Category Archives: Amateur Draft

December 9, 2025

MegaBaseball Winner

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The White Sox won the amateur draft lottery. They did not qualify for the lottery in 2024 despite the most losses in the modern era:

After the White Sox, the biggest winners, especially in terms of overcoming the odds, were the Rays, Giants and Royals. The Rays had a 3.03 percent chance of winning the lottery, ranking seventh, but catapulted up to the No. 2 overall pick, the first time they’ve had a pick in the top five since they took Brendan McKay in 2017.

MLB.com

The last three season each produced an historically terrible team. None of them won the draft lottery. The Athletics picked fourth after their terrible 2023 season, the White Sox were not eligible for the draft lottery last year, and the Rockies were not eligible for the lottery this season. The latter two teams picked poor years to tank.

July 8, 2025

Catching On

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Dan Hajducky at ESPN explores how teams changed the way they evaluate amateur catchers for the draft. This caught my attention:

Jim Koerner, USA Baseball’s director of player development, said it’s still imperative for catchers to wield “middle-infield hands” and a strong arm to be an MLB starter.

“[But] in five years,” he said, “once they institute robo umps, I think it’s going to be completely an offensive position.”

ESPN.com

Rule changes made it difficult for catchers to throw out runners. Pitchcom put pitch selection literally in the hands of the pitchers. Robo Umps will take away the advantages of pitch framing. Catchers already can’t block the plate. So most of what is left is offense.

It does make me wonder if batters will want to be catchers. It used to be that if you had poor offensive tools but were good defensively behind the plate, you could get and keep a job in the majors until the position wore you down. So while it may be more about offense, it would be counter productive to keep putting great hitters behind the plate. The wear and tear of the season is just too much. That’s why Bryce Harper didn’t catch, and Craig Biggio didn’t catch for long. So don’t expect the offensive value of catchers to skyrocket.

This bit on steals also deserves some comment:

“From an analytic standpoint, swinging the count in your favor is more valuable than defending the stolen base,” the player development director said. “Ninety feet matters in certain situations, [but] some teams don’t even care. They’d rather have a guy execute his stuff: High leg kick, deliver the stuff, go for the punch out.”

ESPN.com

This has actually been true for a long time. A number of great pitchers didn’t care about steals. They only cared about getting the batter out, since the steal alone seldom leads to a run.

This is definitely a trend we should watch.

June 14, 2025

Terrible Teams

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Sixty nine games into the season, the Rockies own 13-56 record, a .188 winning percentage. Since the first expansion in 1961, eleven teams produced a .315 winning percentage or worse. Four of those teams come from the early 1960s:

  • 1962 Mets 40-120, .250
  • 1961 Phillies, 47-107, .305
  • 1965 Mets, 50-112, .309
  • 1963 Mets, 51-111, .315

Note that this level of failure stopped as the first amateur draft happened during the 1965 season. For nearly forty years things were fine, the we saw this:

  • 2003 Tigers, 43-119, .265
  • 2024 Diamondbacks, 51-111, .315

There was a bit of an upheaval at the time. Between 1997 and 2002, MLB and the MLBPA went back and forth on a competitive balance tax, with the basics of the modern system going into place in 2003.

In 2013, the Astros finished 51-111, .315. Note that the Astros had completed a sale in which they were forced to move to the American League. It was also a time when the CBA put into place restrictions on the amount teams could spend on amateur players, both in terms of the draft and international signings. The Astros poor play for the next four years would be the basis of they dominant teams since.

That brings us to the recent past:

  • 2024 White Sox, 41-121, .253
  • 2018 Orioles, 47-115, .290
  • 2019 Tigers, 47-114, .292
  • 2023 Athletics, 50-112, .309

There were also two teams in 2021 just off this list. This season, the Rockies will be challenging the bad recent seasons by the Athletics and White Sox.

I am not a fan of the draft, but implementing that system seemed to stop these terrible teams from happening. Subsequent expansions have not produced a team as bad as the 1962 Mets. The draft did not end dominant teams, however. In the 1970s, four teams won multiple Word Championships; the Pirates, Athletics, Reds, and Yankees. Free agency led to long era when no team repeated. It was the Yankees dominance (and it’s always the Yankees dominance) that led to the competitive balance tax (CBT).

