How Much Would MLB’s Draft Proposal Cost the Best Players?
Late last week, Major League Baseball proposed to drastically change the game’s player developmental system. Beginning in 2028, the domestic draft would be cut from 20 rounds to 12, and eliminate eligibility for high schoolers — players would need to be at least 20 years old and two years removed from high school to be drafted. Players who choose to play for a JUCO school would need to do so for both seasons, rather than the one-year requirement currently in place. Most players at a four-year college would become draft eligible a year earlier under MLB’s new proposal; right now, they are not eligible for the draft unless they turn 21 by August 1 of their draft year or until after their third year a four-year college. MLB’s proposal would move the age cutoff date back to September 1. More than 40% of the dollars would be pared from the draft pool, with the most recent $358.7 million available slashed to $200 million.
On the international side, MLB proposed instituting a new draft, an idea originally discussed during the last set of CBA negotiations. The draft, which would begin in 2027, would require players to be at least 18 years old by September 1 of their draft year. The draft pool would stay mainly intact otherwise, with the same $200 million available for international draftees as domestic ones, pretty close to the nearly $199 million that was in the final draft bonus pool in 2025.
We don’t need to do any detective work to figure out where the savings go. As was the case with the league’s parallel salary cap proposal, which management disingenuously promoted as a way to improve competitive balance, this proposal is part of the ever-continuing quest of owners to transfer money from the players’ pockets to their own. Based on pretty much every example ever, the money saved will not offset consumer costs, and I’d be shocked if it was redirected to improve the pay of team staffers, who tend to take in reduced salaries for the privilege of working in baseball, or minor leaguers.
J.J. Cooper covered the proposal in greater detail over at Baseball America, so I won’t go too in the weeds on it here today. Instead, I want to spotlight how much money the proposal would cost the game’s top players.
Increasing the age requirement for players to join the affiliated-ball ranks, and thus increasing the entry age to make the major leagues, has the additional benefit for the owners of increasing the ages of when players reach free agency. Players are most likely to have the best portion of their career before they hit the open market, and under MLB’s new proposal, this phenomenon would become even more pronounced.
Of the 146 players last winter who became free agents after accruing six years of MLB service time, as opposed to those who were non-tendered, only 13 were still in their 20s for the 2026 season. None of the 13 was drafted in accordance with the proposed rules, with eight drafted players out of high school and five signed as 16-year-old amateurs. And no, college players are unlikely to be accelerated as compensation for this. Another 13 of those 146 free agents were entering their age-30 season; only three of those 13 players could have signed when they actually did under the proposed rules.
A year or two is actually quite significant when dealing with an elite free agent or free agent-to-be. When you’re talking to guys that land megadeals, getting a player like Juan Soto or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a couple years early basically allows you to swap a year in their 40s for a year in their prime. This isn’t just mean math guys and their even meaner projection systems; teams are aware of this, which is why someone like Pete Alonso largely gets shrugs in free agency, certainly relative to how early-30s non-elite sluggers were treated 15 years ago. And yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of my noting how much teams have soured on non-elite free agents in their 30s, since, as I’ve been told both by multiple front office decision makers and multiple agents, I’m one of the people responsible for the spread of that attitude!
ZiPS originally projected Soto to get a 15-year, $719 million contract in free agency after the 2024 season, compared to the $765 million he actually netted. Keeping everything the same and making him two years older drops that projected salary from $719 million to $588 million, a pay cut of $131 million.
Similar results occur with other big contracts currently in force. After getting his GED to finish high school early and playing one year at the JUCO College of Southern California, Bryce Harper, who was born on October 16, 1992, was drafted first overall as a 17-year-old in 2010. He made his major league debut in his age-19 season, meaning he won the NL Rookie of the Year award a season before he would’ve been draft eligible under the league’s proposal. The first year of his contract with the Phillies was 2019, his age-26 season. At the time, ZiPS evaluated a 13-year deal for Harper as being worth $314 million, compared to $330 million he actually received. Aging him by two years slashes the projection from $314 million to $259 million, and by three years, to $224 million.
Let’s do that with some other biggest contracts of the last four offseasons for players who would have had free agency delayed. Looking at deals that were valued at $150 million or more, Willy Adames would lose $53 million, Dylan Cease $51 million, Xander Bogaerts $47 million, and Brandon Nimmo $41 million. All in all, if the league’s proposal were in place during the last four offseasons, only nine players would’ve received contracts worth at least $150 million, losing an average of $47 million apiece. Naturally, the same effect exists for the lucrative long-term extensions signed by players during their club-controlled years. Bobby Witt Jr.’s projection sheds $43 million from the 11-year, $288.778 million contract he signed ahead of the 2024 season. According to ZiPS, Corbin Carroll’s projected extension would’ve been for $31 million less than the $111 million he’s currently making over eight years, while Julio Rodríguez would’ve gotten $20 million less than what he received from the Mariners.
