The MLB Draft, also known as the Rule 4 Draft, is one way that MLB clubs acquire amateur baseball players for development in their organization. Players from high schools, junior colleges, four-year colleges and universities, and various other amateur leagues are eligible for selection. The MLB Draft has been held annually since 1965, usually in June or July.
Format
The MLB Draft is typically 40 rounds and compensatory selections. In 2020, the players association and the commissioner’s office agreed to shorten the draft to 6 rounds due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, the 2021 MLB Draft will be a condensed 20 rounds. The draft order is determined by the prior season’s final standings, with the team with the worst record selecting first and the best record selecting last in each round.
Player Eligibility
Amateur players are eligible for the MLB Draft if they meet certain criteria in education and nationality. Players that are residents of the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and other United States territories are eligible for the MLB Draft.
Players are also eligible for the MLB Draft if they are enrolled in high school or college in the United States, regardless of their nationality. See below for the basic groups that are eligible for the MLB Draft:
A club retains the signing rights for all players they select until a specific date, usually exactly one month, at midnight, following the final day of the MLB Draft, is when a player can no longer sign with the club that selected them.
If the player returns to school that also will make him ineligible to sign with the club that drafted him that year. Players that “return to school” and do not sign with their selecting clubs will be eligible for re-selection in the following year’s MLB Draft.
Players that are not selected in the MLB Draft are eligible for free agency at the conclusion of the MLB Draft. Such players are deemed ineligible to sign once they enroll in a college or university full-time.
Player Compensation / Bonus Pools
Players, their agents/advisors, and their selecting club will come to terms with a signing bonus as compensation for being drafted. The amount that the player receives is dependent on a few variables including; age, remaining college eligibility, what round/pick the player was selected, etc.
Players selected earlier in the draft (lower number rounds, 1, 2, 3, etc.) typically will be given larger bonuses as they are typically coveted by many teams, and thus selected higher in the draft. Another factor in the negotiation of signing bonuses is how many years of college eligibility the player still has. Players with remaining amateur eligibility can threaten to return to college and re-enter the draft the following year if their signing bonus demands are not met by the MLB club that selected them.
Conversely, college seniors, with no remaining eligibility, lack such leverage and often must sign for a dollar figure determined by the MLB club.
First introduced in the 2011 CBA, and implemented during the 2012 MLB Draft, is the bonus pool system, which regulates the amount of money that MLB clubs can offer to draft picks. Each selection in the first 10 rounds of the draft is given a dollar value and summing the total team’s picks yields their “bonus pool” amount or the maximum amount of money they can give to draft picks.
Please see below for a link to a breakdown of pick value and bonus pool allotment for the 2019 MLB Draft:
https://www.mlb.com/news/2019-mlb-draft-pools-and-bonus-values
Club Selection Strategy
Each club will have a different drafting strategy in comparison to their fellow MLB teams as well as a new strategy each successive year. A few factors that will help shape a team’s draft strategy include: amount of talent at each position in a given draft, the amount of allotted bonus pool money a club has, current MLB and minor league roster construction, bonus money demands for coveted players, and player preference of the executives making the final draft selection decisions.
One example of a draft strategy might be to select as many top position players in the early rounds as possible because the draft class has an abundance of pitching depth, and the organization has identified many later-round pitchers that they feel have good value.
In this scenario, the club would stock up on position players, the group with less overall depth, and greater talent drop off later in the draft class, earlier in the draft to maximize overall player value.
Another potential draft strategy, in terms of bonus pool allotment, is, if a club identifies their target player in the 3rd round/slot value of $560,000, a high school pitcher with incredible upside but is demanding a $4,250,000 signing bonus or he will honor his commitment to an SEC school. The club could agree to pay him his desired bonus and then in the following rounds sign college seniors for well under their slot value bonus to offset the high price for their 3rd round selection.
Summary
The MLB Draft is one of the most exciting times of the season for fans, amateur players, and clubs alike. Over a three-day draft clubs will add more players to their organization than any other period during the year. Amateur players will see their lifelong goals of becoming professional baseball players realized and fans will get to dream of potential superstars and team success in years to come.
Please see below a link for all MLB Draft results by year:
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/draft/baseball_draft.shtml
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