Day has been pushed back to at least mid-May, and that remains subject to change as the situation develops. , among them the annual amateur draft. With no games being played, there is nothing to generate revenue, and wanted to make cuts to the draft to ease their anticipated cash flow problems. Here are the changes made to the 2020 draft:The draft can be held as early as June 10, the original start date, or pushed back as late as July 20. The signing deadline will be no later than Aug. 1.MLB can cut the draft from 40 rounds to as few as five, and bonus pool figures will remain the same as 2019. Typically there is a 3-5 percent raise each year.Players will receive $100,000 upfront. The rest of their signing bonus will be paid in two equal installments on July 1 each of the next two years.Undrafted free agents will have their bonuses capped at $20,000. Previously they could receive up to $125,000 before counting against their team's bonus pool.Most of the same rules apply in 2021 as well. MLB can cut the draft to 20 rounds next year (not five) and the bonus pools will again stay at 2019 levels. Bonuses will be deferred in the same way next year and undrafted free agents can not receive more than $20,000. The earliest the draft can go back to normal is 2022.Some colleges and high schools in warm weather states played a few weeks worth of games prior to the pandemic, but scouts have since been pulled off the road and amateur baseball has been shut down. There are no games and no one to scout them. scout draft-eligible prospects years in advance and will have to rely on that old information in this year's draft. "It really makes it more of a challenge. You haven't seen the player. Did he get stronger? It makes it hard. It's a little bit of a challenge," . "Rely on quality information (we already have) and work with that." , scouts will be allowed to contact amateur players this month. MLB recently shut down all scouting operations and prohibited such contact. Teams won't be able to scout players, but they will be able to get to know them, gauge their makeup, their work ethic, and their desire to turn pro, among other things. Major League Baseball is expected to allow scouts to contact amateur players again beginning next week, per multiple sources. MLB had prohibited that behavior back in mid-March. R.J. Anderson (@r_j_ Frank Clark Jersey anderson) Although the draft is the best way to acquire cheap controllable talent, the one thing MLB teams value above all else, MLB has tried to save money through the draft for years now. Amateur players are not members of the union, so the MLBPA has been more than willing to use their rights as a bargaining chip. They did it again this year to get favorable service time terms. The changes to this year's and next year's draft will have ma sive long-term ramifications for everyone involved. Players, teams, colleges, coaches, analysts, trainers, baseball at large, so on and so forth. Here's what the changes to the draft, which were spurred on by the pandemic, will mean for baseball going forward.Mid-range draft prospects will be hurt the mostFor the most part, the top 100 or so draft prospects will be fine this year. They'll have to wait two years to get their full bonus, but they will still be drafted, and they'll lock in a life-changing sum of money. The bottom-tier prospects, the guys who receive bonuses as small as $1,000, are Demarcus Robinson Jersey still in the same boat as always, only now their $20,000 bonus cap is official policy rather than unspoken.Last year exactly 100 players received six-figure bonuses in rounds 6-10, and another 293 players received six-figure bonuses in rounds 11-40. Those mid-range prospects, the kids good enough to get a decent payday but not good enough to be selected near the top of the draft, will be the players hurt most by this year's shortened draft. For them, it's now $20,000 or nothing. Consider the two options a college junior projected to go in rounds 6-10 this summer will have after going undrafted:Sign for $20,000 as an undrafted free agent.Return to school for your senior year, then reenter the draft as a senior with no leverage next year.That $20,000 bonus cap for undrafted free agents is at the top end of what the typical college senior receives each year. The vast majority of college seniors sign for $10,000 or le s. So, if you're a good college player projected to go in Austin Blythe Jersey rounds 6-10 this year, your expected $125,000 to $300,000 bonus has become $20,000 regardle s of whether you sign this year or next.There will now be 35 rounds worth of players (plus another 20 rounds next year) left to seek baseball elsewhere. Many will go to college and play baseball, though that creates another set of challenges, which I'll detail in a bit. Some other players will simply take the $20,000 bonus and turn pro, because getting into profe sional baseball is really hard (and getting harder), and this might be their only opportunity to do so. And, inevitably, there will be players who would've been drafted this year (but now won't) that will quit baseball entirely. Some will join the workforce because they can't afford to do anything else. Others may focus on another sport, like football, because that's their only path to a college scholarship. MLB has effectively encouraged two-sport high schoolers to go play that other sport.For multiple reasons, baseball will lose talent this year. Kids will go undrafted and have to give up baseball because it is no longer financially feasible, and that's a shame. was an eighth-round pick and reigning two-time Cy Young award winner was a ninth-round pick. Those long shot succe s stories will be few and far now.Colleges will be overwhelmed with talentFor all intents and purposes, MLB clubs are outsourcing player development to colleges. They're drafting and signing the cream of the crop, and will check back in a few years to see how the other kids develop. That sounds good in a vacuum, though college coaches generally prioritizing winning, not development. Pitchers are often overused in college. The shortened draft ensures more recruits will wind up on campus next year and give college programs the most talent they've had to work with basically ever. So much round 6-40 talent will be college-bound now. The thing is, college roster sizes are not changing to accommodate all the extra players. Here are the NCAA roster limits:35-man rosters11.7 scholarships (some programs don't even fund that money)Maximum 27 players on scholarship (the minimum partial scholarship is 25 percent), which provides some roster crunch Joe Montana Jersey relief, but not much.The shortened draft means that not only will a couple hundred players go undrafted this summer, but many will also be squeezed off Division I rosters.