Is this good for baseball? My personal feeling is no. I think baseball is best when players get a generous slice of the pie, and MLB’s new proposal threatens to make free agency itself less lucrative for top talent, and that’s before accounting for any changes to free agency or the luxury tax system. It should be noted that this is an early proposal and is likely to shift dramatically, but like the proposed salary cap, if the owners insist on sticking to it, baseball is bound for a long lockout.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Money aside, this is terrible for baseball because we will miss out on extra seasons of the best of the best. Imagine baseball without the first 3 years of Kid Griffey. Or more recently Soto, Harper, Trout… The willingness of billionaires to sacrifice that to shrink the player’s share of the pie is breathtaking.
Yeah that struck me as well. It’s like why would you make a league with fewer stars active at any one time? You would have far fewer milestone watches, fewer young players, and a shallower pool of talent. They already contracted the minor leagues and shortened the draft and that’s having an impact but it’s still early for the full impact to be known, but this proposals basically nukes everything.
The owners thought that fans would happily watch replacement players the last time there was a strike. They apparently can’t fathom fans wanting to watch the best athletes compete instead of just whoever wears the jerseys.
You see this in the way the MLB promotes itself. They tend to promote games rather than individuals. In other sports its “Lebron James and the Lakers are coming to town” or “See Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals”. As a further example my wife, who has no interest in sports, knows what sport Lebron James plays, what sport Tom Brady played, and even what sport Babe Ruth played. She has no idea what sport Mike Trout plays. Trout should be at least as well known as the others I’ve mentioned. It’s as if MLB owners are afraid they’ll have to pay the players more if they become individually popular.
Oh I think in addition to chopping free agency and bonus money this is also about shrinking the minors again.
Its obvious corruption… the players are not perfect but asking the owners to not be dickish slave owners is not a reach…
Dude, what have I written that was dickish? I’m pretty certain that I’m at least 90% non-dickish. Like I’m a 30 on the dick scouting scale.
You probably know this but there was absolutely nothing wrong with your post, nor the others that got a similar comment. I give a long leash to people who are paying members who are simply wrong but that kind of jerk level behavior is a totally different category.
Yup. They care more about saving money than seeing great baseball.
This is an excellent point, and ties in well with my thesis that MLB owners are rent-seekers who don’t have any interest in making their product better or more interesting. They all got used to getting money from cable packages for doing nothing and they are at a total loss of what to do as a group to get that money from someplace else.
Because it is one thing to keep labor costs / product costs down among the pool of workers you already have, that’s capital 101. It is another thing entirely to *intentionally make your product less appealing* because of the savings it will create. I strongly suspect that MLB ownership does not believe that having young stars is contributing meaningfully to revenues, and while it isn’t by any means that biggest factor it certainly doesn’t help your cause to take away the excitement of a 20 year old wrecking the majors.
You do see this sort of race to the bottom in other places too, but it’s usually so that they can compete on price to undercut competitors. Is that what MLB is planning to do? Because making your product worse without competing on price just means giving away market share. But then again I am pretty sure MLB ownership has little understanding of what that concept is.
The old school private owners at least liked baseball. Even if they hated paying players, they knew that players were why fans came to the stadium. Now the vast majority of teams are owned by real estate conglomerates masquerading as sports ownership. You’re right–they have no clue that young stars bring in new fans. I think they don’t really grasp that they are competing for limited fan entertainment dollars. That if their product sucks, fans will instead go see a movie or watch the NBA/NFL.
This is so far from the truth. The game was lopsided for decades with many teams just mailing it in. Far more competitive now than ever. You can like or dislike cohen but he wants to win. The last owner was investing in ponzi schemes.
Go through every owner transition for the last 25 years and tell me things are worse?
If your idea of a good owner is Arte Moreno or Peter Angelos’ sons, then i dont know what else to say
Right now, we have Cohen, the Dodgers (who have a crazy revenue stream–they would not spend nearly as much without it), and then who else? The Steinbrenners are not their dad. Going back further, who was the last owner who was like Charlie Finley? The old owners were baseball hobbyists. There were always cheap owners (like Angelos and Pohlad, and say what you will about Moreno, but he is more dumb than cheap). Most of the current crop are large real estate corporations that don’t seem to truly care about baseball beyond monetizing it.
Aside from owner names, modern economics requires winning to have a chance to service debt.
The more billionaire consortiums, the better
Im not a subscriber to “wasnt it better in the good old days” . These are the good old days
Which isnt to say there aren’t things out of whack that need constant care and attention.
The wild bit is that the Private Equity guys have been better owners, because they at least understand the core concept of growing an asset’s value!
You also see it with a monopoly because, hey, where else you gonna go to watch Major League Baseball?
Yeah except Major League Baseball is not “food” or “fuel” or “the internet.” They will probably keep the fans they have but when they die a lot of them are not getting replaced.
