The 2019 MLB Draft begins on Monday, and the Los Angeles Dodgers will have two selections in the first round as they hold pick No. 25 after winning 92 games in 2018, and they also have the No. 31 overall pick, which the club received as compensation for failing to sign J.T. Ginn in the first round a year ago.
The Dodgers have gone a number of different ways with their first-round picks since Andrew Friedman took over as president of baseball operations before the 2015 season. They selected a prep right-handed pitcher in Ginn last year after taking a college right-handed pitcher in Walker Buehler in 2015.
The Dodgers drafted prep infielder Gavin Lux in 2016 and a college outfielder Jeren Kendall from Vanderbilt in 2017.
Friedman addressed if he and his team of scouts have any specific organizational needs going into this year’s draft, and he denied it, saying their plan is just to take the best player on their board when it is their pick, via SportsNet LA:
“Best available player. Our scouts do such a tremendous job, starting last summer, all the way through the fall, through the spring. There’s a lot of good, healthy debate in our room. I think in the last four years there’s been a real impact in terms of the guys we’ve added. Not just the flashy Round 1 guys, but we’ve taken a lot of really good picks in Days 2 and 3. You go back and look at the Manny Machado trade, the number of Day 2 and 3 draft picks that we hit on that allowed us to get Manny without trading from the very top end of our farm system our guys have done a really, really good job of combining the experience of the room and the information we have, and lining things up and then just letting the board kind of fall how it will.”
The slot pick value for the 25th selection this year is $2,740,300, while the 31st pick is $2,312,000. Overall, the Dodgers have $8,069,100 in bonus pool money this season.
In addition to the pick the Dodgers received as compensation for Ginn, they also received another pick when Yasmani Grandal declined their qualifying offer and signed with the Milwaukee Brewers.
However, L.A. subsequently lost a draft pick when they signed A.J. Pollock, as he declined the qualifying offer from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Related to Grandal and Pollock and another layer to the 2019 MLB Draft are Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel. The expectation is both pitchers will sign once the Draft begins, as clubs would no longer lose a pick.
