EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsWith 166 days until the expiration of Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement and the fear of a long-lasting lockout to follow, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association met Thursday for a bargaining session. During the meeting, MLB proposed a drastic overhaul to the game's amateur-entry system. Here is everything you need to know -- and it is plenty.What was in the proposal?The proposal covers domestic and international amateurs and covers a significant amount of ground. The most important elements include:High school players would be ineligible for the domestic draft and need to be at least two years removed from graduation to be selectedAn international draft would be implemented for every player outside of the United States, Canada and Puerto RicoThe domestic draft, currently 20 rounds, and international draft both would last 12 roundsThe minimum age for international entry would move from 16 to 18. The minimum age for the domestic draft would be 20 on Sept. 1. College players would be eligible after their sophomore year, as opposed to their junior year currentlySigning bonuses for both would be hard-slotted and capped at $200 million -- around what international players get now and slashed in half from the current system for domestic players.All draft picks can be tradedA reduction of draft lottery teams and elimination of competitive balance choicesCollege baseball, which MLB in a statement called "an increasingly important pathway," would receive an influx of high-end talent annually and serve as a mandatory stop in the domestic development pipelineUndrafted players from both pools could sign for a maximum of $10,000There would be no cuts of minor league teams in 2030, when the 120 player development licenses that MLB grants to make up Minor League Baseball expireCurrent major leaguers reacted swiftly, with the union issuing a statement that said the proposal "would cripple the next generation of players and damage the future of our game."That is a lot. So let's start from the start: Why are they proposing banning high school players from the draft?MLB's stated objective: "By creating a draft system centered around college-aged players and making most college players eligible one year earlier, more players will benefit from both a college education and an elite development environment while reaching professional baseball -- and ultimately the major leagues -- more quickly. We believe these changes will strengthen college baseball and deepen fans' connection to the next generation of major league stars."The league for years has talked about removing high school players, a staple of the system since Montana high school left-hander Les Rohr went to the New York Mets with the second pick in the inaugural 1965 amateur draft. College players come with experience against consistent high-level pitching and reams of data to indicate what sort of player they will be. High school players are riskier by nature -- but the reward is profound.Take a look at the 12 largest contracts in MLB history:Juan Soto, New York Mets, OF: $765 million (Dominican Republic international free agent)Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers, DH/SP: $700 million (Japan)Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Toronto Blue Jays, 1B: $500 million (Dominican Republic international free agent)Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels, OF: $426.5 million (High school)Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers, OF/IF: $365 million (High school)Aaron Judge, New York Yankees, OF: $360 million (College)Manny Machado, San Diego Padres, 3B: $350 million (High school)Francisco Lindor, New York Mets, SS: $341 million (High school)Fernando Tatis Jr., San Diego Padres, OF/SS: $340 million (Dominican Republic international free agent)Bryce Harper, Philadelphia Phillies, 1B/OF: $330 million (Junior college)Giancarlo Stanton, New York Yankees, OF/DH: $325 million (High school)Corey Seager, Texas Rangers, SS: $325 million (High school)That's right: one American college player. And players believe that's the explicit purpose of the proposal: to push back the age that the best players debut and mitigate the megadeals that can come from the golden combination of precocious talent coming up at a young age.Under the MLB proposal, Pittsburgh Pirates rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin would have finished his sophomore year at LSU less than a month ago and not be drafted until this July. Detroit Tigers second baseman Kevin McGonigle and Seattle Mariners shortstop Colt Emerson, both scheduled to go to Auburn before being taken in 2023 under the current system, would have instead been drafted in 2025 and now in their first full season of pro ball. Maybe they'd be like Nick Kurtz, who went to Wake Forest and played 33 games in the minor leagues before the A's summoned him for good. He'll be a 27-year-old free agent under the current system.Either way, it's dangerous to compare to outliers. But players spent the day wondering why MLB would want to leave the development of its most valuable talent in the hands of those whose incentives don't always align with the league's.What does that mean?College baseball is becoming bigger business. Will collegiate head coaches making seven figures based on their ability to win games each year prioritize developing younger players -- particularly when those players can leave after two years? And especially in a universe in which freshmen already play sparingly because coaches are gravitating to older, more physically and mentally developed players. Freshmen