A better concept for a more exciting draft would be to reduce the age and professional time limit of the Rule 5.
Make any player 18 and older eligible. Got a super prospect? Promote him or he gone.
I’m struggling to come up with a good faith justification on the part of the owners. Perhaps:
Forcing kids into college for a couple years will result in more draftees being “MLB ready” which will increase excitement around the draft similar to what other leagues enjoy. This will allow the league to translate “draft hype” into “team hype” among casual fans(who they’re losing to other leagues) and drive higher engagement.
Eh, I have to squint really hard, and even then I don’t really believe it.
It’s 100% them copying the NBA, figuring that if they could do it then so can MLB. But the NBA actually did have a plausible good faith argument which is that people got jazzed for players watching march madness and that they came into the league with built in fan bases.
But even if we accept the good faith argument on the NBA side (which you are not required to do) that makes no sense because almost nobody knows the College World Series is happening much less who the players are. At some point MLB needs to figure out a way to actually make their sport more popular, and taking players out of the minor leagues and into college is not going to do that!
Which is dumb because the NBA (and NFL) don’t really have minor leagues. Top drafted players make the jump straight to the pros, and they peak much younger. College baseball is not going to be a substitute for the minors, and even the most ‘advanced’ college players often don’t advance and become good players as fast as expected. FFS, do the owners even realize that the Angels exist?
The Angels are the model franchise in their minds.
theres a difference between college basketball and college baseball, its that one is on tv and the other is not. i can watch rider vs sienna in decemeber on espn. i only get the playoffs for baseball. theres 380 div 1 basketball programs that get on tv. baseball? i cant even get standings any of the conferences on any sports site i use. right now every school is feeling the budget tighten for the 30 athletic programs they support, most are gonna be looking to cut those down.
It is tricky to even get box scores at the college level right now. Sometimes they just aren’t reported on the NCAA D1 scores page. Sometimes it is because they are cancelled and it doesn’t say it, and sometimes they just didn’t put it up there. Usually they are somewhere on the internet but the casual fan might not find it.
The players being worse and the game sloppier also makes college basketball and football entertaining in ways the professional leagues aren’t, to the point that many people prefer them to the NFL and NBA.
It doesn’t work like that for college baseball. No shade to anybody who likes it but every time I try to watch a game, my main takeaway is that the gap between high-level college competition and MLB is wider than in any other major sport. Moreover, given that college coaches are hired to win rather than develop prospects into major leaguers, I see no reason that would change even if the game received an influx of young talent, as per the owners’ proposal.
This is simply yet another transparent attempt to reduce the expenses associated with operating an MLB franchise, but it’s by the most extreme, myopic, and self-defeating one yet. It’s genuinely shocking how little the people who own these teams appear to understand the game of baseball.
Fans also get excited about the NBA draft because one player can change a team’s trajectory way more than in baseball.
Paul Skenes is having way less of an impact than Wemby, it’s not a knock on Skenes, it’s just how the sports work and tinkering with the rules won’t change that.
And (though some colleges now make it a selling point) colleges have been historically terrible at development and especially prone to overusing arms
On the Intl side, no one can argue the current system is good for anyone – if they simply fix that, it will be a big win
Not sure an international draft is the best option there. Right now it kind of operates as a free market draft with the signing bonus taking the place of the draft slot.
Players are preyed upon by agents, a lot of execs have been banned, kids are signing at age 12-13, and on top of it all, its not been very successful at producing ballplayers unless you count the original group of fully formed Cubans. Something needs to change
It’s good for the players, right? It’s life changing money as teenagers when many are very poor.
Establish MLB-owned and funded academies that pay the children and their teachers ten times as much money?
Then maintain a full free agency?
I’m fully in support.
It made little sense for the NBA but they still did it. The roster pressure is much more significant with the NBA but would it make sense to force someone like Kobe to do a one and done? At the time the NBA changed those rules their wasn’t any NIL which at least has allowed players to earn money while in college. NIL has obvious flaws but at least it’s something.
I don’t really like that rule for the NBA, but there are some major differences in the sports. The big one is that nearly all NBA players make the jump directly into the pros from HS or college, so they’re getting paid right away and peaking much earlier. And even before NIL, nearly all college basketball players were full scholarship players, where that’s less often true for baseball. This is also essentially a 2-and-done rule instead of a 1-and-done. It really fucks top HS pitchers who may blow out in college and get nothing. And some college programs that have no problem overworking pitchers.
Yep – if they agree to NBA rookie pay scaling for draftees, in EACH draft…the PA might laugh a bit before they toss the proposal.
NBA put a one and done rule because their franchises kept drafting badly and wanted the extra year for maturity. that doesnt make sense for MLB with them having an extensive farm system (that allows players to work on their issues instead of focusing on winning) College baseball has also had issues with running their pitchers into the ground.
“College baseball has also had issues with running their pitchers into the ground.”
Could not agree more some treat them like a pitcher from 1900 even though they are max effort.