I think it’s safe to say the CBT did not work. Lowering the price of amateur players did not work. A draft lottery has not worked. All of these ideas were pushed with an element of competitive balance, but they seem to be a way for teams to simply save money.

I even think the bonus pool rules for pre-arbitration players might be keeping youngsters in the minors longer. If a team keeps a player in the minors until age 24 the team captures the entire prime of their career. I was having a conversation this morning in which I was asked, “Why don’t the Rockies just call up most of their AAA team?” My answer was that the Rockies won’t be competitive this season, so why start the arbitration clock?

I don’t have answers. In my mind, minor league free agency might work, where some combination of age, minor league service time, and MLB service time makes a minor leaguer a free agent. So use them or lose them. I don’t think a constant parade of below .300 teams are good for the game.

January 18, 2025

Dodgers Do it Right

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There is some complaining about the Dodgers after the Roki Sasaki deal:

This looks like a better take:

Over 20 years ago, people felt this way about the Yankees:

With a week to go before pitchers and catchers report for spring training, the New York Yankees shored up their pitching, hitting, and defense Monday by signing every player in professional baseball.

TheOnion.com

The Yankees won one World Series since then, although they play competitive ball nearly every year. Whenever people start complaining about a rich team continuing to amass great talent, I am reminded of this quote by Randy Levine of the Yankees in response to complaints by the Brewers (emphasis added):

“I’m sorry that my friend Mark continues to whine about his running the Brewers,” Levine told ESPNNewYork.com in a phone interview (http://sports.espn.go.com/newyork/mlb/news/story?id=5060292) Tuesday morning. “We play by all the rules and there doesn’t seem to be any complaints when teams such as the Brewers receive hundreds of millions of dollars that they get from us in revenue sharing the last few years. Take some of that money that you get from us and use that to sign your players.

“The question that should be asked is: Where has the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing gone?”

TheFreeLibrary.com

Note that ever since the adoption of the Bonus rule in 1947, the restrictions put in place on talent acquisition aimed to rein in the wealthier clubs.

  • Amateur draft
  • Free agent compensation
  • Competitive Balance Tax
  • Draft slot values
  • International Bonus Pool Money

None of it worked. Only the expanded playoffs, throwing more randomness into winning the World Series, allowed the lower revenue teams to be successful.

All the rules make the game more complicated for front offices. Not surprisingly, the rich teams can hire the most talented finance people to figure out the best ways to exploit the rules!

This blog argued from the beginning that the acquisition rules should be simple; all players are free agents all the time. Teams would no longer be able to exploit young talent by manipulating service time to capture primes under team control. Money would flow to better, younger players, rather than paying for declines. Minor league talent, rather than being trapped behind great MLB players, could move to an organization with openings at the MLB level.

I suspect the value of a free agent WAR would drop, since total MLB compensation should stay the same, and more supply of talent should lead to a lower price. Teams could also put more resources into evaluating talent, since the finance people no longer need to worry about what this signing means to draft choice, bonus pools, and luxury taxes five years down the road.

I know this is unlikely to happen, but I’ll keep the notion alive.

As an aside, I am looking forward to watching Roki on my Roku.

December 10, 2024

D.C. Wins Lottery

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The Washington Nationals won the first pick in the 2025 amateur draft:

The pingpong balls went the Nationals’ way again Tuesday, giving them a chance to replicate their previous success with No. 1 selections. In 2009, they chose right-hander Stephen Strasburg. A year later, they selected outfielder Bryce Harper. Both players were hyped as generational talents and quickly rose through the minors to serve as franchise cornerstones during the Nationals’ ascension to NL East power in the 2010s.

ESPN.com

We’ll see if this sets off a new era of Nationals dominance.

July 14, 2024 July 14, 2024 December 5, 2023 July 9, 2023

Draft First

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For the first time, teammates were taken 1-2 in the MLB amateur draft:

Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews, star teammates on the LSU team that won the Men’s College World Series, were selected with the first two picks of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft on Sunday, becoming the first pair of teammates to go 1-2 in draft history. 

