The Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft is probably the most complex draft process out of the big four American sports leagues.
The best players eligible do not always get drafted in the first or second round. Sometimes they do not get drafted at all. Others may get drafted, but won’t sign with the team that picked them.
So why is that?
One word can explain that – signability.
In the NFL, for example, a team signs the players they draft within a matter of weeks of them being drafted. These players have either ran out of eligibility to play in college, or willingly gave their eligibility up when declaring for the draft, leaving them without much of a choice but to sign. This is not always the case in baseball.
Some players fall into the later rounds or out of the draft entirely because teams do not think they would be able to sign them. And certain players being deemed as unsignable is due to the eligibility rules for the MLB Draft.
Any player that has graduated from high school but not yet attended a college or junior college, college players from a four-year university who have either completed their junior or senior year of college or are at least 21 years of age, and any junior college player is eligible to be drafted. But some opt for college ball instead of going pro.
College commitments
Before the 2011 draft, Pittsburgh Pirates prospect Josh Bell wrote a letter to each team in the majors telling them not to draft him because he planned on honoring his commitment to the University of Texas. Bell, who was rated as Baseball America’s 15th best player in that draft, was not drafted until the 61st overall pick. The Pirates signed him to a record $5 million, the most a team has ever paid to a non-first round pick after drafting them.
Bell is an extreme example, but does show why some teams will avoid certain players in high school. Teams instead may take a gamble on a player like Bell in the later rounds where there is less to lose if they do not sign them. However, that could lead into a conundrum for the player, and it ties into the risk/reward benefit of drafting high schoolers.
The player’s risk/reward decision
Would a newly drafted player out of high school rather sign for less than they may make if they were to break out in college then re-enter the draft, or risk being injured or underperforming in college and then being offered less the next time eligible?
Let’s take Pittsburgh top prospect Tyler Glasnow as an example of this the two sides of this decision.
Glasnow was drafted in the fifth round of the 2011 MLB Draft by the Pirates and was signed for $600,000, the largest ever for a player drafted after the 65th overall pick. The right-hander would have played at the University of Portland had he not signed with the Pirates and would have been eligible for the draft again in 2014.
That’s a pretty good payoff for Glasnow, right? As ESPN broadcaster Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friend.
The 21-year-old broke out as a top prospect for the Pirates in 2013, and followed it up with an even better year in 2014 in which he became a top 10 prospect in all of baseball.
But what if that breakout had happened while he was in college? If he broke out at Portland, Glasnow very well could have been a top 10 pick. The lowest signing bonus a player received in last year’s top 10 picks was $2.3 million, almost four times as much as what Glasnow got when he signed.
On the flip side though, what if Glasnow blew out his arm or did not break out if he went to college? He would have the security of still getting his bonus, but it would have been a wasted pick and money for the Pirates.
Stetson Allie is a good example of a high-risk, high-reward prep player that did not work out. Allie was Baseball America’s eighth best prospect in the 2010 draft, but he fell to the 52nd pick did not think they would be able to pay him what he wanted. He signed for $2.25 million, but as a pitcher he was a complete bust and has since moved to the outfield.
Draft spending caps
The rules for signing draft picks that were implemented before the 2012 draft do not make it any easier to sign players, as teams now have a set cap they cannot exceed when signing picks. Pirate fans know this first hand after the team drafted Mark Appel in the first round of the 2012 draft, but he would not accept the most money the Pirates could offer without losing draft picks.
A draft cap is just one more thing teams have to consider when picking a player, and they may cross off a guy that would force them to exceed their cap to sign.
All these factors make the MLB draft difficult to predict, but at the same time makes it that much more intriguing.
