MLB Proposes Removing High School Draft Picks
Under the latest CBA proposal, MLB would remove the ability for the next Konnor Griffin to enter professional baseball out of high school
Once upon a time, Major League Baseball’s amateur draft was 50 rounds.
Most of the picks after round number 20 were a pointless exercise in low probability contingency plans.
After the 20th round, teams would load up on college seniors, junior college sleepers, and prep players who they had no shot of signing.
Take a look at the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates draft, for example. This was one year after MLB reduced the draft to 40 rounds. In the 40th round that year, the Pirates drafted Bryan Baker out of high school.
Baker had a commitment to North Florida. The Pirates spent their entire bonus pool, and didn’t have money to sign him for more than $125,000. Baker ended up going to college, was drafted in the 11th round in 2016, and is currently in the Majors as a reliever.
The Pirates would have only signed Baker if something went horribly wrong with the selections of first rounders Austin Meadows or Reese McGuire. Even in that scenario, there were a dozen unsigned players from rounds 20-40, including six college juniors, four JuCo players, and two other prep players drafted higher than Baker who probably would have received priority.
In 2021, MLB teams started paying minor league players a fair wage. Around the same time, they shortened the draft. The 2021 draft was the first season where the draft was shortened to 20 rounds, not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 draft.
With fewer players entering professional baseball via the draft, and international spending limits also in place, MLB also removed several of the lower level minor leagues.
The Impact of Cutting 20-30 Rounds
Once upon a time, the Pittsburgh Pirates had short-season teams in Morgantown and Bristol.
Morgantown played in a short-season A-ball league that was known for stocking college draft picks the year they were drafted.
Most of the post-10th round picks went to this level, including picks after round 20. With the cut to only 20 rounds, this level was also eliminated.
Bristol played in a short-season rookie ball league that was a half step above the Florida Complex Leagues. This league allowed younger players to get away from the complex and experience living on their own while playing professional baseball. It included JuCo players from the current draft, and prep players from previous drafts who weren’t seasoned enough for full-season ball.
After MLB removed these leagues, they introduced the MLB Draft League and other affiliated leagues for non-professional players.
Morgantown, along with former Pirates affiliate the State College Spikes, joined the Draft League.
Bristol and the Appalachian League converted to an MLB-affiliated summer collegiate league, giving college players a place to showcase their abilities ahead of the draft.
Other teams went independent. The West Virginia Power, formerly the Low-A affiliate of the Pirates before being replaced by Greensboro, joined the independent Atlantic League, and renamed themselves the Charleston Dirty Birds.
There were some changes within the official minor league baseball structure.
The Florida State League was previously a High-A affiliate, but converted to Low-A. This allowed teams to have their Low-A affiliate in the same town as their minor league complexes, which greatly reduced travel costs. The South Atlantic League converted to High-A, which moved Greensboro up a level as an advanced league for recently drafted college players.
Major League Baseball ultimately offloaded these extra development leagues, trimming their own internal operations, while still maintaining the purpose of the original leagues.
Morgantown and State College still receive draft eligible players every year, right out of college.
The difference is that these players are now showcasing themselves for MLB teams to be considered for the draft, versus getting their first opportunity to prove why an MLB team took a chance on them in a round that no longer exists.
Bristol still receives the players who would have gone very late in the old drafts, and who aren’t selected for the higher profile Draft League. The Appalachian League still operates as a league for lower ranked college players to showcase themselves, again without MLB teams committing resources to the development.
Under the old system, before players received a fair wage, MLB teams only had to invest a few thousand on a signing bonus and a few thousand dollars a year to take a chance on a post-20th round player. The total cost was usually under $10,000 total. In fact, that amount usually could cover two later round college seniors.
Now, Complex level players receive around $20,000 per year, and Triple-A players receive a minimum of around $36,000. Teams also provide in-season housing, transportation to the park, two meals per day, a $31.50 per diem, health insurance that expands beyond the player being released, and the player has more control over their name, image, and likeness.
With costs rising for each individual player, it’s easy to see why MLB wanted to reduce the total number of players in minor league baseball.