can be projects. For plenty of coaches, the juice is not worth the squeeze."We'll be in the portal," Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said after his team was eliminated from the NCAA tournament. "I like to get freshmen and keep them coming along, but if you want to compete in the SEC, a full-grown-man league, it's hard to win with three freshmen in the lineup and a couple freshman pitchers you rely on every weekend. It's just not going to happen."Organizations, on the other hand, recognize the downside of high school players. They are, as a group, a less-sure thing than college players. The share of college players drafted has risen dramatically. The top programs in the country have, in some cases, better resources and technology than plenty of minor league affiliates. College baseball has gotten quite good at churning out players familiar with the demands of modern professional baseball.Even so, three scouting directors on Thursday, in the aftermath of the proposal, told ESPN they worry about numerous elements of it.Such as?1. Even with all the investment in college programs, the earlier a team can get a player into its system, the more control it has over his development.2. That lack of freshman playing time across college baseball. The idea of a whole year spent sitting on the bench or getting limited run when, in the minors, a prospect would be in the starting lineup every day puts a damper on growth.3. The shrinking of the domestic draft to 12 college-only rounds could compel teams to lay off scouts who focus especially on prep players.4. Hard-slotting takes away from the ability to creatively build a draft class. Currently, with flexible bonus pools, teams can spread their money where they want -- like the Tigers did in signing outfielder Max Clark to an under-slot deal so they could grab McGonigle and pay him around $550,000 over slot in the second round.And on top of that, they're cutting the signing bonus pool in half?Back to 2010 levels, yes. A $200 million-a-year haircut is staggering, even if the players were expecting something like it. As part of MLB's 50/50 revenue-split salary cap proposal at the outset of negotiations, it promised major league players would make more money than they are making this year. Considering that figure plus the $600 million in amateur bonuses last year adds up to more than 50%, MLB needed to trim somewhere. And it chose amateur spending.Can't players just enjoy a couple years in college and keep getting paid via NIL by the schools?Yes. But NIL in baseball is a little different than other sports. Especially for freshmen. The ceiling on freshman baseball NIL these days is around $300,000. The transfer portal offers mid- to high-six-figure amounts for proven, well-regarded players. Freshmen, though, are lucky to get $100,000.How does college baseball feel about all of this?Pretty great! Which is saying something considering MLB would be farming out the cost of funding an entire development level of the game to them.MLB is proposing putting its imprimatur on college ball and handing it the sort of talent that never made it to campus. Imagine the next version of Bryce Harper ... trying to get to the Men's College World Series as a teenager instead of Nationals Park. If college baseball does get more popular, eventually staffs get bigger, NIL grows and the stakes get even higher.In a statement, ACC president Jim Phillips lauded the money schools have poured into their programs and concluded: "These investments are creating more opportunities for student-athletes and providing additional pathways to develop at the collegiate level before taking the next step to the professional ranks. The collective improvements are not only a positive for college baseball but help strengthen the game for the betterment of all levels."Is college baseball ready for that, though? Already teams are stretched thin recruiting. Now, with even more roster madness due to sophomore draft eligibility and the new rule that grants every athlete five years of college eligibility, with all the uncertainty about where college sports are going, MLB would be placing a vital cog in its system in the hands of a system in which after the season, thousands of kids essentially declare themselves free agents and enter the transfer portal.What else stood out to players?Cutting the draft to 12 rounds and pairing it with a 12-round international draft would mean only 720 players are going to get paid well each year. MLB proposed limiting every undrafted player to a maximum signing bonus of $10,000. In the current system, players after the 11th round can sign for up to $150,000, with any overage counting toward its bonus pool. With its proposal, MLB is essentially saying: Go back to school and we'll draft you when we think you're ready.The $10,000 for passed-over players does include separate mechanisms to receive an extra $30,000, according to MLB's plan. Domestic draftees become eligible for the Rule 5 draft a year earlier (after their second season) but teams can gain one more year of control for $30,000. International draftees, on the other hand, would receive $30,000 once they join a full-season minor league affiliate, which is not as easy as it sounds. Nearly half of international amateurs are released within three years of signing, according to the league.What's the full plan for international players?Amateur baseball in Latin America is teeming with corruption. Even though players aren't allowed to sign until they're 16, teams start scouting them as young as 10 and 11 and come to early deals, called preacuerdos, at 12 and 13. Almost two-thirds of players drop out of school