This year’s MLB draft was limited to five rounds, down from the usual forty. Those not selected are capped at just $20K in bonus money upon signing, well shy of the (already restricted) amounts typically spent. And now, MLB is warning teams not to promise too much in educational benefits when wooing undrafted players.
Per J.J. Cooper of Baseball America, via Twitter, the league has sent out formal guidance to its teams regarding the negotiation of college scholarship plan and continuing education program funding. Those programs are regular parts of the draft signing process.
It’s not entirely clear what the league is trying to tamp down on here, but the memorandum is said to advise organizations not to offer “exorbitant” funding of players’ education. As Cooper explains, there’s no evident reason for concern that teams could back-door money to players’ personal accounts. Indeed, the programs already come with clear guidelines governing their administration to avoid any skirting of draft bonus rules.
Perhaps the memo was meant mostly as a reminder to teams not to get too creative in their recruitment efforts. But it seems hard to justify any additional squeeze on incoming professional players after so much has already been taken off the table — particularly if it means limiting what those players are able to negotiate in future educational benefits.
Let the teams decide if they want to pay for a player’s tuition if they decide to go back to school and/or baseball does not work out for them. A 20k bonus isn’t covering that education.
Mlb doesnt want teams cutting a check for 500K for 100K in education expenses just to get someone to sign a defacto 400K backup plan
It’s their money. If MLB has a problem with it they can bring it up at the next CBA in the event this problem arises again.
You know teams, like the Braves have done in the past, will have no issue trying to skirt the rules. This is just a warning against getting too creative
It’s education money, so they can’t just withdraw it to go to a Casino or something. Who cares if some team offers 10 million in funding? I highly doubt it’s going to be that much of a competitive edge.
Baseball just tries at every turn to get over on it’s players, and prospective ones.
Wasn’t there a particular school mlb sent educational account kids to at one time, or most of them? I’m pretty sure there was.
Have a thought on what commish is saying.. Say an occasional ivy leaguer, or Pac school junior/sophomore insists on money to continue education and housing at the school they were drafted out of? I imagine the sum commish and league offering won’t cover.. Say housing alone in some areas, or tuition at any Ivy league school.
Think he needs to stay out of this one, or allow players option to continue at school of choice before he speaks and clarify.
The reality is there are the better part of 700 or so guys who usually would be drafted then sign with a team who will be up for non drafted contracts. (remember not all rd 6-down draftees sign)…
Then compare the LAD/BOS/NYY types with the TB/PIT/KC types.
Not every guy has the brainpan for an elite college tying the educational “bonus” in the most expensive cost of living cities… but it is easy to imagine high asset teams dangling it. Then, once you have your $500k “educational bonus” you could later enroll in phoenix online and use the money to cover living expenses wherever you want the whole time.
The 20k signing amount was designed to let all teams sign on a level field.
Did Cooper or anyone do any more digging to see if it was any team(s) complaining to MLB about other orgs taking advantage of something for unfair negotiating tactics with undrafted players?
I don’t see the issue either, but I also want everything to be fair for each team since there’s a cap.
These poor kids. All I hear is MLB saying “Come work for us, but we won’t pay you much (less than minimum wage) after capping your free market bonus asking price. Sure they can dream on making millions in the show, but most won’t make it and the few that do will have to stay for 3+ years to get there. Also, we can’t give you too much for your education after we’re done exploiting you. Or take your chances in 1-4 years with getting drafted and start this charade then instead of now.
Ya it’s bs they could’ve done half of the draft.
i mean they couldve done a full draft anyway given that after a few rounds the slots stop having extra value. teams could just stop after x rounds if they wanted to
No one is forcing them to pursue a career as a baseball player. If they decided to sign for whatever is offered to them that is their personal choice. Perhaps if less players signed on the teams would be forced to compensate them better. It’s a matter of supply and demand
What a ridiculous comment.
Of course no one is “forcing them” to play baseball. Quite the opposite actually. MLB is doing everything in their power to drive players away from baseball and to sports like football and basketball that will pay them more money upfront without having to toil in a minor league system for years before having a chance to make any real money.
Is MLB inadvertently losing potential players to others sports, sure that argument has validity, but to say they are actively “doing everything in their power” is an absolutely ridiculously comment.
Inadvertently? Really, inadvertently? Directly, it is directly losing players. They know exactly what is going to happen. They’re already losing players. This is not helping and they know it.
Let’s get this straight, your argument is that they are making a conscious efforts to drive people away from their business?
Of course they’re not intentionally trying to get players to stop playing. That is a bad read of what I wrote. But they ARE taking intentional actions for the sole purpose of saving a buck, and those actions have undeniable consequences of making the game less desirable to amateur players.
They’re not TRYING to push players away, but they ARE willing to repeatedly take actions that lead down that path for the sake of saving money now.
Any kid that wouldve been drafted in round 26 of the MLB draft, but would go drafted in the NFL 7 round or NBA 2 round draft wasn’t going to join MLB anyways.
In fact, I don’t think a 7th round MLB pick passes up either.
Nothing that happened in this year’s MLB draft had any impact on talent flight to other sports.
MiLB compensation and pipeline duration have everything to do with it.
Those poor kids who come out of high school with no bankable skills and they have to put themselves in debt for a long time just to get a fighting chance at a good job.
I’m not gonna feel sorry for a kid who wants to pursue a baseball dream but ‘only’ gets $20k. That’s more money than the vast majority of high school kids get.
The kid who goes to work at McD’s for minimum wage will catch up on that 20k plus less than minimum wage real quick.
