It remains one of the biggest crapshoots in all of sport, the Major League Baseball Player Draft. Taking place over three days and including no international players, the Draft has always been somewhat of an afterthought for the casual baseball fan amidst all the goings-on in the MLB season. Like the NHL, the players selected usually take years to mature and reach the Majors, so much of the fanfare and immediate gratification that comes with the NBA or NFL Drafts, where players go from the board to the teams, is missing. However MLB continues to find ways to make the Draft more relevant to the casual fan, and even improve the Q level for the diehard follower.
Using the social space and the power of MLB Network, the league moved the Draft a few years ago to their studios in Secaucus to create more relevancy to the process. They have also engaged actively with the projected yip picks, giving those players immediate opportunities to get time in the spotlight and with the fans, and have now taken a page from the NFL and the NBA Draft Lottery by having teams bring in some luminaries from their past glory to help select the first picks and give some analysis about the current draftees, their experience going through the process, and thoughts about the organization they represent. From Hall of Famers to former executives, the studio will be chock full of relevant names that a casual fan may flip to just to hear from, and that will help move the draft picks to be more top of mind as each organization builds.
One of the more nostalgic twists for the presenter will be by the Detroit Tigers, who will have longtime baseball executive Murray Cook in their seat in Studio42. Cook, former GM of the Yanks, Expos and Reds, was one of the executives who gave current Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski a big chance early in his career. Dombrowski has had Cook assisting as a scout for several years, and the spot at the draft table will be a fitting spot for a baseball lifer.
Now those in the room will still not have the uniqueness of other sports, who now shop that seat to elite fans, some brand contest winner or even celebrities, but the step towards other faces brings much better relevance to an event which is big on mystery and long on time for today’s get it done now sports fan. Will there me live tweets from war rooms as some NBA teams have done? Maybe some a little Vine or a pinterest board created by an early dratee? We will see, as baseball is still long on tradition. More so than other sports, and the draft’s length and uncertainty doesn’t really lend itself to the hysteria and fan interest of other sports, but all in all another solid effort by MLB to find a way to make its future stars and the process behind picking them much more front and center than ever before
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