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Tonight begins the 2016 First-Year Player Draft. Also known as the MLB Draft. Also known as the Rule 4 Draft. The draft will begin at 6 pm this evening with the Phillies up first. The first day of the draft will cover the first two rounds including the competitive balance rounds. That will comprise the first 77 selections of this year's draft of which the Brewers will make three selections. The Brewers will have the fifth overall selection in the first round. Their next selection will be the 46th overall selection. They will also have the 75th overall selection as part of the Competitive Balance Lottery Round B.
The second day of the draft begins on Friday at noon and will cover rounds 3-10. The final day of the draft is Saturday and it begins at 11 am. That will cover rounds 11-40. You can watch the draft on MLB Network or MLB.com tonight. Friday there will be coverage on MLB.com. And Saturday there will be coverage on MLB.com.
Despite finding themselves with the fifth draft position, the Brewers will "only" have the 8th largest draft pool allotment: $9,364,300. That's because some teams got extra picks via free agent compensation and the draft lottery. The Brewers only got a CB-B pick in the lottery which is why their pool isn't larger. It's still a good position to be in.
The Brewers first round pick is valued at $4,382,200. Their second pick is valued at $1,386,900. And their CB-B round pick is valued at $851,900. It's important to understand that while these draft slots have dollar values assigned to them, teams aren't required to spend exactly that amount on the player taken with that selection. They can spend more or less. It's only important that they stay within their overall pool allotment. Overages incur penalties. Less than 5% over is just a tax on the overage. But 5% or more and teams lose picks in future drafts.
One other thing to take note of: Sometimes teams will draft a player they think they can sign for "underslot" in order to use that money on another selection. Teams with larger pool allotments have greater freedom to play around with this sort of tactic.
You can find the full draft order here.
You can read more about all the draft pool allotments here.
Here are some of the most recent mock drafts. If you're not familiar, mock drafts are compiled by industry insiders based on information available to them. It's never meant to be taken as a guarantee, but looking at them can give some idea of what to expect on draft day.
Baseball America Mock 5.0 (click on the Mock Archive to view previous iterations)
Keith Law/ESPN Mock 3.0 (Klaw always drops his final mock the morning of the draft so keep an eye out for that if you're interested)
Jim Callis/MLB Pipeline Jun 7th Edition
Also it is always beneficial to read the player capsules on various top prospect lists to familiarize yourself with the Brewers picks. Here are a few of the more notable ones.
And of course be sure to take a look at Kyle's recent article that highlights some of the names the Brewers have been attached to in various mock drafts. You can find that here.