The Impact on and from the Pirates
There was a time when the Pirates had upwards of ten minor league affiliates, depending on how many FCL and DSL teams they had. The Pirates alone have cut three teams from what they had before the overhaul of minor league pay.
The impact of these changes for the league was that more players ended up going to college.
The implementation of the draft bonus pools in 2012 started pushing more players to college. Prior to that, teams could spend whatever they wanted on the draft, which made it more likely that they would sign later round prep players, or even JuCo players who would otherwise go to Division I for further refinement.
In 2011, the Pirates broke the old system.
They spent over $17 million in draft bonuses, which was a record at the time. By comparison, they’ve only gone over $17 million once since the draft bonus pool system was implemented in 2012. That was 2023, when they spent $17,130,800 on all bonuses, including most of their $16,185,700 pool. The upcoming draft has a $19,130,700 pool, which will set a new franchise record.
Josh Bell was the player who broke the old system.
Bell sent a letter to teams telling them not to draft him, stating his intentions to go to college. The Pirates drafted him anyway with the 61st overall pick, and gave him a record $5 million bonus to change his mind.
The Red Sox were reportedly furious.
They wanted Bell, and unlike free agency, Boston didn’t think that throwing a lot of money at a player would get him to sign.
Tyler Glasnow and Clay Holmes were top ten round picks in 2011 who both signed for large bonuses. Holmes received a record $1.2 million in the 9th round. The draft was starting to become expensive for teams, as there were no spending restrictions, and big spenders like the Pirates throwing money around.
After the bonus pool was added, players like Glasnow and Holmes needed to be drafted within the first 50-100 picks in order to receive comparable bonuses. Bell needed to be drafted in the top ten rounds.
This greatly reduced the amount of high school players who turned pro. It also moved the best college players up from rounds 11-20 into the top ten rounds, and moved the best 21-40 round players inside the top 20.
The college system became the new lower level development network for Major League Baseball. Former big bonus, projectable prep players would go to college and develop until they were first rounders. Former fringe college draft picks would showcase themselves in the new draft leagues for consideration of a pick.
The 2011 draft was expensive for the Pirates in part they had the first overall pick. The Pirates drafted Gerrit Cole with the pick, and still loaded up on prep players like Bell, Glasnow, and Holmes. They also signed three additional top ten round prep players (Colten Brewer, Jake Burnette, Jason Creasy), and one additional pick beyond the 10th round (12th rounder Candon Myles). After the 20th round, they added 12 college players, including a few from the JuCo ranks.
By comparison, the Pirates had the first overall pick in 2023. They took Paul Skenes, again taking the top college arm. This time around, the draft restrictions limited them to a single over-slot prep player. They took Zander Meuth with the 67th overall pick. They did go over-slot on 12th round college pick Khristian Curtis, which is looking like a good move.
Despite Curtis reaching Triple-A as a promising prospect, the combination of Meuth and Curtis is a far cry from Bell, Glasnow, Holmes and others under the pre-bonus pool system. Small market teams like the Pirates found a competitive edge through the draft, which was taken away with the changes in 2012.
The changes that reduced draft rounds had the same impact on the competitive edge of lower ranked draft prospects.
One of the college players drafted after the 20th round in 2011 was 30th round pick Matt Benedict, a college senior out of Western Carolina. Benedict is currently the Pirates’ assistant director of international scouting.
Benedict spent the rest of the 2011 season with State College, playing at a level that is now the MLB Draft League. It’s possible he could have gone inside the 20th round under the current system. What wouldn’t have changed would have been his 2011 assignment. Today, he would have been playing in State College just to get noticed as a potential draft pick.
MLB didn’t lose that lower level development pipeline. The lower-level pipeline was absorbed by college baseball, and fringe-college players now have to perform in draft and collegiate leagues in order to have a shot at going professional.
The next Collective Bargaining Agreement could bring further changes that would not only boost the college baseball pipeline and reduce the minor league systems, but make it more difficult for fringe-players to have a shot in pro ball.
No More Prep Players?
Once upon a time, the Pirates drafted a young man named Konnor Griffin.
Actually, that wasn’t that long ago. Griffin is barely 20 years old. And he plays in the Major Leagues.
