Dec

20

How will MLB’s 8/15 rule impact Cape players?

Posted by Greg | Filed Under News | 

A large, middle-aged scout for the St. Louis Cardinals approached us with just a little too much urgency last July. My son and I had been talking with Falmouth Commodores catcher Mitch Canham (Oregon State), and we were returning to our cheap beach chairs along the first base line.

“Why were you talking with Mitch?” he asked with a clinched smile.

“We’re from Washington state and he’s from near our home,” I responded, sounding eager as Gomer Pyle.

“Well, I’m with the Cardinals organization and we have him under control,” the scout informed us. Clearly he mistook me for someone who might be trying to engage the young prospect.

Under old MLB rules, the MLB could draft a kid in June and take the next year to sign him. But this fall the MLB and the Player’s Association reached agreement on an Aug. 15th signing deadline.

This rule change is a significant one for the CCBL, which opens June 15 (around draft time) and concludes as late as Aug. 15 (around the new signing deadline). The implication is that top prospects, many of whom work at odd jobs through the summer, will also be negotiating intensively through the summer with MLB scouts. This has always been true but the intensity is going to intensify.

Talking with Baseball America, Rob Manfred, MLB’s executive vice president for labor relations, had this to say:
“On balance, the practice of draft-and-follows was not to our benefit in terms of the economics of the draft–there’s a certain incredulousness that in June, a guy is drafted in the seventh round and by the following June this guy is a $2 million, gotta-have player. We didn’t think that dynamic was helping us.The second reason is our relationship with the colleges. All the back-and-forth that goes on–did he enroll? Did he start? All that nonsense–we thought that the signing deadline was another good way to create leverage in the process for the clubs.”

In a separate story, Baseball America concluded that the agreement spelled the end for draft-and-follows, as major league clubs will now only control the rights to a player they draft in June until Aug. 15, rather than control a junior college player until the following draft.

“I really don’t see it having much of an impact on junior college baseball, just because kids go to junior college baseball to be draft eligible, and it will still be that way,” said Johnson, Chipola (Fla.) Junior College coach. “You probably won’t have as many pro scouts trying to encourage and send kids to JCs after not signing them, so there won’t be as much pressure to go to the junior college level.”

Comments

2 Responses to “How will MLB’s 8/15 rule impact Cape players?”

  1. Anonymous on December 29th, 2006 7:34 am

    I don’t think it will have that great of an impact. The real talent in the CCBL are kids that are coming out of either their frosh. or sophomore seasons in college that have most likely been drafted out of high school and are not draft eligible again until after their soph. season. The CCBL teams have a pretty good handle on who, if drafted, will sign and not come to the Cape. These kids are most often found, at best, on the non-roster list so a permanent spot is not wasted. High school kids that are drafted high most likely will skip college but high school kids that are drafted lower than expected and want to improve upon their draft position will go to school but not be draft eligible until after their sophomore season…those are the kids that you more often than not find in the CCBL. The most talented of that group is drafted and signs after their sophomore year. Remaining JR’s and SR’s, except in rare occassions, are not invited to the Cape because they are simply not as talented.

  2. New NCAA Rules Good or Bad for Summer Ball? : CodBall: Unofficial Blog of the Cape Cod Baseball League on June 1st, 2007 6:20 am

    [...] this year is the MLB and Player Association’s agreement on an Aug. 15th signing deadline.  CodBall reported on this 8/15 Rule late last [...]

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