Freddie Freeman had to do a double-take Friday afternoon.
When informed by a reporter of Major League Baseball’s Thursday proposal to make major alterations to the amateur draft process — including the exclusion of high school players, the reduction of the draft from 20 to 12 rounds and the cutting of the overall signing bonus pool for draft picks almost in half — the future Hall of Fame first baseman looked shocked.
“What?” he said.
When the details, which figure to become the latest flashpoint in MLB’s labor negotiations, were repeated to him, he simply shook his head.
“I think maybe now the fans will start seeing that it’s just money,” Freeman said. “Because that’s just cutting. It’s all about money.”
The draft proposals, which were detailed by Baseball America and ESPN, were presented by the league to the MLB Players Association on Thursday, as part of ongoing and already contentious negotiations between the sides ahead of the expiration of the league’s current collective bargaining agreement on Dec. 1.
The MLBPA immediately balked at the idea, which would most notably prevent domestic prospects from entering the draft until after their sophomore season of college — as opposed to the current system which allows players to be drafted upon their high school graduation.
In a statement, the union called the proposals “flat out bad for baseball, ones that would cripple the next generation of players and damage the future of our game.”
Freeman, who was drafted straight out of Orange El Modena High School by the Braves in the second round in 2007, expressed his own extreme frustrations while speaking to The California Post on Friday.
He called MLB’s proposal “ridiculous” and argued it was an example that the league’s approach to labor negotiations has “not been about competitive balance, it’s all about money.”
He also highlighted the ways beginning his professional career straight after high school helped him develop into an eventual MVP and nine-time All-Star.
“I loved coming out of high school,” he said. “It got me into the professional ranks. It got me into being able to develop into that organization and how they expect you to play. They believed in you at such a young age.”
Mookie Betts, a fellow MVP winner who was also drafted and signed out of high school by the Red Sox in the fifth round in 2011, similarly praised his development experience while expressing surprise at the league’s latest proposal.
“That meant the world to me,” Betts said. “I feel like I developed faster, just because I was in it at 18. The younger you can get into it, the quicker you can develop to [the pro] game. Because this game is different than the college game. I’m not saying either one is better or worse, but I just feel like that was my advantage. I got to learn a professional style of baseball at 18.”
Betts also noted that had he gone the college route (which, under the current system, requires players to stay in school for at least three years), he wouldn’t have been draft-eligible again until 2014 — the same year he made his MLB debut.
“My clock got expedited so much faster,” Betts said. “When it’s all said and done, I’ll have 18, 19 years in this game [at the MLB level], just because I got to start when I was able to start.”
MLB’s proposal, of course, is merely an opening stance. Over these CBA negotiations, it’s likely that any changes to the current draft system — including MLB’s push to create an international draft that would also be capped at 12 rounds — will have to be compromised.
How quickly the sides can find middle ground, however, seems ominous.
Already, they were at an impasse over the owners’ push for a salary cap. And now, with a lockout looming and next season under threat if a new agreement can’t be reached, the draft has become the latest sticking point.
According to ESPN, MLB’s objective for the changes is for more players to “benefit from both a college education and an elite development environment while reaching professional baseball — and ultimately the major leagues — more quickly.”
The players, however, see it as nothing more than a cost-cutting measure; one that will limit opportunities for players to get into professional baseball initially and limit their earnings power over their career by delaying how quickly they could reach free agency.
“That’s crazy to me,” Freeman said. “That’s all just a money issue.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