Also injury and recovery for amateur players is much more complicated than if they are in a pro org. Obviously it can go wrong once they turn pro but the resources are vastly different.
Indeed.
The MLBPA doesn’t actually want Dylan Crews to get $50m on draft day if it costs Soto $200m
The MLBPA is a 1 percenters union. There’s a lot that I like about the NBA model in terms of revenue sharing, restricted free agency, and salary scales. But the MLBPA would never go for that because they want their Lebrons to have no top-end limit.
NIL opens up the free market more in NFL and NBA. Not sure how it changes the math in baseball. How many college baseball players are even making $100k?
Great stuff Dan, I hadn’t thought about the utility of ZiPS for labor discussions, but this is a great use of it 🙂
I’m for anything that is a step toward reducing the inherent advantage of large market teams.
This is that.
It’s certainly not perfect. If a kid is ready at 18, he’s ready and should be able to play.
But don’t let the quest for perfection be the enemy of the useful.
Minimum payroll then. Or harsher punishments for not spending enough, not being competitive, etc.
Maybe a mix of both and you lose your franchise if you’re too shitty?
Financially well-endowed teams will still outbid the small-market teams on an AAV basis. There will just be fewer prime player years getting paid.
Buffalo, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Raleigh, are all competitive markets in other leagues. The Bengals have the 3rd highest payroll in the NFL
These leagues have all figured it out. Surely MLB can too.
They all have some level of cap, but the spread between highest and lowest payrolls is like $80M to $100M.
In MLB it’s $300M+
Thats insane. The bigger problem isnt big market teams spending. It’s the rent seeking of small market teams.
Yeah that is not just a small market problem, that is a cartel problem
It is the gap.
It is neither just big market spending or small market “rent seeking” It is about the gap.
The gap is largely a product of MLB revenues primarily derived from local sources.
This gap needs to close. That’s all.
The owners can solve that gap amongst themselves. (Ie more subsidy from rich to poor).
The players should have no role in this. They should demand that all 30 teams normalize revenue of all 30 teams. If they did that all teams would then have similar payrolls.
EXCEPT, why would a large market team do this?
Ummm, are you okay?
As an aside, yes, I am a scientist (and Prof at a Flyover U). And I backronymed ASS, but everyone is too damn polite to call me that. Folks are free to go through my comments to see for themselves, but I don’t troll.
Are you off your meds? Get some help.
This character is probably day drinking and it would be a favor to them to remove it. That’s the more charitable interpretation.
No idea what I did to set them off.
I can see the argument that a salary cap might increase parity. How in the world does reducing the draft, and eliminating high school eligibility do that?
I don’t see how reducing rounds in the draft increases parity, I suspect that’s simply an effect of contracting the minor leagues, and maybe preparation to do it again. Fewer minor league teams means fewer players needed and likely that and older recruits mean faster passage through the minor leagues so you can eliminate another 30 MiLB teams.
But eliminating highschool eligibility would have increased parity as a second order effect, The primary effect is almost sure to be more money in owner’s pockets, but it would be expected to slightly increase parity because the % of WAR coming from the inital 6 years of team control goes up (as that covers more of the peak) and the % of WAR coming from free agents or players who were extended long term goes down (as they are all on the downslope of the aging curve). This makes money matter (slightly) less to team quality.
To the extent that this changes the market, this makes the initial draft more important and expensive free agents less important, so small market teams are (slightly) more competative.
From the owner’s point of view this proposal is probably even better than what Dan says, because lowering the big free agent contracts ALSO lowers arbitration awards.
I don’t see how it could influence parity except as a negative. Small market teams that are competitive rely on their scouts to maximize the value they derive from then their draft picks and bonus pool space. It needs to be pointed out that the draft and international signees have a hard cap. Underperforming teams actually get a larger draft budget than the best teams in a given year.
Can’t downvote this enough.
How would it reduce the advantage of big market teams? The amount teams can spend on the draft and international signees is hard capped.
From the fan’s point of view we lose all the great seasons players had in their early years. Many, perhaps most of the greatest players usually hit the majors before they turn 21.
In MLB history, only 21 position players and 35 pitchers have ever accumulated 5+ fWAR through age 20. In the past 50 years, it’s been 6 position players and 3 pitchers. (The most recent pitcher was Felix Hernandez, 20 years ago, and it took him two seasons.)
In the past decade, only 14 pitchers have reached the Majors by their age 20 season. Three (3) accumulated 1+ fWAR through that age, with Juilo Urias leading the pack at 1.7. The hitters have had a better showing, with 22 players reaching the bigs, 8 having 1+ WAR. with Juan Soto at the top with 9.1 fWAR.