The Pirates drafted Griffin out of high school in the first round of the 2024 draft. He quickly made his way to the Majors after one full season of pro ball, and has already signed an extension with the Pirates through 2034.
According to Baseball America, the latest proposal from Major League Baseball in the early Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations is the elimination of high school draft eligibility.
This means players like Griffin would have to go to college for two seasons before getting a shot at going pro. Right now, Griffin would be mentioned as a first overall candidate for the upcoming draft, versus being in the Major Leagues.
Along with the elimination of high school players, MLB’s proposal would reduce the draft to 12 rounds. That makes sense when the entire high school pool is eliminated.
This would be a massive change, greater than the bonus pool implementation in 2012, or the minor league restructuring in 2021.
Look no further than the Pirates as an example of how this change would impact the current system. It’s not just Griffin.
Seth Hernandez was drafted out of high school in last year’s first round. He’s currently pitching in High-A during his first professional season, and is already one of the top pitching prospects in the game. Under the proposed new system, Hernandez wouldn’t be draft eligible until 2027.
If this system is implemented, the best high school players could opt to go the JuCo route to shorten their college time, allowing them to enter the draft earlier than if they went to a Division I school.
This proposal would further boost the college baseball ranks, ensuring that every player passes through that system before turning pro. College baseball would be guaranteed to have the best American-born players before they turn pro, similar to what the NBA did with their own draft years ago.
Baseball America notes that MLB’s proposal comes with assurances that they wouldn’t reduce the number of MiLB affiliated teams from the current 120. Aside from the fact that they’d be reducing minor league jobs with the reduction of draft rounds, MLB teams could still reduce the minor leagues.
One way would be to turn Low-A into a complex league.
Currently, the Pirates have two teams in Bradenton. The FCL Pirates are a rookie level team, featuring the lower drafted prep players from 2025, along with international players making the jump to the US. The Bradenton Marauders play across town in Low-A, featuring lower drafted college players from 2025, along with younger players making the jump from the FCL for their first full-season.
With fewer players entering pro ball, teams could turn the FCL into a pure development league, with scrimmage games played on the backfields under controlled rules. These controlled games would allow innings to be ended according to pitch counts versus outs, and would allow teams to customize situations with runners on base, without the situation occurring naturally.
This possibility would then allow the Low-A affiliates to replace the Complex League as the first stop for official games. Anyone who wasn’t ready for official games would remain at the minor league complex for what would amount to endless Spring Training.
MLB doesn’t need to further reduce teams, because that change has already taken place. The proposed changes for the upcoming CBA would further strengthen the college ranks, along with the draft leagues, by further reducing the amount of players in professional baseball.
There were other proposed changes that Baseball America reported. Those included slashing draft bonuses by 50%, expanding pick trading, and hard draft slots that wouldn’t allow for the current system of offering over-slot bonuses to get a player to sign.
The Pirates have over $19 million available in their bonus pool this year, which is the highest of any team. Despite having the fifth overall pick, they’re in a better position to end up with the most talent in this draft than the first overall team. All of that would depend on how they manage their slot spending.
Under the new proposed system, they’d be spending around $9-10 million, with the ability to trade for additional picks and space. However, they would no longer be allowed to pay rounds 5-10 less money in order to go over-slot on a second rounder. This would further reduce the ability to get additional high ranked players by stacking the spending on fewer top 10 round picks.
Baseball America also noted that MLB proposed a similar draft structure for international players, complete with a similar bonus pool as the draft.
With the draft compensation cut by 50%, this would ultimately mean that the international side was getting the other 50%, and the former international bonus pools would be eliminated. This would result in teams spending less for amateur talent acquisition.
The Pirates have a little over $8 million to spend on the international side this year. They’ve already spent over $5 million in reported bonuses, and the signing period lasts six more months. Under the proposed changes, their total budget for amateur player acquisitions would be cut by $8 million.
It doesn’t matter this time if teams are being reduced. With amateur money being reduced, the player pool would also be reduced, thus cutting MLB’s financial responsibility of running a larger minor league system.