The Pittsburgh Pirates began the draft by picking Skenes, the hard-throwing pitcher, No. 1 overall, and the Washington Nationals followed with Crews, the power-hitting outfielder.

Skenes became the first pitcher to go No. 1 overall since Casey Mize was selected by the Detroit Tigers in 2008. Skenes’ selection was announced by Seattle Mariners legend Ken Griffey Jr.

ESPN.com

The Pirates are a team on the rise, and now they have a college pitcher who should be ready for the big leagues quickly, since he’s already in his early 20s. Skenes upped his game in 2023, throwing 122 innings and cutting way down on his walks. If he blows away batters in the minors with low walks, he’ll climb quickly.

January 16, 2023

Catching On

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Ethan Salas received a $5.6 million signing bonus from the Padres on International signing day. A catcher, Salas ranked at the top of this talent pool:

According to scouting reports, Ethan Salas has raw power at the plate and strong defensive skills.

ESPN.com

It may not be long before he reaches the majors. Ivan Rodriguez came up at age 19, so that investment could pay off in a couple of years. Like Rodriguez, Salas’s first season in the minors will be at seasonal age 17.

Note that if an international draft had been in place, the Padres would not have been able to acquire this player. Without competition from other teams, Salas likely would have received a smaller signing bonus. I’m glad international players are resisting the draft, and hope they continue to do so.

January 11, 2023

Help from Japan

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The Athletics sign posted pitcher Shintaro Fujinami from Japan:

It’s a low-risk signing that could end up paying big dividends. Major league scouts have had an eye on him since he was 19 and while he’s had struggles, it seems Oakland is committed to giving him a legit shot at thriving in the Majors. And just like with all of their signings this offseason, if he makes a successful transition then Oakland might consider trade deadline deals for him to help further bolster the farm system.

AthleticsNation.com

I wonder how much of signing players that might be flipped has to do with draft position uncertainty? If this strategy works it might be a quicker way to rebuild.

Fujinami is really a splendid splinter, listed as six foot six inches and 180 pounds at Baseball Reference.

December 7, 2022

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play

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The Pittsburgh Pirates win the initial MLB amateur draft lottery. The Pirates were tied with the Reds for the third worst record in the majors in 2022, and move up two slots. The Nationals, with the worst record, get the second pick instead of the first. The Twins did the best, however, as they finished the season 78-84 after a strong start that had them in first place in the AL Central. Normally they would have picked thirteenth, but now pick fifth. The Tigers and Rangers also move up, picking third and sixth respectively, while Athletics drop to sixth. Both the Reds and the Royals drop out of the top six.

Will this help stop tanking? Three of the worst teams still received high draft picks. Two teams who spent money in the free agent market last year but did not succeed get to improve in the draft as well. It still seems to me if you are rebuilding that a poor team is still the best bet for a good draft pick.

What will help is the inability to do this years in a row.

 Large-market teams (defined as those who do not receive revenue sharing) are prohibited from entering the draft lottery in back-to-back years; small-market teams can’t enter it for three straight years.

ESPN.com

It’s going to take a few years to see how this plays out. I still don’t understand why teams can’t trade draft picks.

December 5, 2022

Picking Order

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The first draft lottery to determine which teams get the top picks in the draft takes place Tuesday December sixth. I did not realize that an added wrinkle aims to prevent long-term tanking and to prevent rich teams from too many top picks:

Teams that receive revenue-sharing payouts can’t receive a lottery pick for more than two years in a row and those that don’t get revenue-sharing payments can’t get a top-six choice in consecutive Drafts. Furthermore, a club that’s ineligible for the lottery can’t select higher than 10th overall.

MLB.com

So if the league sends money your way and you finish top six in the lottery two years in a row, tanking in the third year does not help. With luck this will prevent the five-year tanks we saw from clubs like the Cubs and the Astros in the previous decade.

November 7, 2022

MLB Power Ball

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The MLB draft lottery takes place on December sixth:

Washington, Oakland and Pittsburgh, which each lost 100 or more games, have the best odds of getting the top pick at 16.5%. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati both went 62-100 but the Pirates were slotted third because they had a worse record than the Reds in 2021.

