It’s a completely different draft environment today than any draft in my experience, and this is my 21^st draft in some form or another.

The reason? The first round won’t start until 6 pm (EST) tonight instead of the normal 1 pm (EST), as the draft goes primetime on the Major League Baseball Channel.

This change is probably going to drive scouts crazy all day, as they will be doubling back on phone calls on signability, second guessing decisions that were made long ago, networking with other scouts and generally filling themselves with anxiety.

Some scouts handle the pre-draft anxiety, when all the work has essentially been done, better than others. Many years ago I remember calling a very well known scouting director the day before the draft to ask a couple of questions. He was obviously outside from the background noise on the phone and I asked him what he was doing.

“I’m outside gardening with my wife,” he answered.

“Then what the heck are you doing answering my call! Get back to what you were doing and good luck tomorrow.” is what I responded, and I admired him for his ability to unwind after a long and hard spring.

That anxiety is nothing compared with what the players and their families are going through. And that points out one of the really big differences with the way this draft is set up that I think has been largely overlooked.

There will be only three rounds tonight. Seeing as there are at least 75-100 players who think they are going in the first round and probably about 250 who think they are going to be drafted in the top 3 rounds, there are going to be a huge number of disappointed players. That’s nothing new, although the mid round depth of this draft inflates those numbers a bit from a normal year.

What’s different is that scouts are going to have about 15 hours to call all those disappointed players (and their advisors) and get completely new signability on them. All those players (a scout told me this morning that every high school player in Florida seemingly said they would sign for first round money only) are going to have some serious gut check time if they want to play professional baseball instead of just posturing with monopoly money.

And the area scouts are going to be going crazy tonight making all those phone calls to get all those new signabilities. The fourth round is going to be very interesting!

So if you are a player who really does want to play professional baseball this year, get your thought process together for this happening, talk to your advisor, check out the signing bonus slots for the fourth and fifth rounds, etc. It could well be you that gets passed on tonight.