This was no ordinary amateur draft. The coronavirus shut down the college baseball season not 20 games into the 2020 year. Most high school teams around the country hadn’t even begun. The Oakland A’s, like every other team, couldn’t unleash its team of scouts into the ballparks for further evaluations on prospective draftees. There were no face-to-face meetings with those players, their coaches or families.
All the necessary evaluations were pieced together from already collected information and video from previous seasons, with newer technologies like Rapsodo and TrackMan coming up clutch to fill in the necessary gaps.
With a draft date and format unknown until May, the A’s prepared their big board as if it were any other 40-round draft.