Another look at O's options for the No. 2 pick

When the First-Year Player Draft begins on Wednesday night, the Orioles will have some big decisions to make. They may well be choosing between one of three options with their No. 2 overall pick.

* Take a real good hitter in Arizona State first baseman Spencer Torkelson, if he doesn't go 1/1 to the Detroit Tigers, or add Vanderbilt's Austin Martin. He features some defensive versatility and is the best pure hitter in the draft with plus bat skills and bat speed and the potential to add power.

* Take the best pitcher in Texas A&M lefty Asa Lacy. He's got poise, smarts and four solid pitches, with a fastball that can touch 98 mph. Add him to Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall and dream on hitting on three frontline pitchers.

* Take a player that will sign for an underslot bonus and go big with the savings later in the draft. An underpay at No. 2 and an overpay at No. 30 could allow the O's to emerge with two of the top 15 ranked players. The risk is that the player or players you hope will fall to you do not get that far.

In a conference call with Baltimore reporters yesterday, Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said option three is harder to pull off in a shortened five-round draft.

"I think that this short draft will constrain your ability to spread bonus pool money around or at least the opportunity to do so," he said. "If a team does sign their first pick for less than slot, they're going to be under more pressure to apply that savings in the first few rounds. Whereas in a normal draft, if you don't sign one player with all the money, you can gradually spread it out over the rest of the draft.

"That is something we are having to think about. But even in the Astros-Carlos Correa example, we feel it's important that if you are taking a guy with a high pick that he's your favorite guy. So we're focusing on taking the guy we feel is the best player for us, the best investment. We will listen to and consider signability factors, but you know, it's important that we maximize our draft class and getting that first pick right is the most important part of that."

Has the rebuild taken a hit?: The question comes up a lot. How is the O's rebuilding effort set back by both a reduced draft this year along with the potential of having no minor league games in 2020?

Yesterday, I asked Elias for his take.

"It's not ideal, but I think every team across baseball is getting hurt by this on a number of levels," he said. "If you are a team that is not rebuilding, your window might be closing and you're missing out on your players maximizing their playing time.

"For a team rebuilding like ours, yeah, the repetitions at the minor and major league level - for our young players at the major league level that's development that's not occurring - I've said before the only consolation is that every team is in the same boat.

"I've tried to keep a glass-half-full attitude about the draft. I'm happy we have our six picks and that we're getting our top five rounds. But it does, it's not fun, that we can't continue to add players to this system beyond the fifth round. We feel like we're good at picking late. Last year, we took a lot of really good pitchers on the second day of the draft. And really bolstered our system. And you saw they pitched well at Aberdeen.

"We're just not getting all that. We're going to try and sign as many kids as we can after the draft. I don't know what that number is going to be. I don't know how these kids are going to make their decisions. No one really knows how that will go. But we're content we're getting our five rounds in and we're going to do the best we can."

O's look to be aggressive pursuing undrafted players: Elias used the word "recruit" when talking about trying to sign undrafted players. No doubt this year it will be more about players picking teams than the other way around with a max bonus of $20,000 for players not selected in the five rounds. The Orioles will need to convince some young, talented players to pick Baltimore.

"We're totally prepared for that," Elias said. "We've got recruiting materials prepared in terms of video and also written materials about the opportunity that exists in our system. We've had relationships that we've been building with these kids as an amateur scouting department and our player development department is involved in those efforts as well.

"We think that this is a terrific place to come sign if you're an undrafted free agent for a number of reasons. We are on the cutting edge of player development. We saw a big step forward from our players last year. We have more on the horizon we will be introducing. And maybe even beyond that, we are rebuilding and this is a rebuild that is focused on homegrown players and a homegrown pipeline. And a strategy that will be reliant on internally grown players. So the opportunity to not only get better, but actually play for the major league team and play for the Orioles is much greater here than it would be for a club that is not undergoing that strategy. This is the place to be if you're a player and you want to make the big leagues."