I think very few if any players will debut at 20 without any additional minor league seasoning, at least on the hitting side. If you expand to age 21 as the likely earliest age of debut, that expands the pool to 80 total hitters. Even at the bottom of the WAR range, you have guys like Alan Trammel, Roberto Clemente, and Gary Sheffield. And at this point, you’ve missed out on some prime seasons from Trout, ARod, Griffey, Harper, Soto. Even if we’re looking at a relatively small handful of HOFers per decade, why on earth don’t we want to see them play as soon as possible?
And the ones that debut early are usually super stars.
So a large number of super stars debut early.
Ending this sucks for fans.
They are trying to shift player development expenses to college ball.
The NFL probably saves a billion a year by letting college football develop players.
The vast majority of NFL draft picks make the 55 man roster day 1. And nearly 100 start week 1.
This also allows you to replace expensive vets every year via draft.
Churn will be higher and +30 players much more rare.
The NFL rookie cap that started 12 years ago really destroyed the earnings potential of 80% of players. Most never reach free agency and their first years are super capped out.
Only stars getting money. Everyone else replaced quickly
This is sort of true. 1-4th round picks are essentially locks to make the roster. It trails off from there. Additionally nowhere close to 100% of draft picks start week 1.
I think the NFL has been able to pull this off because College Football is extremely popular and players can make a name for themselves in college. As a full contact sport, there’s also a case to be made that 19 year old QB protégés and speedster WRs are at risk from playing on the field with NFL defenders before they reach physical maturity.
Neither of these conditions exist in baseball, it’s blatantly a cash grab.
Yeah? And? So what? That justifies restraining everyone’s earning capacity?
No, it doesn’t. That’s a completely separate issue. The original comment was that we would lost these great early seasons by great players. But we would lose very few seasons by them, and even fewer great ones.
“We would only lose time seeing truly special players” is certainly an argument.
You’re also discounting the pro-level development that leads to those extraordinary players.
“You’re also discounting the pro-level development that leads to those extraordinary players.”
Yup. Funneling more players to college is a great path to delaying development and making player development worse. The minor leagues are where the best coaches and facilities are.
That’s very arbitrary it’s better to look at if they provided positive value a super star can do that before they really breakout.
It remains to be seen how much such a system would push back the debuts of top players. Certainly some, but it also seems quite likely that a big portion of player development between ages 18 and 20 comes from maturing physically. Many will also be getting reps against high level college competition.
In addition, the top players who can do so will likely follow the lead of Harper and several top basketball recruits, finishing high school early and starting their college years at 17.
I would oppose this on principle, but overall I doubt we would notice much difference.
Players have to be at least 20 to be drafted under this proposal, so starting college earlier doesn’t help. College teams want to win games primarily–player development is secondary. This is why essentially zero college hitters (along with metal instead of wood bats) emerge completely MLB ready.
You’re right, I’m wrong (and dumb). My apologies to all.
no really that troll is wrong… he has given information that is incorrect.
Couple of things:
Lets say you show promise in multiple sports early in life. Economically, this makes baseball more risky (than before).
Flooding D1 with more players means more players at lesser schools or less playing time and dev.
More college also gives more time for injury (Im assuming some colleges aren’t as good as pro orgs at preventative/rehab/etc.) They also aren’t as good for developing.
So those important 18-21 dev years aren’t maximized.
I think this is awful for the game. Owners already have a monopsony for baseball talent and this makes positions available even more scarce.
Imagine a town with a factory as the primary employer. They already have a huge amount of wage leverage. Now imagine they limit the amount of entry level positions with arbitrary rules.
Its bad economics
Sorry, I misread. I’m wrong. I would delete it if I still could.
Baseball used to have an advantage over football because you could get a signing bonus of seven figures. The under-the-table money for college football wasn’t nearly as big or certain.
That went away with NIL. That’s a big competitive advantage that MLB lost. Instead of making a counter-move to compete with football for the best players, MLB has basically thrown in the towel. They will lose a large number of premium athletes that have historically chosen baseball, for many reasons, but one of those was that advantage. What a pathetic, loser thing for MLB to propose.
I am very wrong–I misread quite badly. Please ignore my ignorance and carry on with your intelligent discussion.
honest mistake, we all make em
For a bunch of free market capitalists the owners dont really seem to like it when it comes to their business with this rent-seeking behavior.
Cartel bosses
My working assumption is if MLB’s lips are moving it’s in pursuit of appropriating ever more of the value generated by the game for themselves.
This move seems like the end result would be less money for the owners, but a bigger loss for the players. It seems almost spiteful, but my guess is that it is pure stupidity.
Apart from the money, this would also drastically reduce the odds of anyone reaching traditional statistical milestones – 500 homers, 3000 hits, 200 wins, etc.
Perhaps those sort of arbitrary end points don’t matter in the grand scheme, but they matter to me. I’m a fan. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.
An acquaintance recently asked how much the owners are willing to invest in the communities that sustain MLB. My response to that was, that the unfortunate reality is, most MLB owners (and increasingly, sports leagues in general), are hung up on how much communities are willing to invest in them. Sadly, just about all of this is a one way street, and it feels like this particular CBA negotiation is going to be especially ugly.
