MLB owners’ proposal to reshape path to pros runs counter to growing the game

Not every developmental track goes as smoothly as the Pirates' Konnor Griffin, who is the most recent player to debut as a teenager. Justin K. Aller / Getty Images

In seeking a Zen state of mind for baseball’s collective-bargaining negotiations, I repeat the following mantra every morning:

Initial proposals matter only so much. Initial proposals matter only so much…

And yet, I’d love to know where the owners think they will land with their proposals to overhaul the domestic draft and introduce an international draft, radically changing the way amateurs enter the sport.

We know the owners, like the players, want the most money. But the owners, as represented by commissioner Rob Manfred, talk constantly about growing the game. Their domestic draft proposal, in particular, runs counter to that message.

Reducing the domestic draft from 20 to 12 rounds is not growing the game. Neither is eliminating eligibility for high school players. Nor slashing domestic draft bonuses from last year’s payout of $401 million to $200 million.

Major League Baseball should want to widen opportunity for players to enter the professional ranks, not narrow it. It also should want to do everything possible to attract the best athletes, rather than risk losing them to other sports.

The league says its salary cap proposal would pay major leaguers more in 2027 than in 2026, so clearly the owners want to save elsewhere. And, similar to the way the league is leaning on competitive balance to justify its push for a cap, it is citing the rise of college baseball to rationalize overhauling the draft.

Not all of the league’s ideas lack merit. The current entry system for amateurs, which includes not only high schoolers but also international players who sign at 16, is hardly a model of economic efficiency. The more information teams have to evaluate amateurs, the better the decisions they will make. And injecting college baseball with top high school talent likely would lead to greater attention for the amateur draft and the game overall.

Yet, all of these arguments mask the owners’ true intentions.

To reduce the amount they pay amateurs. To remove the possibility of high schoolers negotiating higher bonuses by threatening to go to college. To force international players who would enter the system at 18 in their draft year and domestic players who would enter at 20 to become free agents at older ages, reducing their values on the open market. The league’s proposal also would skip over one international draft class to accommodate the age increase, taking $200 million out of the market.

Yes, college players would be eligible to be drafted one year earlier, as sophomores instead of as juniors. Yes, the best of those players are reaching the majors faster than ever before. But if the owners are trying to persuade major leaguers to sell out amateurs — a strategy that to an extent has worked in the past — they don’t appear to be succeeding.

In both its salary cap and amateur proposals, the league offered very little, if anything, the players might find appealing. The union predictably freaked out over the league’s ideas for the domestic and international drafts, calling them in a statement “another set of proposals that are flat out bad for baseball, ones that would cripple the next generation of players and damage the future of our game.”

Again: Initial proposals matter only so much. Both the owners and players can ask for whatever the heck they want at this early stage, enumerating their most fervent desires like eager children putting together holiday wish lists. The owners’ plan for the domestic draft, though, is built on a questionable premise: That colleges can develop players as well as major-league teams do.

Colleges obviously are quite capable of development. The league says 75 percent of domestic major leaguers come from college baseball. Top college teams employ many of the same technological and analytical tools major-league organizations do. And players who go to college, even if only for two years, could advance their education while collecting NIL money.

Development, though, is not the primary driver in the college game. Winning is. Just the opposite is true in minor-league baseball, where nurturing players takes priority over how teams perform.

In the current scenario, even the league’s proposal to make players draft-eligible after their sophomore years is something of a poison pill. College coaches prefer more experienced players, and seek them out in the transfer portal.

“If you want to compete in the Southeastern Conference, full-grown man league … it’s hard to win with three freshmen in the lineup and a couple of freshman pitchers that you depend on every weekend,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said recently. “It’s just not going to happen.”

As an example of how the proposed system might work, consider the most recent teenager to enter the league, Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Konnor Griffin, who made his debut three weeks before his 20th birthday.

Griffin, rather than get drafted ninth overall as a high schooler in 2024, would have fulfilled his commitment to play at LSU. In a perfect world, he would have become an immediate star, gone first overall in the 2026 draft, then made his debut at some point early in ‘27. Spending less time in the minors, he would have become eligible for free agency only one year later than he would have under the current system.

But let’s say Griffin’s LSU career went less according to plan. Maybe he would have gotten injured. Maybe he would have slumped and lost at-bats to a junior or senior. Maybe, in search of more playing time, he would have transferred to another school. He might have fallen in the draft as a sophomore. He might have delayed entering it until he was a junior.