TAMPA, Fla. — Less than two months ago, Christian Fedko was in Port St. Lucie with his UConn baseball team with everything out in front of him. After a strong summer in the Cape Cod League, the infielder was heading into his most important season for a college baseball player. He was set up perfectly for his junior year with the Huskies and preparing for the 2020 MLB amateur draft.
And then everything skidded to an unbelievable halt.
The coronavirus pandemic not only shut down the country and professional sports for the present, but it will undoubtedly have a rippling effect going forward on life. For college baseball players like Fedko and for the programs that they will not get to play for this season, the aftershocks of this canceled season will be felt for years.
“It’s definitely weird not knowing what is going to happen,” Fedko said. “Is (the draft) going to happen in June or July? How many rounds? Right now, all I can do is sit back and wait. I can only control what I can control.”
In some ways, Fedko and UConn’s near future was out of their control as MLB and the players association sat down to negotiate how they would handle the suspension of spring training and the postponement of the regular season. The players, motivated to protect service time and get some kind of paychecks during the shutdown, agreed to allow MLB to make major changes to the draft.
MLB is allowed to hold the draft anywhere from June 10, the original date, to July 20. The signing deadline will be no later than Aug. 1. MLB can cut the draft from 40 rounds to as few as five, and bonus pool figures will remain the same as 2019. Players will receive $100,000 upfront. The rest of their signing bonus will be paid in two equal installments on July 1 each of the next two years.
The same rules apply for the 2021 draft, which some, perhaps cynically, believe plays into MLB’s desire to contract affiliated minor league baseball teams.
But by cutting at least 20 to 30 rounds from the amateur draft, there will be hundreds of players — high school and college — who were mid and late-round prospects who will not get picked up in the normal pro baseball pipeline this summer.
Fedko was not on the list circulated to teams of the top players who were asked by MLB to submit medical reports, but he was high on some area scouts’ radars and “has a real shot” to be in the first 10 rounds, according to one Northeast-based scout.
Back in February, when UConn played a three-game series against the University of Michigan at the Mets’ spring training complex, he had a chance to build on the momentum of being a Cape Cod League All-Star.
“From where I was at a point talking to scouts and knowing my stock is higher than it ever was before, it was exciting, a dream to think about getting drafted,” Fedko said. “It’s shocking to have it all stripped away.
“But it’s nothing you can control.”
Technically, as a junior Fedko could just return to UConn and play his senior season next year. The NCAA Division I committee, however, made that a little more difficult when it granted an extra year of eligibility to this year’s seniors, but did not expand the number of scholarships available (11.7) or provide financial assistance for college teams to carry extra players.
So, for all the players not drafted in those middle and later rounds, a spot on a college team is taken away for a younger player.
“I’ve had to have some hard conversations,” UConn coach Jim Penders said. “We have juniors that I thought would have an opportunity to get drafted, mainly pitchers. But we also had an infielder who’s a Cape Cod League All Star and you know we expected to lose him. So, Friday I had a conversation with a middle infielder that we pretty much recruited to replace Christian. We’ve talked to recruits about maybe taking a gap year and waiting.
“I’ve had to have other hard conversations about ‘I can’t renew your scholarship, because I have to renew Christian’s or someone else’s,” Penders said. “Eventually the players will have to have a hard conversation with themselves about what they want to do.”
Being an undrafted free agent is not as attractive of an option as it has been in the past either. They will have their bonuses capped at $20,000. Previously they could receive up to $125,000 before counting against their team’s bonus pool.
UConn and college baseball programs around the country will have their recruiting affected for several years by the MLB-MLBPA agreement.
Fedko is mulling over his baseball future now.
He is back home in Pittsburgh with his family, adjusting to UConn’s online learning and working out in his old childhood batting cage in the backyard.
“It’s always been my dream to play professional baseball. The dream was to win a College World Series and get drafted,” Fedko said. “The coaches at UConn knew that was my dream, they prepared for it. Now, it’s a tough decision. It’s uncertain and the next year is as uncertain with maybe just five rounds again as this year. No one knows what is going to happen.”
Of course, that is not an uncommon situation to be in these days. No one knows if there will be an MLB season in 2020 or what “normal” life will be like when this pandemic is over.
Fedko understands that his baseball dream is one small piece of life that will have to find its way back. Penders too knows that dealing with the fallout is not as hard as watching the heart-wrenching tales of death and sickness across the country.
But now, they are both learning to navigate this new reality and baseball and figure out what it means for the future.
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