Yes, it honestly isn’t a huge deal to me, but I’m not very reflective of the average fan. Currently there is a Twitter argument going on about Schwarber hitting 500 home runs and how he would be a hall of famer because of that. I realize how old he was when he made the mlb. Now while I don’t think war perfectly encapsulates what he does, we have to realize those are the fans the mlb needs. We aren’t don’t see the 20 game winners very often, or 0.300 batting average. Completely losing already shrinking milestone frequency for greed just seems completely short sighted.
apologies for popping off at politics on the baseball page… I’m at my limit. Fuck these idiots.
Or you might want to go for a walk to calm yourself if you’re riled up to this extent.
Seriously, as someone who’s hardly pro-owner or pro-Trump, it’s hard to see all everything as less “popping off at politics” and more “having a full-fledged meltdown”.
Brian, we appreciate your continued support, but really, take a deep breath for a minute. I don’t like the owners either, but we try to keep FG comments from ending up as knife fights!
Perfect example of why the $ I spend here is well worth it.
Now fix the Red Sox please.
Thanks Dan. What I don’t understand about MLB floating something that would #1. Help Owners reduce expenditures and 2-26 hurt the game in lmozt any measurement of player freedom, average FA year, etc. etc. etc. Their stated goal is a Salary Cap? They are not getting that, but by tossing out ideas like this as perhaps “trade-offs” still get closer to the absolute goal of reducing expenditures from scouting – draft costs. – reduced minor league system even further. Winning Door #2 the concessions to no salary cap might be better in the long run as these are fixed cost reductions. For years…
Thanks for the article Dan. Super minor correction, Harper played for the College of Southern Nevada, not California, staying in his hometown one last year.
I am pretty blown away by this proposal, and not in a good way. All MLB teams have to do is stop picking high school players! But they can’t contract the minor leagues further without some sort of central coordination. Which of course would also be bad for interest in the sport. MLB feels like it is in a cost-cutting spiral where they decide to let football take all the best athletes forever and resign themselves to second-tier sports status forever, like a more temperate version of the NHL.
But they cannot help themselves. Back when basketball disallowed high schoolers, one of the big talking points was how often teams were burning super high picks on busts. But the simple answer was to just not take high schoolers if the risk was that great. Yet, the GMs could not help themselves. They were so afraid they would miss out on the occasional Kevin Garnett that they kept lighting those picks on fire. And the NBA stepped in to “save” them from that ruination.
It is kind of like when the Cardinals front office traded away Allen Craig so Matheny physically could not play him anymore.
Looking at the list of HS NBA draftees, I don’t see the bust rate being much worse for early first-round picks than for college players. Kwame Brown was a notable bust, but in the top 10 picks you have Lebron, Dwight Howard, Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Tyson Chandler, Amare Stoudamire, and Andrew Bynum Among busts, you have Brown, Jonathan Bender, Darius Miles (arguably not a bust), Eddy Curry, Desagna Diop, Shaun Livingston (who did have a solid career after a devastating injury), and Martell Webster. Later than 10th overall HS picks had some really good values–Kobe of course, but also Jermaine O’Neal, Rashard Lewis, Kendrick Perkins, JR Smith, Gerald Green, Monta Ellis, Lou Williams.
Yeah there’s actually a much higher bust risk for baseball players of all types; and it’s even more exaggerated for HS players.
But the easy solution is just not to select them. I kind of think picking a HS pitcher in the first dozen picks is crazy unless they’re a Hunter Greene / Mackenzie Gore level talent, and probably not anywhere in the top 50 unless their scouting report / grades are as good as Shane Baz or Ryan Weathers back when they were drafted. Just don’t take them! But of course that’s not their actual endgame here.
Ah, the Allen Craig trade, the subject of the much less warmly received Moneyball 2: Electric Boogaloo
This does sort of conflict with a salary floor and the continued current cost control years as a plan, right? If the money has to go somewhere to hit a floor, and players are older when they get out of cost controlled years, where is the money going that has to be spent (under the MLBs other proposal)?
1) Offering many pre-FA extensions with the hope of “winning” them (and thusly further overpaying FA players)
2) Just obscene amounts to the front end of deals?
This is obviously an extreme opening proposal by the owners. I doubt even the most militant owners believe this will be agreed to. But if they can ultimately agree on one draft for all players (international/high school/ college), increase the slot amounts for each pick, and keep the minimum age at 18, that can work.
The international draft is a mess – asking 12 and 13 year olds to make verbal agreements to sign at 16 is ridiculous. The league and the union have ignored this system, I would like to see some oversight to ensure the kids are treated better. And maybe set up a joint mlb/union fund for the majority of kids internationally-signed kids who don’t make it to the big show, so they can have paid tuition or job training to assist them with the transition to the rest of their life.
