Overview
- Owners on Monday proposed a sweeping rewrite of the amateur system that would ban high-school entrants from the domestic draft, raise domestic eligibility to about age 20, and cut the domestic draft from 20 rounds to 12.
- The plan would cap both the domestic and a newly proposed international draft at roughly $200 million each, add hard slotting that fixes bonuses by draft slot, and raise the international signing age from 16 to 18.
- Analysts and the players’ union say the changes would shift much of development and its cost to colleges, shrink early pay for prospects, and could save owners an estimated up to $1 billion over the next CBA.
- Projection work from systems like ZiPS, cited in coverage, shows delaying entry by one to two years would materially lower top players’ free-agent value, with examples suggesting losses of tens to over a hundred million dollars for elite talents.
- The union has rejected the proposal and talks are now more adversarial with the current CBA expiring Dec. 1, 2026, which increases the risk of a lockout and could reshape how teams and colleges share talent and costs over the next decade.