The Baseball Hall of Fame is replete with inductees who debuted in MLB as teenagers, including icons such as Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., Mel Ott, Jimmie Foxx, and Bob Feller. The same is true for future inductees such as Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.
Such a situation, however, would largely cease to exist if a radical new labor proposal from MLB team owners becomes reality.
Amid a bargaining environment that is already deeply divided, management put forward a new offer that would dramatically restructure the sport’s current draft. Among the key terms:
Making all high school players ineligible for the draft. Eligibility for U.S.-born players would begin at age 20. Last year’s No. 1 pick, 17-year-old Eli Willits by the Nationals, would be ineligible until 2028 in this structure. For college players, most of them would become eligible after their sophomore year.
Cutting the domestic draft from 20 rounds to 12, implementing hard slots for draft bonuses instead of the current, looser structure, and slashing the overall draft pool by about half to $200 million—an aggregate figure not seen since 2010.
