Late last week, Major League Baseball proposed major changes to the game’s player development program. Starting in 2028, the domestic draft will be cut from 20 rounds to 12, and high school student eligibility will be removed – players will have to be at least 20 years old. again two years were taken out of high school to write. Players who choose to play for a JUCO school will have to do so for both seasons, rather than the current one-year requirement. Most players in a four-year college will be eligible the previous year under MLB’s new proposal; currently, they are not eligible for the draft unless they turn 21 on August 1 of their draft year or until after their third year at a four-year college. MLB’s proposal would move the age cutoff date back to September 1. More than 40% of the dollars will be paid in adjustments, and the $358.7 million of the latest available is reduced to $200 million.
On the international side, MLB has proposed the creation of a new structure, an idea that was first discussed during the last round of CBA negotiations. The draft, which will begin in 2027, will require players to be at least 18 years old by September 1 of their draft year. The draft pool will remain the same otherwise, with the same $200 million available to international draftees as domestically, much closer to the nearly $199 million that was in the final bonus pool in 2025.
We don’t need to do any detective work to find out where the money is going. As was the case with the proposal of parallel salary capsules of this unit, which the management proposed indifferently as a way to improve the level of competition, this proposal is part of the ongoing efforts of the owners to transfer money from the pockets of the players to theirs. Based on almost every example ever, the savings will not offset consumer spending, and I would be shocked if it was redirected to improve the wages of team workers, who often take reduced wages for the privilege of working in baseball, or minor leaguers.
JJ Cooper covers the proposal in detail at American baseballso I won’t get into the weeds too much here today. Instead, I want to highlight how much the proposal will cost the top players of the game.
Increasing the age requirement for players to join the ranks of professional football, as well as increasing the entry age to make the big leagues, has the added benefit of increasing the age at which players reach free agency. Players are likely to get the best part of their career before they hit the open market, and under MLB’s new proposal, this situation will become even more prominent.
Of the 146 players last winter who became free agents after earning six years of MLB service, compared to those who were not tendered, only 13 were in their 20s by the 2026 season. None of the 13 were drafted under the proposed rules, with eight players drafted out of high school and five signed as 16-year-old rookies. And no, college players are less likely to be accelerated to compensate for this. Another 13 of those 146 relievers were entering their age 30 season; only three of these 13 players would have signed at the time they actually signed under the proposed rules.
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A year or two is actually very important when dealing with an elite free agent or soon-to-be free agent. When you’re talking about guys who win, getting a player like Juan Soto or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a few years early allows you to trade a year in the 40s for one year in their prime. This doesn’t just mean math guys and their guesswork; teams know this, which is why someone like Pete Alonso gets the shrugs in free agency, certainly related to how non-elite sluggers were treated 15 years ago. And yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of my comment about how much the groups suffered from non-specialists in their 30s, since, as I’ve been told by both front office decision makers and many agents, I’m one of the people responsible for spreading that attitude!
ZiPS initially predicted that Soto would receive a 15-year, $719 million contract in free agency after the 2024 season, compared to the $765 million he earned. Keeping everything the same and making him two years older drops the projected salary from $719 million to $588 million, a decrease of $131 million.
Similar results are occurring in other major contracts currently in effect. After getting his GED to graduate high school early and play one year at JUCO College of Southern California, Bryce Harper, born October 16, 1992, was drafted for the first time as a 17-year-old in 2010. He made his major league debut in his age 19 season, which meant he won the NL rookie of the season before winning the league under the year award. a suggestion. The first year of his contract with the Phillies was 2019, his age 26 season. At the time, ZiPS evaluated Harper’s 13-year deal as worth $314 million, compared to the $330 million he actually received. Aging in two years drops the average from $314 million to $259 million, and in three years, to $224 million.
Let’s do that with some of the biggest contracts from the past four seasons for players who would have been delayed in free agency. If we look at deals that were around $150 million or more, Willy Adames will lose $53 million, Dylan Cease $51 million, Xander Bogaerts $47 million, and Brandon Nimmo $41 million. Overall, if the league’s proposal had been in place four seasons ago, only nine players would have received contracts worth at least $150 million, losing an average of $47 million each. Naturally, the same effect exists in the lucrative long-term extensions signed by players during their years of club control. Bobby Witt Jr.’s Projection spending $43 million from the 11-year, $288.778 million contract he signed before the 2024 season. According to ZiPS, Corbin Carroll’s target extension would be $31 million less than his current $111 million over eight years, while Julio Rodríguez would get $20 million less than what he got from the Mariners.
Is this good for baseball? My personal feeling is no. I think baseball is better off if the players get a bigger piece of the pie, and MLB’s new proposal threatens to make free agency itself more money for top talent, and that’s before counting any changes to free agency or the luxury tax system. It should be noted that this is an early proposal and is subject to significant change, but like the proposed salary cap, if owners insist on sticking with it, baseball will be shut down for a long time.
