The MLB Draft begins Wednesday and this year it will have a very different look than previous years. There will only be five rounds of the draft, and the Astros have four picks available to them. The Astros won't have their 1st and 2nd round selections because of the punishment they face from MLB, but they do have a compensatory pick at number 72 overall that they received for losing Gerrit Cole in free agency. No. 72 will be their first selection, and they will also have one pick in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th rounds. What's encouraging about this draft for the Astros is who will be making the selections.

The Astros have their new GM in James Click, and he'll clearly have a huge role. But what might surprise some Astros fans is that the two men that ran the 2019 draft when Jeff Luhnow was in charge, are still with the team and working with Click. Charles Cook and Kris Gross. Gross leads the Astros amateur scouting, and Cook was promoted to director of player evaluation last fall by Jeff Luhnow. The Astros definitely have a tough task ahead of them without their 1st and 2nd round picks, but at least they have experienced talent evaluators in the building that learned directly from Jeff Luhnow. Say what you want about Jeff Luhnow, but his resume is elite when it comes to team building and analytics.