The first 10 picks, which will inexplicably take 90 minutes, will air on NBC and Peacock.<\/a> After that, it\u2019ll stream on MLB.com, MLB TV and MLB+, and for those who have cable MLB network will carry picks 11-40. Because why would your own network cover the whole first day of your sport\u2019s draft?<\/p>\nDay one includes the first four rounds, while day 2 on Sunday will cover rounds 5-20. That\u2019s an upgrade over last season, as the event isn\u2019t unnecessarily split into three days. Day 2 will also stream on MLB.com and the apps.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays will have a fairly quiet day one. Their first pick, which would normally be 29th overall as the World Series losers, will be bumped back 10 spots to #39 because they tried to hard to win spent over the second luxury tax threshold last season.<\/p>\n
They also forfeited their second round pick for signing Dylan Cease after he turned down the Padres\u2019 Qualifying offer. He\u2019s been more than worth it, posting what\u2019s shaping up to be arguably his best statistical season and making a strong case to be in the Cy Young mix, but given the state of the rest of the team they\u2019ll miss the opportunity to strengthen the farm.<\/p>\n
After #39, they\u2019ll pick again at #103 at the back of the third round and #131 in the fourth. On day two, they\u2019ll select #164 in the fifth round, and 29th in each round thereafter.<\/p>\n
Their bonus pool of $5,543,100 is the second smallest ahead of only the Dodgers, who both pick after them and took two Qualifying Offer penalties in addition to the luxury tax knock back. Nearly half that money, $2.57 million, is attached to the #39 pick. As a reminder of the rules, teams pay a 50% surcharge for exceeding their bonus pool by up to 5%. About 20 teams, including the Jays, always use that 5% overage. But by crossing 5%, the penalty jumps to a 75% surcharge and the loss of a future first round pick. Nobody has ever paid that penalty, and the Jays won\u2019t start now, so 105% of the pool less a dollar ($5,820,254) is functionally a hard cap.* That pool has to cover all of their picks in the first 10 rounds, plus any bonus amounts in rounds 11-20 larger than $150,000. If a player in the top 10 rounds fails to sign, the team forfeits the entire bonus amount associated with that pick, which can wreak havoc with plans if they\u2019d expected to move money around between picks. For that reason, expect that teams almost always have had tentative contact with players taken in the first few rounds and know what it\u2019ll take to land them.<\/p>\n
*Teams can also give prospects a $2,500 roster bonus that doesn\u2019t count against the pool. That allows the Jays to move $22,500 around, but doesn\u2019t materially change the situation.<\/p>\n
Strategically, their lack of resources puts them in a bit of a bind. Normally, teams have three general draft strategies available. First, they can offer an over slot bonus in the first or second round, picking up a single prospect they love at the cost of having to find some bargains later. The Jays did that in 2020 for Austin Martin and in 2022 for Brandon Barriera, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s likely here for a couple of reasons. First, Austin Martin and Brandon Barriera, and the guys behind them didn\u2019t exactly rescue those strategies. Second, because in those years they had a lot of draft capital (the 5th selection in 2020 and three second round picks in 2022), so even with a deficit to make up they could land multiple significant prospects. That\u2019s very different from 2026.<\/p>\n
Second, teams can play it roughly straight, giving them the \u201cexpected\u201d amount of money to work with later on. The Trey Yesavage, Gunnar Hoglund and Alek Manoah picks in 2024, 2021 and 2019 fit that mold for Toronto, with pretty good success.<\/p>\n
Third, they can cut a deal for a player willing to sign for less than the slot bonus at their pick to move some money down the draft, maybe getting multiple solid prospects instead of one top guy. Jojo Parker and Arjun Nimmala represent moderately under slot deals in recent years. The Jays won\u2019t have a specific player in mind at #103 or 131 if they go that route, just the expectation that someone exciting will be around when they next pick that they can use money on. They might also wait and take a shot after the 10th round on a top tier high schooler who slides because a high bonus demand or a strong commitment to go to college make them too risky to take with a slotted pick. That was the play last year, trimming money through most of the top 10 to give $1.7 million to Blaine Bullard in the 12th round.<\/p>\n
My sense is that the Jays are opportunistic, rather than having a clearly discernible philosophy. They were tied pretty heavily to Jojo Parker last year at #8, but Yesavage, Arjun Nimmala in 2023, Barriera, Hoglund, and Martin were all somewhat out of the blue. Those six guys represent all four major demographics in the draft (two college pitchers, a college hitter, a high school arm and a pair of high school bats), and signed at different prices relative to the slot where they were chosen. They also have totally different profiles, from a command artist in Hoglund to Yesavage\u2019s nasty stuff and from ultra-polished hit tool over everything Martin to tool shed with swing and miss concerns Nimmala. The only common thread is that if you had been watching public scouting draft boards in the weeks before each of those drafts you\u2019d have expected them to go sooner than they ultimately did.<\/p>\n
That seems likely to continue in 2026. They\u2019ll let who\u2019s on the board at #39 dictate the shape of the remainder of the draft, probably with a preference to cut some money but a willingness to go to or above slot for the right player.<\/p>\n
Speaking of players, this is normally where I\u2019d take a second post to profile a half dozen likely options. That\u2019s an exercise in futility when the first pick is outside the first round, though. Instead, tomorrow I\u2019ll take a look at each of the four demographics and a handful of names I think might be out there for their first pick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 MLB draft kicks off this Saturday, at 1:00pm ET. Because of MLB\u2019s ironclad commitment to preventing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82,278363],"class_list":["post-787852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-toronto-blue-jays-mlb-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}