The 2022 CBA shook up the draft, curtailing the ability to tank and making experience more important. MLB teams showed that Sunday night.
FORT WORTH — Shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stepped to the podium to open a rare draft in which a first-place team was picking first.
A few minutes later, a team that nearly made the playoffs last year — the Cincinnati Reds — chose Wake Forest right-hander Chase Burns with the second selection. Not until the third pick, when the Colorado Rockies took Georgia outfielder Charlie Condon, did a team that spent last year and this year firmly out of contention make a selection.
But Bazzana was not as obvious, in large part because none of the top-rated players seemed to be guarantees to make an impact immediately. Last year’s first pick, Paul Skenes, will start the All-Star Game for the National League on Tuesday night in nearby Arlington, Tex., and his emergence has changed the future of the Pirates dramatically. Bazzana is not expected to change a franchise’s fortunes as much as smoothly slide into them.
Some of the more elite talent ended up sliding to the back end of the lottery anyway. Florida two-way star Jac Caglianone was selected sixth by the Kansas City Royals despite having generational power, in large part because of his tendency to swing at pitches outside of the strike zone. The St. Louis Cardinals, perennial winners who rarely find themselves with a chance to draft so high, took West Virginia shortstop JJ Wetherholt at No. 7. He had been in the conversation at first overall.
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