David Ortiz open to international draft in MLB, seeks further input from players before implementation

Former Boston Red Sox star David Ortiz, perhaps the most prominent voice in Dominican baseball, says he is open to the idea of an international draft but is wary of its implementation before receiving significant input from players past and present.

In a phone conversation Wednesday with ESPN, Ortiz said the draft proposed by Major League Baseball, which has become a flashpoint as the league and the MLB Players Association try to strike a deal that would end MLB's lockout of players, needs a long runway for implementation.

«The system in the Dominican is not ready to have a draft next year,» Ortiz said. «The Dominican is not the U.S. You can't snap a finger and everything lines up to operate the right way. We've got a new president who's trying to improve things. We need to do this slowly.»

MLB has proposed a draft system that would begin in 2024. The league would place teams in pods of seven or eight and rotate their draft positions so there would be equitable access to top amateur talent, with each team picking in the top seven or eight once every four years. The draft would feature 20 rounds, with 600 hard-slotted picks, and undrafted players could sign for a maximum of $20,000. International picks would be tradable.

The league says the draft system would guarantee more money for international talent than the current system, in which international amateurs are free agents who can sign with any team but are limited by a hard cap that topped out in the 2021-22 signing class at $6.26 million for eight teams and was as low as $4.64 million for others.

Players are eligible to join organizations at 16 years old, though teams regularly enter into multimillion-dollar agreements with children as young as 12 and 13. MLB