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Thursday, Major League Baseball publicly dropped its first salvo regarding potential changes to the amateur draft, an international draft, and several other issues affecting amateur baseball.
Let’s pause there for a second.
I was born into professional baseball. Some of my earliest memories are being in major league clubhouses as a five-year-old around players like Tony Phillips and Rickey Henderson with the early Oakland Athletics clubs. My upbringing and the environment that shaped me are reflected in the documentary Harvard Park, which highlights the baseball culture that produced players such as Eric Davis, Darryl Strawberry, Chris Brown, and many others.
My father was an agent. I was fortunate enough to play my way into signing with the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays. I’ve spent nearly two decades in scouting and player development, with time in pro and international coverage and internal organization evaluation, including nine years for three MLB organizations. I started Future Stars Series in 2016. That is the source of all this.
The Hard Line: Inside the Draft Proposal
In any negotiation, you start with your hardest-line position. That’s Negotiation 101. It doesn’t mean that’s the outcome. It doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. It means you’re establishing your opening position.
The Players Association’s reaction was both predictable and accurate: no chance. Let’s be clear about that.
MLB says, “Here’s what we want.” The Players Association says, “No shot. Full stop.”
That deal, as proposed, isn’t happening, and that should tell you enough. There are only a handful of people who actually have a clue about where this is going. Truthfully, the only people who really know are the ones in the room.
The Travel Baseball Freakout and the “Formula” Illusion
What was interesting to me on Thursday was the massive freakout, and I didn’t see it from people who are deeply embedded in the sport. Sure, people have contacts. People talk to scouting directors and decision-makers. Information gets around. But there are some things that need to change.
The biggest public reaction came from the groups that are probably the most affected first: the travel baseball industry.
Write it down. Book it. It’s going to happen. You’re going to see organizations affected that have been thrown together with names like “National,” “Scout,” and every other buzzword imaginable.. Why? Because many of them operate on the premise that you can’t succeed without them, that their formula is the formula. That they are the roadmap. None of that FOMO is accurate.
Parents get conned into that line of thinking sometimes. Yes, I used the word “conned” because there are multiple ways to get where you want to go in this game. The pathways are different for every player.
From a Future Stars Series standpoint, we’re probably the only organization in the travel space that actively tells players to participate on multiple platforms if they can. Why? Because multiple platforms can matter.
There is no one formula.
And if I’m being direct, I believe we’re one of the few organizations willing to tell players exactly what they are as players, even when they don’t want to hear it. We’re not manufacturing rankings because they look good on social media. We’re not handing out flashy numbers and telling everybody they’re a first-round pick. We have real forecasting methods.
We’re different.
Because we’re different, we’ve positioned ourselves where almost every MLB organization has some level of involvement with us. That’s not unique to us alone, but it speaks to the credibility we’ve built and the relationships we’ve established.
Scouting may be affected by these changes, too.
Adapt or Get Left Behind: The Evolution of Scouting
Industries evolve. Fighting change doesn’t stop it. Complaining about change doesn’t stop it. Businesses adapt, or they get left behind.
There are good area scouts who have been pushed out. Others have become crusty on purpose. Instead of evolving with the game, they try to move it backward toward themselves. They actively get in the way of other people and other ideas.
That never helps. Especially when you’re simultaneously complaining about somebody else doing the same thing.
Yes, Major League Baseball has floated proposals that could drastically change scouting departments. Player development has been changing for years.
Back to the Future: The Business of Player Development
Here’s something that may make people uncomfortable:
Major League Baseball, as a whole, looks at player development through a business lens. Most players don’t make it. The risk-reward profile in baseball is brutal. And if you can develop while you’re in the big leagues and helping the club win, that’s how you stay. That’s how you grow.
I was told a long time ago that prospects aren’t prospects until they hit their ceiling. There’s truth to that. When you look at the industry as a whole, it’s contracting a little bit. In many ways, it’s going back to the future.
Baseball has done this before.
In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, many of the legends we celebrate today came through systems that looked much different. Players signed with independent clubs, Class-A clubs, and lower classifications and worked their way up. Sometimes they reached the big leagues sooner than people expected.
Would they stay? Nobody knew. But organizations brought them up because they were prospects. They generated excitement, energized fan bases, and enhanced the business.
That’s a historical fact.
The Major League Baseball Players Association is not against players reaching the big leagues sooner. Neither is Major League Baseball. Both sides want elite players on the field as quickly as possible.
They simply disagree on how to get there.
Data Over Labels: The Changing Evaluation Funnel
College baseball represents a different funnel.
The game was different when Legion baseball and Connie Mack were the primary avenues of competition. Today’s players have more options than ever before. People who understand the system that’s coming are going to know how to use it. And it is coming.
Look at other sports. The NBA and NFL both implemented one-year rules. They changed the path from high school to professional sports.
Most of those athletes don’t make it. And most baseball players don’t make it either.
They’re still professionals. They’re still athletes. But most don’t make it.
When you’re evaluating high school players based on a handful of at-bats at Area Code, Future Stars Series, East Coast Pro, and a few national events, decision-making changes. Scouting changes. You want more tangible information. You want more objective information.
That’s where Synergy, SmartPark, Hawkeye, and TrackMan come in. They’re methods of capturing information and organizing it in ways that help decision-makers. And that’s why the old Major League Scouting Bureau ultimately disappeared. It didn’t evolve; it’s gone.
Now everybody on social media suddenly wants to be the next MLB Scouting Bureau. Or thinks they already are.
No, you’re not, because there’s a mix required. Putting out a player’s velocity, vertical break, exit velocity, and slapping a ranking next to the name doesn’t do it. Calling somebody an eight and declaring him a superstar doesn’t do it. I constantly see players outperform those labels, and some of it is simply false, the result of the buzzword-style approach.
And sadly, some of the people doing it know better.
The New Ecosystem: Value and Opportunities
So yes, change is coming. But it’s nowhere near what some people seem to think. At the grassroots level, the industry is going to have to shift to keep pace. Frankly, it should have shifted a long time ago.
That means some people may lose jobs. That’s business. That’s life. And make no mistake: this is a business.
At the levels above that, college sports are also changing. A lot is happening in the middle ground where playing 130 games a year suddenly makes more sense than playing 65.
That’s potentially 300 at-bats. Meaningful innings. That’s more development opportunities. That’s growth.
And now, with revenue sharing and NIL realities, colleges are increasingly looking for players they believe can perform. Because if they don’t perform, people lose jobs there too. That’s the ecosystem.
Professional baseball is already narrowing player development. Organizations are becoming more efficient and more deliberate about how players move through systems. They’re trying to minimize risk.
Players, on the other hand, are trying to protect their rights and maximize their opportunities. Those interests don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And if I’m a high school player, I’m thinking about one thing: How do I enhance my value?
Playing on one showcase circuit isn’t the answer. You need games. You need baseline evaluations that matter. You need skill development. You need proper approaches. You need environments that produce growth.
As this ecosystem evolves, I think you’ll see more players pushed toward places that preserve options and create value. Junior College baseball is one of those places. There will be others.
Punting the Noise
So, for right now, my recommendation is simple: Ignore the people screaming about this. What was proposed this week isn’t happening. It’s noise. Unless you’re looking to be entertained, punt everything you saw yesterday. Something else is coming. And honestly, it may end up helping the sport. Because, despite all the arguing, both sides ultimately want the same thing.
They want a healthier game. They want better players. They want better products. They want a system that works. They simply have to figure out the structure underneath and how to use it to their advantage.
That’s what labor negotiations are.
All the static from Thursday’s proposal from MLB?
Punt it. It’s not going to happen.
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