Draft question

[Guardians]

Jag brings up a question about international signees from the J2 period and whether they are eligible. His citation is from BA, which states:

The 2020-21 international signing period opens today, a signing class that normally would have started on July 2, 2020 but moved back to Jan. 15, 2021.
What is listed below are the signing agreements for all 30 teams. Those agreements are not official yet, as they are all pending each player signing his official contract, passing a physical and getting approval from Major League Baseball, the same as it is for draft picks. Many of these players reached agreements to sign with clubs years earlier, with Jan. 15 marking the first date they can sign an official contract.
Many of these players will not sign contracts today. A lot of that is related to the pandemic, including health and safety measures as teams manage who enters their academies, with MLB and the governments in these countries having different restrictions in place. Some players will sign this weekend, next week or later on in the process. The signing period is open until Dec. 15, 2021.
As players do sign contracts, we will be sharing photos of them throughout the day on our social media channels at Twitter and Instagram.

Link to the article: https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... email#Cubs

So, the point of the question is what do we consider "signed." In my opinion, signed would be announced via team and player officially. But even if a guy signs and then doesn't sign (like a couple years ago when there were a couple issues w/ PEDs and other issues), then the player would have to be dropped anyway.

[Cardinals]

In my opinion, signed would be announced via team and player officially. But even if a guy signs and then doesn't sign (like a couple years ago when there were a couple issues w/ PEDs and other issues), then the player would have to be dropped anyway.

I agree with this.

[Rangers]

I agree with you guys and the decision to move the draft back does help. It's tricky, though, and I could see some frustrating scenarios regardless of our rule. I'm at the top of the list of the guilty on this as I've done zero work on the draft but the best thing would be for us to define who - at least among prominent grey area guys - is eligible at the start of the draft.

[Guardians]

I think the tough thing with identifying eligible guys is getting a comprehensive list. There are a lot of random $10k signings that may get one mention on Twitter. But, I agree with you. I think we let people use their judgement on whether there is a risk to making a pick knowing that our rules state the player has to sign. If there's ambiguity, up to the owner to take on the risk.