Beck

MLB today proposed an overhauled domestic amateur-entry system that removes high school players from the draft, makes college players eligible after sophomore year, shortens the draft from 20 to 12 rounds, and cuts bonus pool from current $358.7M to $200M, sources tell ESPN.

MiLB baseball is a sport where winning doesn’t matter and impossible to watch. What a terrible representation of baseball.

Want to know how bad hitting has become? Go compare today’s batting averages to those from 20–30 years ago. Hitters back then had to cover a much bigger strike zone, especially on the outer half, where umpires routinely gave pitchers strikes off the plate. Today’s hitters have a tighter zone, technology, replay, and more information than ever. Yet the offensive product is worse. And before the velocity and spin-rate crowd jumps in, remember: TrackMan changed how velocity is measured. MLB’s own documentation acknowledges that TrackMan measures the ball out of the hand and can read 2–6 mph higher than older radar systems. The bigger problem is that over the last decade baseball tried to reinvent the swing. The result? More strikeouts. Less adjustability. Less ability to use the whole field. Fewer complete hitters. Pitching development isn’t much better. It’s become max effort, max velocity, and max spin rate. The game didn’t get smarter. In a lot of ways, it got worse.