ESPN.com

All the teams that didn’t make the post-season have a shot at the pick, include the Brewers with a 0.2% chance at number one. MLB Network will cover the lottery live, providing MLB with another show to bring in revenue!

July 25, 2022

Draft Dead

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The MLBPA chose amateurs over money as they rejected the proposal for an international draft.

The Major League Baseball Players Association formally rejected MLB’s last proposal on an international draft on Monday, the deadline for both sides to reach agreement on a long-standing issue with major ripple effects. The absence of a draft means the qualifying-offer system and the international signing period will each remain as is.

The two sides exchanged a total of four proposals this month, including two last weekend, and were consistently far apart on the amount of money that would be guaranteed to future international amateur players.

ESPN.com

I hope this is a start toward tearing down restrictions on players, including a shorter time to free agency and an end to the current amateur draft. This is the first step I’ve seen in that direction in a long time.

July 22, 2022

The International Draft

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The deadline approaches for MLB and the MLBPA to make or break a deal on an international draft. One of the main concerns voiced as a reason for the need of a draft is corruption, as youngsters, barely teenagers, make deals to sign with clubs years before that transaction is allowed.

Let me state up front that the draft is not about that. The draft is about saving MLB money, and making it a bit easier for the lower revenue teams to compete for players. Francisco Lindor of the Mets says it well:

“This is not a system problem — this is a people problem, and the people work for the major league teams,” said New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, a member of the MLBPA’s executive subcommittee. “It should start by penalizing those people that do pre-deals. It should start by penalizing the people that are putting these (players) to work as hard as they can at such a young age to try to get a deal at 13, 14 years old. That’s who they should be penalizing.

“At the end of the day, the system is a byproduct of the rules that people made. … I think the system is probably not the greatest, but the people who created the system have taken advantage. That’s the problem.”

ESPN.com

Long time readers of Baseball Musings know that I believe the more rules in a system, the easier it is to game those rules. This is why I constantly push for universal free agency. The limits put on international signings appear to have made the system worse, not better. If a draft is implemented, in ten years people will be complaining about the lack of Latin American players in the big leagues, just like the current amateur draft reduced the number of African American and Puerto Rican players in MLB. These players were no longer cheap to develop, so that mechanism moved to other countries outside the draft.

I also want to take exception to a statement in the article:

When the Dominican-born Minaya served as the New York Mets’ general manager from 2004 to 2010, teams were just beginning to commit resources in Latin America.

ESPN.com

This really started in the 1970s:

That aspiration became more formalized in 1977. In that year, “super-scout” Epy Guerrero, himself Dominican, took ten Dominican players he had signed and housed them together so they could hone their skills. The Dodgers and Pirates, already involved in scouting in the Caribbean, quicky copied this model.

The idea of a closed baseball academy was born, and they were also established to cut down on the culture shock faced by players moving to the United States without knowledge of English or American culture. Today all thirty MLB clubs have a presence on the island in the form of these academies.

Origins.OSU.edu

What happened 20 years ago is that most of the big market clubs realized they could save money with this model. Suddenly, teams like the Pirates, who had been fairly free to develop foreign talent, now had to compete with the Yankees for that talent. Remember, every restriction on signing free agents, whether amateur or professional, is designed to stop the Yankees from dominating the league.

The draft is a bad idea. Slot bonuses are a worse idea. Let all the players be free to sign where they want for the money they want. Everyone will be better off.

July 17, 2022

Sonny Draft

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The first two picks in the rule five draft went to sons of major league players:

The Baltimore Orioles made high school shortstop Jackson Holliday the first selection in Major League Baseball’s draft on Sunday, but the biggest shock came with the No. 3 overall pick, as the Texas Rangers selected Kumar Rocker, the highly touted pitching prospect who famously did not sign with the New York Mets last season.

Rocker now joins his former Vanderbilt teammate, Jack Leiter, who was picked second overall by the Rangers last year.

