SPRINGFIELD–The baseball world has been divided, since last week, after Major League Baseball proposed it would be better off if it no longer allowed high school players to skip college and get drafted to the pros.
The practice of calling up high school-aged talent has been going on since 1965, so it’s been stictched into MLB’s fabric for quite some time. So, you can only imagine how well that notion went over with the Major League Baseball Players Union…hint: NOT very well.
Last summer, there were 615 players taken across all 20 rounds, and, of those, 96 were high school-aged players. In fact, 19 of the 43-first-round selections were high school athletes.
Along with limiting the draft to players who’ve either completed their sophomore year of college or are at least 20-years-old, MLB also wants to shorten the draft from 20 rounds down 12, so they can also have an international draft, which would consist of 12 rounds, as well.
On top of that, signing bonuses for both drafts would be hard-slotted and capped at $200 million — around what international players get now and slashed in half from the current system for domestic players.
This news comes on the heels of Major League Baseball also proposing a salary cap for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, which runs out before the calendar year ends. And if the two sides can’t come to an agreement before then, then there’s a real possibility fans of America’s pasttime could see the first work-stoppage since the strike that abruptly ended the 1994 season.
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