I love baseball, but my knowledge regarding the draft is lacking. Can you tell me…
How does one become eligible to be on the draft?
How is the ranking (1,2,etc) determined?
I believe draft pick is awarded based on last seasons MLB standings. Teams with the worst record are given priority. But how exactly does it work?
Thank you for your replies.
The “quick version” answer to #1 appears to be, you are eligible for the draft is you were born in the USA or Canada, have finished (or at least used up all of your baseball eligibility in) high school, and either have not started a 4-year college (all junior college students are eligible, unless you transferred from a 4-year school), have finished your junior year, or are 21 or older.
The fundamental draft order is determined by season standings, but teams can lose their pick for signing free agents and gain additional picks if they did not sign a high level pick the year before.
In 2014, for instance, Toronto picks ninth, because they were the ninth worst team in baseball, but then they pick again at 11th because they did not sign that corresponding pick from the 2013 draft. Toronto cannot lose that pick even if they sign a free agent (See below.)
There is then an interim round when teams get extra picks “in between” the first and second rounds for free agents that left them despite being made qualifying offers. A team can also lose a first round pick if they sign such a free agent, unless the pick was in the top ten, in which case they lose their next pick. So Seattle loses their second pick for signing Robinson Cano, while the Yankees get a compensation pick for losing him (but lose their first pick for signing Jacoby Ellsbury, and a compensation pick goes to Boston.)
Thank you RJ for chiming in. From what I have seen on this MB, you speak the language of baseball.
So, there is a list of eligible draftees. If my team has a first round choice, we can select anyone we feel will strengthen our team, right? The draftees are not ranked. We scan the list and choose who will be the best for our situation, no? So, when we hear that so and so was a first round draft choice it signifies that he was chosen because he had the talents the team needed. Not necessarily the “best” of the offerings, right?
Pretty much, yeah.
Although there are (at least) two caveats to that.
The first is that at the very high end (like the first round or more) most teams will take the player they think is the very best regardless of what their major league team might need. Because young talent will still likely need to develop a bit, so taking a lesser talent because you need him now doesn’t really work. So, generally speaking, if you are drafted #1 it means that the team picking first thinks you are the absolute best player available in that draft.
The other caveat has to do with money. Some players enter the draft out of high school with the backup plan of going to college. They then attempt to negotiate a larger-than-typical signing bonus. If they don’t get the bonus they just go to college and try again a few years later. The league has tried to limit the effectiveness of this by “slotting” the bonus size for draft picks and then punishing teams for “going over slot” (paying a larger-than-typical bonus). This has somewhat reduced the number of players that refuse to sign after being drafted.
ETA: To clarify that last point, in the not-too-distant past it was typical for very good players to drop below where most teams would have them ranked due to “signability” concerns. This doesn’t seem to be as typical now. In fact, you sometimes see the opposite now where teams will draft a player that may be lower on their board because they think they can sign him cheaper (this lets them pool some of their bonus money to “overreach” later in the draft for a “signability” guy). The international bonus money plays in to this too, in ways I don’t fully understand.
To what Jas09 said, that is why Toronto gets both the #9 and #11 picks next year. The #9 pick they earned by being terrible; the #11 pick they earned because their 2013 first round pick refused $4 million, electing instead to go to college (which was an insane decision if you think about it, but by all accounts the young man and his agent were taken by surprise when Toronto didn’t budge.)
This is kind of a strange system, if you think about it, essentially telling Toronto “hey, if you can’t make a deal, you really lose nothing, we just give you a similar pick the next year.” Since draft picks are generally years away from being big leaguers there isn’t a lot of difference between having one first round pick in eahc of 2013 and 2014 or two in 2014. The reason they allow this, of course, is that it helps to keep the signing bonuses down; Toronto would have been much more motivated to throw money at Phil Bickford (the kid they drafted in 2013) if they weren’t just going to get a fresh pick in 2014.
How does an 18 year old turn down a $4 million bonus? That is money that could set you up for your entire life. He got some bad advice. He could blow out a knee or arm in a heartbeat and be done.
The hubris of agents and players sometimes amazes me.