Speaking of the salary cap piece that Dan references above. I don’t like the owners position in this negotiation, I’m not a fan of owners asking for a larger share of the pie, and I loathe cartel economics.
At the same time, I haven’t seen a strong case made on Fangraphs that a tandem cap and floor isn’t a net positive for the sport.
The closest I’ve seen is the argument that a floor is sufficient, so why bother with a cap? There’s some merit to this, but it doesn’t strike me as realistic from a negotiations gives and takes standpoint vs. the as-is today. That’s before even getting to league competitiveness…and I do think MLB could greatly benefit from greater competitiveness!
My anecdotal observation has been that even hinting at a cap and floor in these forums draws condescension, as though the question presupposes validity to any facet of the league’s argument.
And if that’s one’s first reaction reading this here, I assure you I’m asking genuinely, I refer to the first bullet in my answer here, and I reinforce that I’m not some league stooge.
I also strongly prefer penalizing do-nothing franchises with high salary floors to raise the cost of shittiness for league participation. You could further raise the cost of shittiness by adopting tactics like relegation etc. but those are pretty big leaps from as-is.
To borrow a turn of phrase from Dan – It’s June. I’ll save my outrage for when the owner’s a digging in their heels on this – and their other proposals – in February. Then we’ll find out what they really want.
It would make absolutely zero financial sense for MLB ownerse to cancel games over this, so I have to assume that they think they aren’t getting the cap and are trying to get the players to sell out the kids again as a consolation prize.
Can we all not snipe at each other please? We usually don’t have to police these comment threads, and that’s a rare, nice internet thing.
Dan, you are as winsome as you are toothsome
Is there anyone who can explain (not speculate, but who really knows) why the owners dont see the minor leagues the way so many of us do, i.e. as a low-cost way of connecting a large number of fans to the sport (which is probably waning on its own) and indeed a way to build proxy fandom to MLB teams, through the affiliations? Dan’s calculations make sense and provide the cost saving thrust, although analyses like these require some assumptions that nothing else changes in the world/economics/development curves, which is rarely true. And maybe the free agent cost savings is what this is about. But they cut the minors a few years ago, and now this, and it really seems like an own-goal. Maybe they think somehow this will create a watchable lovable ecosystem of college teams and college stars that will buoy the sport, but that isnt guaranteed and needs to be built from scratch as opposed to an existing pipeline that appears to kinda work. I don’t need the comments about “how billionaires minds work”, as I mostly agree. But baseball is not yet a mercenary situation with owners buying and selling rapidly, so logic would imply some incentive towards stewardship. Perhaps the point is that there’s no connection between the P&L and the Balance sheet, so owners think their teams’ appreciation in value is wholly disconnected from fandom, viewership, profit, and that value is all they care about. It’s a little puzzling.
Quite simply, because it’s a cost. Even if there’s value in the end as we see it, they don’t care, because they don’t think they need the exposure, and they have to pay for development. By farming out development, they rid themselves of said cost – they don’t actually care how good the players get, like if the entire league is 90% of what it currently is performance-wise, just that they’re good enough to put butts in the seats.
MLB teams are currently valued at 5-6x revenues, where NBA/NFL teams are more like 12x. This entire CBA negotiation is about ridding themselves of as many costs as possible, and making whatever costs are left utterly predictable, in order to catch up to the other two leagues in terms of valuation.
If they succeed, every single team stands to gain at least $1 bil in value, and if the multiples hold potentially as much as $4-8 bil for the marquee franchises. At that point, 100% revenue sharing doesn’t matter – when you get that windfall dumped in your lap, regardless of market size, every owner/ownership group would be totally on board.
I know you wanted actual information and not random billionaire psychology speculation. But it’s pretty clear that because they have not observed the counterfactual and they are unable to perceive what it actually is.
I think your last point, P&L severed from B/S, nails it, FWIW.
You’re looking for real inside knowledge which I don’t have but cartel structure backdrop is worth saying more about.
When the benefit accrues for simply having *made it* to the inner 30 circle then there’s a few forces at play:
-Cartel membership benefits overcome bad geographies / markets
-Doing well in a bad market will not come close to approaching the perk of being in the club of 30 in the short or medium run
-Force of will (including good owners who care about winning and are persistent and will spend long-term $) can help create a good MLB franchise and fandom regardless of location, but…
-mid to long term levers will often be deprioritized for short-term and more directly controllable ones (cost), and…
-bad owners will gladly not compete because the marginal gain of their spend is low, and they will keep cutting spend, especially because…
-the big gap between the platinum tier (in platinum markets) and the rest of league further reduces marginal utility of their $ spend
It’s fairly easy for bad owners to fall into the easy path of doing nothing but cutting costs, and it’s fairly easy for bad owners to become owners….ultimately this is where I believe the per year cost of being an owner must be sharply raised. Increasing marginal utility of incremental spend through a tighter floor to cap band would, I think, also help
I enjoy this view, parts of it are pretty new to me and make a lot of sense.