The Biggest Risk With the New Proposal
There are some obvious downsides to these proposed changes, aside from preventing the next Konnor Griffin from arriving in the Majors at age 20.
If this change was made for the 2027 draft, MLB teams couldn’t draft the next Seth Hernandez, and Hernandez himself wouldn’t be eligible as he was already taken in 2025. There would be a two year reduction in draft talent before the high school players forced to go to college in 2027 would end up eligible for the draft in 2029.
The bigger risk is from a development standpoint. The college ranks would not only get stronger, but colleges would assume a greater responsibility of the development of the game’s future.
When teams used to be able to sign as many high school players as they could, the argument was that it was more beneficial to a pro team to control the development of a young player in a fully developmental environment, versus sending them to college to pick up bad habits from a win-now environment.
This was especially true for pitchers, whose arms have been known to be abused by college coaches trying to advance in the College World Series.
Any player going to college wouldn’t face development geared at a 10-15 year professional career that might end in the Majors.
Instead, the focus would be winning at all costs for 1-2 years, with no regard for development in the pursuit of a longer baseball career that reaches the highest levels.
It’s easy to see the downside to the future of the league if these changes involve the college ranks becoming an unavoidable step for every player’s development.
The Lone Upside
Once upon a time, the Pittsburgh Pirates won a World Series.
That last happened in 1979.
The song “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins is ten years older than Konnor Griffin.
It was also released three years after the Pirates last made it to the NLDS.
Major League Baseball had a fight for a salary cap system in 1994, which resulted in a strike that cancelled the 1994 World Series.
Financial parity wasn’t added to the game, and ever since the same trend has existed on both sides of the aisle.
MLB rules for free agency and player acquisition always tend to favor the largest markets, who have no restrictions on talent acquisition at any level, and who can complain to remove any edge gained by a smaller market.
Player salaries have grown for the best players, but the large majority of the league has been left out of that cut of revenues. The last time I checked, the median salary was around the league minimum.
For decades, MLB has focused on maintaining the advantage of their big market teams, while the MLBPA has focused on maintaining the advantage of their biggest stars.
This has led to a situation where teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers are almost guaranteed of reaching the playoffs every year, while small market teams need everything to go right just to get into the Wild Card round.
Major League Baseball needs an economic overhaul. That’s not just a salary cap to reduce spending at the top, but a salary floor that would lift the teams and players at the bottom.
Such a system would only work with fair revenue sharing, like every other professional sports league has. Teams like the Dodgers can no longer be allowed to retain hundreds of millions of dollars in local revenues each year, allowing them to out-spend most teams before ever receiving a dime of national revenues.
MLB has been pushing for a cap in the early CBA negotiations. The MLBPA would need to push for a salary floor and revenue sharing on the other side to make a cap system work.
If such a system were implemented, the draft and minor league development would naturally become more standardized, and the importance of amateur talent acquisition would be reduced. Teams like the Pirates would actually have a fair shot at adding talented players and competing with teams like the Dodgers.
Fans in Pittsburgh wouldn’t have to watch the next Barry Bonds or Andrew McCutchen or Paul Skenes play in Pittsburgh for only a few seasons while knowing that player would inevitably be playing the remainder of their careers with a larger market team.
Konnor Griffin might be a Pittsburgh Pirate for his entire career if the league had a more competitively balanced financial system.
Major League Baseball is going to be arguing for spending less money in every proposal they make. They’re also going to try to hide this fact. In this latest proposal, they stated they won’t be reducing the amount of teams, but just using the Pirates alone, the financial reduction would be $8 million and fewer minor league players being employed each season.
The only way the league will get to a competitively balanced system would be if the MLBPA defends these cuts to the bottom, while conceding cuts to the highest paid players to pay for a rising floor.
The end result should be a fair revenue split between the teams and the players, while also having a fair revenue split between the teams themselves in order to provide competitive balance and a market where 30 Major League teams have an equal chance to sign any Major League player.
Last time this was attempted, the league lost the World Series.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the league loses the 2027 season this time around.
The alternative would be a continued chipping away at players and teams at the bottom of the economic scale, which will eventually result in the league losing everything in the future.
Until the next time I go live…
-Tim Williams