Major League Baseball’s Amateur Draft

Steve Bernhardt: Building the Better Ballplayer

Major League Baseball’s Amateur Draft is set to take place next Thursday and Friday. This is an extremely exciting time for many young baseball players, as having their name called by a team next week gives them a chance to continue furthering their dream of playing in the Big Leagues.

For most people outside of the professional baseball community, the draft is a mystery. I field thousands of draft questions each year from players and parents at our Baseball Factory events. I won’t take this time to go through all of the rules and processes of the draft, but I do want to clear up one thing. You do not have to live in Florida, Texas or California or play in the College World Series to get drafted. Do a lot of players in those three states get selected? Yes. Do players from major DI schools get drafted? Yes, but along the lines of last week’s blog on different college levels – there are schools everywhere that are producing players selected in the draft.

Let’s take a quick look at the Boston Red Sox drafted players in 2007. In last year’s draft the Red Sox selected forty-seven players – twenty-five high school players and twenty-two college players. They drafted high school players from Long Beach, CA, Flower Mound, TX and Parkland, FL, but they also took players from high schools like St. Mary’s in Paducah, KY, Kalani in Honolulu, HI, Northwest Catholic in West Hartford, CT, Don Bosco Prep in Teaneck, NJ, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, CO and Blue Springs in Blue Springs, MO among others. On the college side, they took players from well known schools like Rice, Oklahoma, Washington and Duke, but they also drafted quality players at LSU-Eunice, High Point, Northeastern, Edmonds CC in Washington, Trinidad State in Colorado, Dixie State College in Utah and Dominican College in New York.

I know – the Red Sox have the money to scout in all these places, but what about other teams? To compare, let’s look at an extremely low budget team, the Florida Marlins. Last year, the Marlins selected fifty players in the June draft. Eighteen of the fifty were high school players and the other thirty-two came from the collegiate ranks. The Marlins did select several high school players from California including their top two picks, but they also found talent in some interesting places. Their sixth rounder came from Oak Grove HS in Hattiesburg, MS while their seventh rounder played at Tremper High in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Add in some players from Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri and Georgia and it looks like the Marlins’ scouts see a good bit of the country as well. Of their college selections, they drafted players from schools like the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Carson-Newman College, Kaskaskia JC in Illinois, Delta State and Itawamba CC both in Mississippi, Norfolk State in Virginia and Compton CC and JC of the Canyons in California.

As you can see, both teams scour the country to find the best talent. It is true that, with very few exceptions, if you can play – they will find you. One thing these players do have in common is that they PLAYED. You don’t see many teams draft players who sit on the bench. Go to a place – no matter where it is - where you can play, and if you have the talent your name will be called during a future ML Draft.