I hate the proposal because is destroys Minor League baseball as we know it.
It’s that simple.
Minor league baseball is so much fun and I’d hate for it to be contracted further through something dumb like this. The first ballgame I ever attended was a short season A-ball tilt with my family when I was 5 years old.
This is surprisingly weak analysis. The other proposals on the table have the owners sharing revenues 50/50 (as well as a number of other proposals on minimum pay etc)
Even if you posit that Soto or Harper would be “losers” some other group of players wins because the money has to go somewhere in the 50/50 split
This CBA has four negotiators: big market clubs, small market clubs, stars/agents, average players
The owners want to level player salaries imo and the big market guys are, so far, willing to entertain a cap and more rev sharing (that might not hold)
The 30-50 stars want to protect a system that gives the stars the spoils while throwing more carrots at the cannon fodder guys.
My guess is that there will be small moves to a cap/floor, more rev sharing amongst teams and the owners get a lot of the draft stuff they just asked for.
Hard cap/floor? No way
Good points, which are unfortunately being downvoted.
You’re absolutely correct about the salary impact on MLB players as a whole in the context of the owner’s other proposals of a cap/floor system with guaranteed revenue split.
Even in the absence of such huge changes to the current system, I’m disappointed with the false precision of Dan citing specific $ impacts on individual free agents without even mentioning a *huge* underlying assumption: static free agent $/WAR. That’s almost certainly not correct, because free agent $/WAR is a dynamic number that’s impacted by both (1) the restrictions on players/WAR available as free agents and (2) MLB’s overall economics.
To take a hypothetical that shows how free agent $/WAR is a dynamic number, aggregate MLB payrolls clearly wouldn’t rise to nearly $11 billion – almost doubling – if all players were free agents. (That would be the overly simplistic math of applying the observed $/WAR of free agents that Ben Clemens calculated a few months ago – https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-are-teams-paying-for-a-win-in-free-agency-2026-edition/ – to the definitional total of 1,000 WAR each season.)
Directionally, would this draft proposal reduce the free agent salaries of the players Dan mentions, if implemented under something close to MLB’s current economic framework? I’d say almost certainly yes, though by less than calculated using a static $/WAR assumption. It could very possibly also reduce total spending on free agents as a group, though the ~$160 million reduction to the draft bonus pool complicates that analysis. That $ amount is ~2.5% of total 2026 Opening Day payrolls, and probably shifts the demand curve of free agent spending.
The exact $ impact on free agent $/WAR would be extremely difficult to quantify, so I don’t fault Dan for failing to quantify it. I *do*, however, fault him for failing to note the key caveat – and that it’s, at best, overly simplistic – underlying his exercise in arithmetic.
I have cast about for a way to express my disdain for the attitude of MLB/the owners.
What I have found is that it all just strikes me so much of complacency. “We don’t need to search high and low for every source of player talent. We have plenty. Missing out will not hurt our bottom line. No one will walk away from handing us money. Any expense on more draft rounds, minor league teams, or international scouting is just a small amount of money wr could keep in our pockets. No one will compete with us. ”
It reminds me of those stats about “mature” companies and industries deciding a dollar spent on lobbying for protection from competition is more valuable than a dollar spent on R&D.
But are they really assured of revenues when the product is not maintained? I both highly doubt it and suspect it might. I also both hope they are wrong and dread they are right.
unlimited profits, controlled expenses, cartel ownership: the private equity wet dream.
Negotiations, especially labor negotiations, don’t begin with either side proposing a fair agreement to the other side. These initial proposals will be modified or disappear entirely from any final agreement. The same will likely be true for any initial proposals from the players’ union. Owners make proposals and agreements that are in their best interests. Players do the same. It’s not necessary to vilify the owners or players to point out why this type of proposal won’t be popular with fans and why most of us will want the specifics changed or forgotten. Articles like this are important because they provide us with a clear picture of what would actually happen from these proposals. From this fan’s perspective, there’s nothing positive here.
I think NCAA basketball is harder to follow with the one and done rule. The NBA has developed the G-League significantly since that rule was implemented and it makes me wish the NBA was closer to how baseball does it where a player either commits to several years of college or goes pro right away.
Forcing someone with no interest in academics to go to college for one year is a farce and having the 10-15 NBA prospects compete with actual student athletes is worse for their development than the G-League or putting them straight to the show. It’s a stupid thing to emulate.
Reducing salaries/contract lengths for the top players will also result in more top high school and college athletes choosing other professional sports over baseball, resulting in fewer star and superstar ballplayers for fans to enjoy.
I am a big proponent of labor > ownership, but am curious as to the thoughts on competitive equity from this proposal. Keeping more prime age seasons on the drafting team (which can be done by other means) seems to benefit lower income teams and makes the ability to “buy” wins or championships harder / higher risk.