MLBPA Rejects Owners’ Draft Changes in Latest Labor Proposal

The MLB Players Association not only wants to keep the league’s amateur draft largely the way it is now but also revive elements that were in place before the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of labor negotiations picking back up between the league and union, the MLBPA made a draft proposal Tuesday that entirely rejects the dramatic cuts offered by team owners last month. Among the key components of the players’ draft proposal:

• Returning the event’s timing to June, when it had been held annually through 2019. After a remote-based event in 2020 during the depths of the pandemic, MLB since 2021 has staged the draft as part of All-Star Game events each July. The 2026 version happened on July 11 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The union, however, contends that the extra month of initial professional exposure for draftees provided by the June timing outweighs the incremental fan development benefits from staging the draft along with the All-Star Game. 
• Retaining a 20-round format as opposed to the reduced, 12-round structure envisioned by management.
• Increasing signing bonuses instead of the hard slots and overall reductions that the owners proposed. 
• Preserving eligibility for high school and junior college players. Owners last month proposed removing draft eligibility for all U.S.-born players younger than 20 as it seeks to shift much of the player development process to college baseball. Under the union’s draft plan, college sophomores would also become newly eligible under the union’s plan. 
• Reducing taxes and penalties for teams exceeding signing bonus pools. Currently, MLB teams rarely outspend their draft bonus pool by more than 5%, when loss of draft picks and hefty overage taxes start to be assessed. 

Negotiating Dynamics

While much of the MLB labor negotiations to date have focused on veteran players, elements around free agency, and management’s push for a hard salary cap, the latest flash point centers on the youngest players and the primary means of entry into the sport.  

“The MLBPA offered a framework that would maintain the economic structure of the Rule 4 draft, provide lower-revenue clubs enhanced access to amateur talent, and provide millions in benefits to such clubs that achieve success on the field,” the union said. 

The league and union, however, remain very far apart in nearly all aspects of negotiating. Not only are the two sides heavily divided on the specific proposals of the ongoing labor talks, but they also don’t have remotely the same view on the state of the game.

“The supposed stewards of the game have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince fans that they don’t have hope, that they shouldn’t have hope, or that the product that they’re paying to consume in record numbers is somehow broken,” MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer said last week of the league. “I think it’s perverse.”

The current labor deal expires Dec. 1, and a management lockout is widely expected at that point.

“What fans in a number of our markets are telling us, better half of them, is that there’s a lack of competitive balance in the game,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week. “Everything we’ve proposed is focused on addressing that fan concern.”