High school outfielder Druw Jones, the son of five-time All-Star Andruw Jones, went second overall to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

ESPN.com

Holliday is the son of Matt Holliday. Rocker is not the son of John Rocker, in case you were wondering. 🙂

Update: Jackson Holliday is a bit of a baseball Mozart:

July 11, 2022

Trading Picks

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The Royals and Braves make a deal involving a competitive balance pick. The Royals receive three minor leagues, including the Braves top prospect, and Atlanta gets a pick between their 20th and 57th slots. The Braves top prospect does not rank highly among all minor leaguers, so Atlanta might do better with the higher pick. The Royals get some depth for their minor league system.

I hope MLB gets around to allowing all picks to be traded.

July 8, 2022

Playing the Draft Card

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MLB and the MLBPA are in negotiations to institute an international draft.

The March 10 agreement that ended the 99-day lockout set a July 25 deadline for the union to agree to the draft. Without an agreement, direct draft-pick compensation and the qualifying offer system would remain for major league free agents. That structure has inhibited the market for some players, such as pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel in 2019.

Chron.com

So once again, major league players will throw amateurs under the bus for a little more money. An international draft will lead to fewer foreign players, since they will no longer be a cost effective means of acquiring players. Why run an academy if there is no guarantee you will get the players?

The MLBPA should be trying to eliminate the draft altogether, and I hope they wind up rejecting this proposal.

July 8, 2022

Farming Wins

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Down on the Farm posts a graph of the WAR accumulated from the draft for each team since 2010:

I’m not quite sure what the methodology is here. I suspect it is players drafted since 2010, not organization raised talent since 2010, since Mike Trout would add 80 WAR to the Angels. This may also be a good argument for tanking, since that Astros talent comes from a six-year tank, the first draft of that tank occurring in 2010.

This graph also shows that getting good players in the draft is not the only path to success. Note that the Orioles rank high here, but no one thinks they are looking at a dynasty right now. The Twins, Rays, Red Sox, Cubs, and Braves are all lower middle on the graph, yet have achieved some success.

I’d love to see a similar graph for international signings in the period.

March 10, 2022

Punting the Draft

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MLB and the MLBPA kicked the International Draft down the road so they can get back to the economic issues of the CBA.

Under the deal reached Thursday, if a negotiated agreement on a draft is reached by July 25, direct amateur draft-pick compensation would be removed for free agents starting with the 2022-23 offseason.

If the sides do not reach an agreement by July 25, direct amateur-draft pick compensation would remain in place.

ESPN.com

So the owners get what they wanted, linking the draft to free agent compensation. So if the players say yes to the draft, they are putting the interest of the free agents ahead of the interest of the amateurs.

February 6, 2022

Draft Tournament

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Here’s a novel idea about expanding the post season from the bottom. Hold a tournament among the bottom eight teams, with the winner getting the first pick in the draft:

From there, the two subsequent ‘one game showdowns’ will establish the exact order. If you like shortcuts, here’s the “won-loss” pattern that will determine each pick:

W-W-W = 1st overall pick
W-W-L = 2nd overall pick
W-L-W = 3rd overall pick
W-L-L = 4th overall pick
L-W-W = 5th overall pick
L-W-L = 6th overall pick
L-L-W = 7th overall pick
L-L-L = 8th overall pick

That’s 12 one-game showdowns with quite a bit at stake in each game (especially the first round, but arguably throughout), with each team guaranteed to play 3 games.

AthleticsNation.com

All the game will be played at the stadium of the team with the best winning percentage, so that gate encourages bad teams to finish as high as possible. In this scenario, MLB would go back to a single wild card. It’s an idea worth considering.

December 13, 2021

Incentives on a Roll

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Bless You Boys gets notes the importance of incentives in stopping tanking.

Removing what incentive remains by having a draft lottery could help, but tanking for draft picks is not the main reason that teams don’t spend money on players. Getting those picks often doesn’t affect a team’s success or failure that much even when they land really good young players. Teams too often use those young talents as temporary promotional items, never committing to putting a good team around them and building a winner. By itself, a draft lottery won’t stop tanking. Teams must be required to spend revenue sharing dollars on payroll, and winning must be incentivized while draft incentives for losing are removed.

