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Kiley McDaniel, ESPN MLB Insider
A recent college football ruling against the NCAA could end up having a sizable impact on the future of college baseball.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Tennessee granted an injunction to Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, allowing him to pursue another year of NCAA eligibility. That means a college athlete’s time in junior college doesn’t count toward his overall years of NCAA eligibility.
If upheld, this would mean that a player who spends two years at a junior college could start his NCAA career as a freshman with four years of eligibility left instead of the current two.
While Pavia’s case is tied to an SEC football player, pending a final ruling, the change could impact college baseball, MLB draft and even the minor leagues in a profound way. I spoke with a dozen MLB scouts and college coaches about the potential fallout.
An ACC assistant baseball coach summed up his thinking: “I wonder what’s coming next from administrators. College baseball will be a whole lot different if juco doesn’t count.”
Here is how the impact could be felt by everyone involved across every level.
The players
This decision is a clear positive for amateur players. If seasons at a junior college stop counting toward that NCAA standard of four playing seasons in five years, players could use the path to better line up their best college seasons at the best schools for the most playing time and best monetary outcome (NIL, salary or draft signing bonus), with flexibility to change schools each season and likely getting a free graduate school degree or two along the way.
Here’s one scenario:
High school (age 18): The player turns down a low-six-figure signing bonus in the draft out of high school.
College Year 1 (age 19): The player doesn’t have a starting spot at the Power 4 school he committed to in high school and, instead of playing part time, asks for a redshirt to preserve his eligibility. (This player is also draft-eligible every year of this scenario except this one.)
College Year 2 (age 20): The player moves to a junior college, where he starts and makes progress as a prospect with regular reps.
College Year 3 (age 21): The player’s progression continues, and he commits to a mid-major college during his second junior college year.
College Year 4 (age 22): The player is a redshirt freshman and has a great year at a mid-major school.
College Year 5 (age 23: The player transfers to an SEC school as a sophomore and gets a $100,000+ NIL package.
College Year 6 (age 24): Returns/transfers to SEC school as a junior.
College Year 7 (age 25): Returns/transfers to SEC school as a senior.
There are other scenarios such as a postgrad year after high school, a junior college redshirt, a medical redshirt, etc., that mean we could someday see a player celebrate his 30th birthday while still playing college baseball.
One of the key points here that would incentive players to consider this path is that they would be draft-eligible in nearly every season of their college career. This opens up the opportunity to leave for the pros whenever their stock is highest, since MLB rules allow players to be drafted after each season at a junior college or in a college season where they turn 21 years old by Aug. 1. In the current system, players often have to decide between taking what is offered to them as a high school senior or waiting three years to be draft-eligible again. Until recently with NIL and soon revenue sharing, these players would make no money between those two decisions.
There is some downside for players though: It would become rarer for freshmen to contribute at top schools, thus top schools will likely offer fewer scholarships to high school players, and it will get very competitive for roster spots at these top colleges, exacerbating something that was already starting to happen with the recent set of roster reforms.
College programs
Junior college baseball would see the immediate biggest impact with this change as it isn’t a leading path to professional baseball right now. In fact, over the past five MLB drafts, there has been only one first-round pick, one second-round pick and three third-round picks selected directly out of junior colleges. It is more common to see players transfer from junior colleges to four-year colleges and then go early in the draft, but that is still seen as a secondary path at best. Both of those paths from junior college to the pros would become more common when eliminating the two burned years of eligibility and infusing the juco level with talent looking to maximize future options.
The feedback I got from MLB scouts and college coaches on what this means for four-year schools showed the ramifications would also be felt all the way up to the highest levels of Division I baseball.
The top schools would have rosters featuring a mix of top draft prospects of a typical college age and “professional” collegiate players in their mid-to-late-20s, with the latter shuffling in and out nearly every season.
In fact, a scout texted me the Pavia headline and added: “The NCAA just got a minor league.” I texted back to clarify, “The SEC will just be big draft guys and 26-year-olds?” “Pretty much.”
There were already some stories this summer of top high school recruits (mid-to-upper-six-figure bonus offers from MLB teams) being dropped by top college programs late in the process in favor of a college junior transferring in to receive a six-figure NIL package, likely going on to sign a pro contract after one season.
That transfer is almost certainly a better player for that year than the incoming freshman but demands NIL resources for only one season of performance. We might see more short-term decisions like this made by coaches as their salaries continue to rise — winning an extra series could be worth millions. There continue to be fewer incentives to develop players in college for multiple seasons from a small role to a bigger one and, at the same time, convincing a promising prospect to use a year of eligibility for a part-time role would be more difficult.
MLB teams
There’s currently a pretty high bar for teams to clear when offering a bonus to entice a player to sign out of high school, often somewhere from $500,000 to $1 million. We’ve started seeing some examples of players choosing college over pro ball with NIL offers playing a large role. I could see a world where junior colleges are strictly for development and playing time, the top four-year college programs become comparable to Low-A in competition level and professional environment, and mid-major colleges are a way station between the two.
Seeing a top 21-year-old draft prospect facing a savvy 26-year-old college lifer regularly before the draft would let MLB teams feel better about how that top prospect will look in the minor leagues, thus raising the perceived return on investment they make on the player. Scouts I talked to were also concerned for their jobs because of the certainty those kinds of matchups would create. At the top college programs, where there’s full video and charting of every pitch alongside rich data that often rivals MLB ballparks, the opinion of scouts in the stadium could matter less when analytical models would be able to quantify even more of the key information used for draft-day decisions.
If the top collegiate conferences start replicating a lot of what the lower minors will offer, then the talent in the lower minors would also decrease to some degree. I don’t think this would affect Double-A or Triple-A at all — there will just be two similar paths leading to the upper minors and the big leagues.
MLB teams would still regularly draft and sign the best players out of high school and the top four-year colleges in the first few rounds like they do now, but the potent combination of the recently contracted minor leagues, NIL/transfer portal and junior colleges as a training ground that don’t use NCAA eligibility could lead to fewer players signing for lower-six-figure bonuses to develop in the minor leagues since the benefits would potentially be greater in college.
Think of it from a young player’s perspective: getting a free education, a large chunk of your potential signing bonus in revenue sharing/NIL next season, and a chance to increase that eventual bonus dramatically — when it’s possibly your only big payday in baseball — could be the smart move. The other option is taking a low-six-figure bonus for what could just be a few years of playing in the minors before being released. Teams that take a bulk approach to the draft with a number of low-to-mid-six-figure-bonus collegiate players might have to adjust their strategy.
Changing how teams are able to get talent from the amateur levels through their systems to the major leagues could be a big enough difference maker to alter both team strategies and eventually how the draft functions. You can then imagine a world where this series of changes leads to a more top-heavy draft of players that largely go straight to High-A or Double-A and may only be one year away from the major leagues when drafted. Does it lead to a shorter draft? A modified draft-and-follow system? A loan system like soccer? Does MLB get more involved with the college game, maybe by subsidizing scholarships or holding the MLB draft in Omaha around the College World Series?