The Los Angeles Dodgers won’t have Freddie Freeman forever. At some point, they’ll have to find the next guy capable of chasing 2,500 career hits through the MLB Draft.
But that draft might not look the same by the time they get that chance.
MLB explored the possibility of cutting the Amateur Draft to just 12 rounds and excluding high school players entirely, according to reports before Saturday. The draft currently runs 20 rounds and has long been the primary pipeline for teenage talent. Freeman himself came out of El Modena High School in Orange, California via that very system.
He didn’t hold back when asked about the proposed changes.
“I think maybe now the fans will start seeing that it’s just money,” Freeman told Jack Harris of the California Post. “Because that’s just cutting. It’s all about money.”
Freeman’s own path is a pretty good argument for keeping high school kids in the draft. The Braves took him in the second round back in 2007, and all he did was develop into a perennial All-Star, an MVP winner, and a multiple-time World Series champion.
“I loved coming out of high school,” Freeman 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.”
The Draft Is Still How Teams Like the Dodgers Build
That’s the whole point of the amateur draft. Teams pluck 17 and 18 year olds, stick them in their farm systems, and hope they turn into something. The Dodgers have done it. The Braves did it with Freeman. Cutting high schoolers out of the equation would gut a major scouting pipeline that’s produced generations of stars.
Freeman is pushing 40 now and still producing at a high level. He just passed the 2,500-hit milestone. That milestone likely never happens without the amateur draft giving a kid from Villa Park, California a shot straight out of high school.
“I think maybe now the fans will start seeing that it’s just money,” he repeated. He’s not wrong. The proposed cuts would save teams money on signing bonuses and development costs. But it would also shut the door on the exact kind of story that made Freeman’s career possible in the first place.
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