BlessYouBoys.com

It comes to mind that one incentive might be to limit the visits of popular teams. Figure out who are the big road draws, and reduce the number of games those teams play at the parks of losing teams. Due to interleague play, this is somewhat easy outside a division. When a team ties to win, they get the bigger draws.

December 11, 2021

Defeating the Tank

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Jayson Stark proposes giving teams that just miss the playoffs the top picks in the draft in an effort to stop tanking. (Link may require a subscription.) Here are the thoughts of an anonymous team executive:

Like many people, he has other changes he would favor, either in addition to this or as stand-alone ideas. He initially talked up those ideas as being preferable to this plan. But the more he thought this one over, the more he warmed up to it. He texted me, several hours later, with more thoughts. He still has reservations, but he concluded this way:

“It definitely incentivizes winning, and that would be the purpose. So after thinking about it, you’d get my vote. Creative.”

TheAthletic.com

I very much like that the proposal is thinking in terms of incentives. My objection is that sometimes teams that try to win sometimes wind up with poor seasons. A front office puts together a good team on paper, then then two freak injuries to star players and lots of losses in close games drops them to 65 wins.

I still believe the best way to deal with the incentives to win or lose is to remove the incentive. Get rid of the draft, and use competitive revenue sharing to get teams to compete.

July 13, 2021

Just Pitchers

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The Angels took twenty pitchers with their twenty draft picks:

Pitching has long been an issue for the Angels, the primary reason the team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014. When Shohei Ohtani starts Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Denver, he’ll be the first Angels pitcher to appear in an All-Star Game since Jered Weaver in 2012. (Hector Santiago was selected in 2015, but did not pitch).

ESPN.com

Choose enough pitchers, and one of two of them is likely to work out. We’ll see where this group stands in a few years.

July 12, 2021 July 12, 2021

Surplus Players

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Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald discusses draft strategy with the Marlins and amateur scouting director DJ Svihlik. The limited number of players drafted last season left a very rich field of players for lower rounds:

That played a role in the Marlins going with two top prep players who fell to them on Sunday — Wake Forest High shortstop Kahlil Watson (a consensus top-10 prospect in the draft cycle) at No. 16 and Buffalo-area catcher Joe Mack (No. 19 by MLB Pipeline) at No. 31.

And it’s why they waited until Day 2 to take some of these college players with proven track records, knowing that they would be available later on (and, tangentially, could be signed to bonuses that were below their slot value to help sign a few of the prep players).

MiamiHerald.com

So teams are getting better players for less money. I’m sure the owners are happy about that.

July 11, 2021

Draft Underway

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The 2021 amateur draft is underway, with catcher Henry Davis selected by the Pirates as the first pick, and Jack Leiter, son of Al Leiter, gets selected by the Rangers.

Davis has big power and an even bigger arm, throwing out 46% of would-be basestealers to become a finalist for the Buster Posey Award as college baseball’s best defensive catcher.

ESPN.com

You can watch the rest of the draft on the MLB Network.

January 5, 2021

Increasing Competition

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Brittany Ghiroli at The Athletic (subscription may be required) writes about how to prevent tanking. She comes very close to universal free agency as one solution:

One idea was get rid of the draft and give every team the same amount of money to spend on players coming out of high school or college to replenish their system. Make everyone a free agent right away and make teams bid to get the top young players. Another idea involves the same draft system but grants free agency after two years to avoid the stockpiling of prospects and long, tedious rebuilds.

The long-term ramifications would obviously be enormous. What do free agent contracts look like? Is the offseason now a scramble to sign the best players? Does Mike Trout call his buddies and create a super team? How do you lure players if every team has the same amount of money? There’s a lot of creativity that can happen here and, again, it would put a lot of pressure on front offices to deliver.

The Athletic.com

All teams have enough money to spend on free agents, there does not need to be a level playing field. The only way to really stop tanking is to eliminate the draft. Otherwise, teams will game the system to the point of tanking to get that first pick. Universal free agency is a much better solution, and gets great players more money at a younger age.

June 30, 2020