While the regular season hasn’t even begun, the work stoppage won’t prevent Major League Baseball from conducting its first-year player draft this summer.
With that said, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced MLB to dramatically shorten the length of this year’s draft. As a result of financial concerns across the league, there’ll be just five rounds next month instead of 40.
For the New York Yankees, this means they’ll have just three selections (rounds one, three, and four) in 2020. Since the Astros attached a qualifying offer to Gerrit Cole this past offseason and the Yankees exceeded the luxury tax in 2019, the team was forced to surrender their second- and fifth-round picks along with $1 million in international signing money.