Who might the Dodgers pick in the MLB Draft?

The 2022 MLB Draft is nearly here, with the three-day affair in Los Angeles and once again lumped together with All-Star Game festivities for reasons I cannot adequately fathom except for spite.

Here are all the details of this year’s draft, which begins on Sunday and runs through Tuesday.

When is the draft & how can I watch?

Sunday is the showcase day for the draft, with the first two rounds televised by both ESPN and MLB Network beginning at 4 p.m. PT. Sunday covers the first 80 picks, which includes Competitive Balance Rounds A and B.

Those first two rounds are at XBox Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, and every team will have a representative on hand. For the Dodgers, this is Steve Sax. Sunday will also broadcast on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM.

The rest of the draft has far less fanfare, relegated to a downtown hotel and streaming on MLB.com.

Monday covers rounds 3-10 beginning at 11 a.m. PT. Tuesday features the final ten rounds, also beginning at 11 a.m. PT

When do the Dodgers pick?

With the second-best record last year, the Dodgers would have normally had the 29th pick in the first round. That got pushed back one slot because the Mets have a compensatory pick at No. 11 for failing to sign last year’s No. 10 pick, Kumar Rocker. But instead of picking 30th in 2022, the Dodgers saw their first selection drop by 10 spots because they were in the highest tier of competitive balance tax last year. So their first pick is No. 40.

A pair of big-ticket, qualifying-offer free agent deals affected the Dodgers in a few lower rounds. For Corey Seager signing with the Rangers, Los Angeles got a compensatory pick after the fourth round. But for signing Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers lost their second- and fifth-highest picks, which meant bye bye to their second round pick and that extra Seager pick.

The Dodgers have 19 picks in 20 rounds, and bye virtue of having the penultimate selection in every round and for not having a second-round pick, the Dodgers’ draft bonus pool of $4.2 million is the lowest in the majors. All signing bonuses for picks in the first 10 rounds count against the bonus pool, and the amount of any bonus over $125,000 for picks in rounds 11-20 or undrafted free agents also gets added to the pool.

Who might the Dodgers take with their first pick?

As you might have noticed, it’s been quiet on the mock draft here for a while. Some of that is because of bandwidth and not enough time to devote to it. But also, most mock drafts tend to stick to predicting the first round, and the Dodgers’ first pick at No. 40 is technically in the second round.

However, a few recent national mock drafts have included some players the Dodgers might be interested in. Here are a few either mocked to LA, or that the Dodgers have some sort of interest, along with their draft prospect ranking at Baseball America:

• Dalton Rushing, Louisville catcher* (Carlos Collazo, Baseball America), ranked 44th at BA
• Eric Brown, Coastal Carolina shortstop (Kiley McDaniel, ESPN), ranked 55th at BA
• Jacob Misiorowski, Crowder JC (Missouri) RHP (ESPN & Keith Law, The Athletic), 67th
• Malcolm Moore, McClatchy HS (Sacramento) catcher (ESPN), 66th

*The Dodgers seem to like the current catcher from Louisville who they drafted with a high pick.

For more in-depth potential Dodgers draft minutiae, I highly recommend reading Dustin Nosler, who has been compiling profiles of potential LA selections for the last month, including Brown, Misiorowski, and Moore. Nosler’s latest draft profile is Gavin Turley, a high school outfielder from Arizona.

How long do teams have to make picks?

This varies by the round, with more time for the earlier rounds, and nearly speed reading by Day 3. The time between selections is as follows:

• First round & compensation picks (picks 1-32): 3 minutes between picks
• Competitive Balance Round A (picks 33-39): 2 minutes between picks
• Round 2 & Competitive Balance Round B (picks 40-80): 1 minute between picks
• Rounds 3-10 (Monday): 1 minute between picks
• Rounds 11-20 (Tuesday): no time between picks

Have the Dodgers ever picked 40th overall before?

Why yes, and I’m glad you asked. Back in 2005, the Dodgers selected a right-handed pitcher out of the University of Tennessee named Luke Hochevar with the 40th pick. That was a compensatory pick for Adrián Béltre signing as a free agent with the Mariners.

The Dodgers could not sign Hochevar, who opted to return to school. He pitched well enough to picked first overall in the 2006 draft by the Royals, so his gambit paid off. It also pushed down the other highly-touted pitching prospects in that draft one slot. After the Tigers at No. 6 took Andrew Miller, the fifth college pitcher selected in the first six picks that year, that left the Dodgers at No. 7 to take a Texas high-school left-hander who turned out to be pretty good, by the name of Clayton Kershaw.

It’s a hefty burden to expect his year’s No. 40 pick to be linked to two Hall of Famers, but with the draft you never know.