before high school, according to MLB, and live with trainers who showcase them for scouts. The worst of the trainers, knowing scouts prefer physically mature kids, inject them with steroids. Bonus skimming is real. So is age fraud. All of this has been going on for years. MLB has proposed an international draft in past bargaining to serve as a means to fix it. The union balked at the system -- drafts are inherently player-unfriendly, taking away the freedom to decide where to sign -- and no deal materialized.MLB's hard-slot draft plan, people familiar with the international proposal said, would address and largely solve the issue of teams cutting verbal deals with children, then rushing the player to get a steroid test to see if they were deceived in the process. That's big. But it's more complicated than just fixing those issues.Will trainers -- who can receive up to as much as 50% of players' signing bonuses -- still find, house and teach players the same way? Will the MLBPA relent on its opposition to the draft? Or will it maintain its position that players should not have to pay the price for a problem that MLB employees created, whether through illegal bonus-skimming or too-early scouting that incentivizes trainers to use illicit means?What about moving the international signing age back to 18?Under the current system, the next international amateur signing period begins Jan. 15, 2027. The best players have had agreements with teams for years. Everyone already knows where everyone is going. Enough so that these preacuerdos serve as collateral against which plenty of families take out loans.To ensure all those players are 18 and draft-eligible, MLB's proposal would remove the forthcoming signing period and hold the draft sometime between September 2027 and March 2028. There is no easy way to move from 16 to 18, but this proposal would make for six international amateur entry classes over the entirety of the seven-year deal MLB is seeking -- a loss the union calculates at $200 million compared to the current system.Beyond that, the effect of any delay on the trainers -- many of whom depend on bonus money to keep funding their academies -- as well as the families that have taken loans is potentially problematic. MLB addressed as much in its proposal, which would prohibit loans using future compensation as collateral and issue lifetime bans to trainers that provide children with PEDs.And the rest of the proposal?Once the previous draft ends, teams would be able to trade any draft pick they own. There are some restrictions. Teams couldn't, for example, deal first-round picks in consecutive seasons. They could only move picks in the current draft. But it's a drastic shift from only competitive balance picks being available to move. And as for those, MLB removed them from the fray, arguing that a capped system is already competitively balanced and small-market, low-revenue teams no longer need built-in advantages. That's the same line of thinking in shrinking the draft lottery: the more balanced a league is, the fewer levers it needs to pull.One of the most important pieces to come out of the proposal: MLB saying it would not seek reductions of the 120 minor league teams after previously shrinking the minors by 40 teams. During the last collective bargaining agreement, minor league players organized a subunit of the MLBPA and negotiated significantly increased salaries, prompting concern that with the extra pay going to minor leaguers, MLB would look to claw it back elsewhere.So what's the upshot?It's impossible to know MLB's strategy. But it's obvious the only way the union accepts a salary cap is if its membership fractures, and MLB, accordingly, is bound to make proposals that could have a cleaving effect. With how the union framed the offer in its messaging to players, Thursday's proposal is unlikely to serve as a great divider.In its statement, the union estimated losses of more than $1 billion over the next five years. Beyond the money, though, it's the message the players are hearing from the proposal: That for all the benefits college baseball provides, MLB organizations develop better players.Amateur entry is an area where the league has made gains, though, because current players are not above giving up some rights of future members in service of current ones. Of all the tentacles in baseball labor relations, an amateur draft in which a club never has received a penalty for exceeding its bonus pool by more than 5% and an international system with a hard-capped bonus pool are the sorts of things one might see in a capped system.And MLB used that truth to put the union in something of an awkward position with its proposal. Because if the MLBPA finds the proposal problematic and likes the status quo -- well, annual draft bonus pools are tied to revenue, a parallel to the larger salary-cap system the league would like to implement. So if a system tied to revenue works well in a draft, why would it not writ large?Where do things go from here?The sides plan to meet again next week. What the MLBPA plans to offer -- its initial proposal included a salary floor equivalent called the competitive integrity tax and enormous financial gains, particularly for younger players -- we don't know. But it would surprise no one if the union, in encouraging MLB to leave the amateur system alone, pulls out an old quote from Mets owner Steve Cohen about just how valuable draft picks really are. And Cohen said that five years before this proposal. Extreme surplus value, clearly, was not enough. The league covets cost control -- and the amateur-entry proposal appears to be its most concerted effort so far to capture it.