The kid signing for $20k with tuition and living expenses covered for 4 years of college won’t have to take on student loan debt. Really, this $20k can be worth 4-5 times that.
Now, we don’t want these players to become educmakated or anything.
I thought the feudal system died in the 1400s, which coincided with another pandemic.
No one is saying they can’t become educated. These kids all undoubtedly have college scholarships sitting there waiting for them should they choose to become educated. The choice is there. Choose a free education or start working, gamble on yourself, and struggle to pay for your education later if the gamble doesn’t pay off. MLB is an opportunity, but they should not have to be a safety net for these players.
Muh bootstraps.
Paulie, you do such a great job of articulating your arguments. People are probably awestruck by your undeniable use of logic and it really helps you convert people to your beliefs.
Looks like I have one thumbs up to your zero.
Thumbs up your ass don’t count…
Lol
I just hope MLB saved themselves from embarrassment and deleted Coppolella’s name from the Pages letter template they used to send out to teams.
Since the players are not getting paid for the playoffs (no fans mean no pay) , the players should force the commissioner to declare the length of season, play at their prorated salary and then strike on Sept 27th.
There’s a good way to ensure that fans will walk away from the sport and the “no fans, no pay” system would become permanent. If players actually pulled something like that, I would never spend another dime on baseball unless every one of those players were banned from the game for life.
Why should the players play for free? If they strike Sept 27th, the owners will run to the negotiating table to finally make a reasonable offer.
Didn’t work in 94 and won’t work now.
The CEP is designed for kids to pursue their education and those funds cannot be used for anything else. The room and board is related to the education and while those may be inflated, clubs typically just offer an amount equal to the costs of R and B on each school’s website. MLB being typical misers again. Smh.
Better idea…instead of paying the players, make the kids pay for the privilege of allowing older white men the opportunity to see their “non profitable” franchise rise in value ten fold
Over the years I have always told my players that unless they get drafted early and sign for a few million dollars, they need to insist that their is an education clause in the contract in which the MLB organization will pay for five years of post-secondary schooling at the minimum. The clause only kicks in if they dont get to the MLB/get released.
The entire minor league and college system makeup for baseball needs to be revisited IMO. Oversimplification, but if you contract short season rookie and A ball and dont have players starting their professional careers until after high school, you pump most of those athletes into full college scholarships where they are getting their Rookie League and A ball level competition in college and developing from 18-22 … and then they are ready to go into the minors afterwards, like AA level. So you end up, as a fan, getting to follow college ball and careers (like football and basketball), instead of losing sight of player X who you wont see after a team drafts them, for another 4 or 5 years, if at all. Why doesnt MLB learn from the success of the NBA and NFL?
I get what the league is trying to prevent but I don’t want to hear them complaining in 6 years when youngster that signed for only 20k wants to maximize his earnings in free agency and not take team friendly deals.
Oh, but sadly you’ll hear it, rest assured of that. How dare they just not be grateful to get those pennies on the dollar that their skills are worth. That’s almost always the narrative.
Just checking…
There is not a single person left who thinks Kyler Murray made the wrong choice, right?
Baseball is doing everything they can to tell kids to play a different sport.
If you put them on polygraphs, the A’s probably couldn’t even tell you Murray made the wrong choice.
it has nothing to do with the sport. if Kyler was anything but a QB, it would have been a choice. being a even a good backup, let alone starter, at QB makes you huge bucks. if Kyler was anything but a QB then he might have taken Oakland’s offer.
MLB can’t be having educamacated ballplayers now. If they was, they’d never accept the terrible CBAs MLB makes billions from!
they better not be too intrusive about this. i get the idea that teams may try to hide normal bonuses as education bonuses, but they better allow teams to make these offers to whoever they want.
Personally I think capping signing bonus at $20K was a little too extreme. It should have been a “bonus pool” amount that each team was allowed to spend and split it up however they felt best – if the league was concerned about total spending being too high. If they wanted they could have even capped individual signings to $100K or something like for regular drafted Free Agents. Idk to me the $20K bonuses just seem absurdly low for guys that under regular conditions could’ve been taken in the 6th-10th rounds and signed for $100Ks or even in later rounds signing for more than $20K. It’d be one thing had there been 10/20+ rounds but given that it was only 5 there are so many players that really got screwed under the current system!
If they don’t think 20k is enough, they can go/return to school and try again next June. Hopefully by then the draft has return to a more traditional format which allows more player the opportunity to sign for a higher bonus.
There won’t be as many scholarships available, with so many college juniors returning for their senior years and with seniors getting an extra year of eligibility.
Cool to read the actual guidelines on how the tuition coverage works. Seems to me like it would be pretty difficult to commit a ton of fraud there, although I’m sure the (fill in team you hate) will try.
I’d rather have my son take $20k, play for a couple of years, then have school covered than put us on the hook for student loans if I’m a blue collar level dad.
Of course if my son is good enough to get a scholarship to a decent program, that’s the best way to go.
It’s partly a matter of whether you’re more ready to play baseball or go to college. My nephew started getting offers in 9th grade, was drafted at the end of high school and signed. He had committed but his head really wasn’t into college at that point. They will pay for school, he is taking some courses while there’s no baseball.
Looks like Manfred has been reading The Shock Doctrine. This is 100% disaster capitalism. This is what happens when you put a lawyer in charge. The players need to get him out of there.
Article says “get creative “. Hell nobody in MLB is creative. Jeez ⚾️
cheap a^^ BS. Let them pay for the prospects college education. They can surely afford it….MLB is heading for a Strike the way things are going now..
Seriously, WTF.