One thing about baseball’s draft that is different than any other sport that I know of is that a team can stop drafting or continue drafting depending on their needs. I’m not sure if a team has a minimum amount of picks they need to make or a maximum amount they can take (I imagine there is an upper and lower limit to draft pics), but often you will see a team draft someone in the 42nd round, while another team has stopped drafting players in the 37th round. I’ve always found this interesting.
Maybe someone can shed some light on this?
I am guessing each team has to take a player in the first X rounds (say 20), but they can stop after they draft the minimum. Likewise, the draft may last for Y rounds (say 50), but most teams aren’t drafting in the later rounds.
I hope this makes sense, and i hope someone who knows how the draft works a bit better than i do can explain this a bit better.
The draft is 40 rounds long now, though you could in theory have more picks due to supplementary picks. I believe as it stands the Yankees are entitled to 42 picks in 2014, for instance (they gain three picks due to losing Kuroda, Cano, and Granderson, but lose one fr signing Ellsbury; that can still change, depending who signs where.) A team can stop picking before round 40. I believe there used to be more rounds; Mike Piazza was famously drafted 62nd solely as a symbolic gesture of kindness to his father, and then they kind of found out by accident that he could hit.
There is no minimum, but practically speaking a team could not possibly draft fewer than 20-25 players a year; they will lose that many players every year just to sheer attrition. Baseball’s minor league system is vast, because it takes years and year of pro ball for 99% of major league ballplayers to learn to play MLB ball. Every MLB team has 200+ players in the minor leagues and overseas affiliates under contract, and every year a lot of them give up or have to be released when it is discovered that they are simply not pro material. MLB teams chew though a huge number of players.
A point I should make is that to get a compensation pick for a lost free agent, a team must make a “qualifying offer,” which is defined as a one-year guaranteed contract for a number equivalent to, IIRC, the average of the 125 highest salaries in MLB from the year before. Again IIRC that was $14.1 million. So the Yankees had to give Robinson Cano an official offer of at least $14.1 million for one year (obviously a formality in his case since he would be insane to accept it) to get that draft pick. When you’re talking about big stars the qualifying offer is always a pure formality, but for players with question marks this becomes a tricky situation. Going back t the Blue Jays, they lost Josh Johnson to free agency and got no draft pick because they did not make him a qualifying offer. Johnson has been an excellent pitcher in the past but in 2013 was a horrible disaster and got hurt, so it was a risk; do you make the offer? He might accept. If he does, will you blow your $14 million or get a surprising year out of him? They chose not to risk it, electing to spend the money elsewhere, so he left and they get no pick.
As to why Phil Bickford turned down a $4 million bonus, it’s because he got bad advice. There is simply no other explanation; they thought the Blue Jays would blink, and that was a terrible miscalculation. Aside from the fact the Jays are owned by a giant, soulless media conglomerate that would happily drain the blood from its custodial staff if they thought they could make thirty bucks doing it, the new draft rules are specifically designed to punish the Phil Bickfords of the world by giving the Blue Jays every reason to tell him to go to hell. They had very little to lose by standing their ground, because now they just get another draft pick in pretty much the same position in the draft. For them it’s hardly even an inconvenience; for Bickford it’s potentially a life-altering mistake with little upside.
I suspect MLB was unofficially, er, supporting the Blue Jays in their stand, since it sends a rather stark message to future Phil Bickfords.
As stated above, the draft is limited to 40 rounds now, and there is almost no passing. Teams need the bodies. Many teams will afterwords, sign several undrafted free agents just to fill their rookie ball, low A and extended spring training rosters.
The draft previously was 50 rounds and before that was 100 rounds max. Passing on picks was much more common under the old rules. In 1996 for example, teams started dropping out slowly in the late 40’s, early 50’s with about 10 teams lasting until the mid 60’s. 3 teams made it to the 90’s though, and the Yankees used all 100 draft picks.
Too late to edit.
Actually only 2 teams made it to the 90’s in the 1996 draft. Houston dropped out after the 82nd round. Tampa after the 97th and the already mentioned Yankees.
Barry Zito was the last player of any consequence drafted. He was taken in the 59th round, but chose college instead.