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MLB Draft: How the New CBA Could Change the Draft

By Benjamin Chase

Dec 7, 2015; Nashville, TN, USA; MLB commissioner Rob Manfred answers question from the media after naming Cal Ripken Jr. (not pictured) Senior Advisor to the Commissioner on Youth Programs and Outreach during the MLB winter meetings at Gaylord Opryland Resort . Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 7, 2015; Nashville, TN, USA; MLB commissioner Rob Manfred answers question from the media after naming Cal Ripken Jr. (not pictured) Senior Advisor to the Commissioner on Youth Programs and Outreach during the MLB winter meetings at Gaylord Opryland Resort . Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports /
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A new provision in the MLB collective bargaining agreement has gone under-reported, but it could drastically change the landscape of the draft.

With MLB Pipeline releasing their Top 50 prospects for the the upcoming 2017 MLB draft and their first mock drafts (seriously!), many baseball fans have begun to turn their attention toward next season’s draft.

Many don’t realize, however, that the draft next year could look quite different than previous seasons due to a little-reported piece of the new CBA.

What exactly happened?

In Jeff Passan’s big break-down of the new CBA on Yahoo, this only drew a one-line bullet point, so it’s understandable that many people have completely missed it, but in talking with scouts and a few team folks, this could have some pretty large ramifications.

That one line reads such:

"• High-school players can formally opt out of the amateur draft instead of just telling teams not to draft them."

So what does this mean?

In reading this initially, I really didn’t see the big deal, personally. Players have “opted out” of the draft before, like Kyler Murray just in 2015, but as that linked article even states, that opt-out isn’t official. Any major league team could have still selected Murray if they so chose just in case he changed his mind.

That seems innocuous enough until you begin to talk with some of the players who really did not want to be chosen out of high school and dealt with dozens of phone calls from newspapers, friends, and family congratulating them on their selection. It became something that really was a felt “punishment” for not signing to have to deal with explaining to every phone call why you were not signing.

For many outside of the game, we’d look at that as a sort of whining. How much we’d give to be selected in the baseball draft!

However, think about explaining to family that you turned down an Ivy League school for the local community college for two years. The phone calls and emails and texts and tweets and everything else would get to be endless, even though it’s 100% your choice.

The more I talked with former players who went through this process, including two who explicitly told teams they were going to college and not to draft them, yet ended up being drafted, the more this new official opt-out made sense.

How will we see this change the draft?

In speaking with former players and scouts, the biggest thing that this will allow is that players can officially make a choice. Rather than using their college commitment just as a negotiating ploy (and the money in the draft has been reduced quite a bit, so there’s not the same amount to negotiate for, either), they can choose to say they definitely will attend college and simply opt out.

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Murray was a rare guy in that he told teams not to select him, and they actually listened and didn’t try the 39th round “just in case” selection tactic. For many players who have told teams not to draft them, however, that has not been the case, and that will clear this up.

The thing that one scout told me is that he felt that baseball did not go far enough in the new rule. While the rule does allow for high school players to opt out of the draft, it does not provide a provision for those college players who are draft-eligible sophomores or juniors that would like to return to college for another year. That could be an interesting addition to the next CBA if this opt-out proves to benefit the development of players.

I truly don’t believe you’ll see a ton of the guys that made that top 50 list opt out for the draft in any given season. However, the guys who would be more like a 100th ranked guy and would like to use his baseball skills to get a free education (in the rare few schools that actually have full baseball scholarships, but that’s a whole other article!), he can now make that choice.

Next: Pirates Top 10 Prospects

For a teaser, here are videos of the top high school and college hitter and pitcher according to that top 50 to whet your draft whistle!

Hunter Greene, RHP/SS, High School:

Alex Faedo, RHP, Florida:

Jeren Kendall, OF, Vanderbilt:

Royce Lewis, SS/OF, High school:

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