MLB -- Don't push kids to drop out to evade draft - ESPN

Major League Baseball has sent a warning to clubs about encouraging players subject to the MLB draft to withdraw from high school baseball to become eligible to sign as international players. An MLB spokesman declined comment.

The key section of the memo sent to teams Monday and obtained by ESPN reads: «It has come to our attention that Clubs have been encouraging amateur players in the United States to withdraw from, or otherwise refrain from playing, high school baseball in the United States and/or Canada, in order to try to establish residency in a foreign country, in an effort to make themselves eligible to sign under the International Amateur Talent System instead of the Rule 4 Draft.»

In the MLB draft, picks largely cannot be traded, so teams' access to elite players is largely determined by their draft order. In the international system, teams have similar-sized bonus pools, and any player is able to be negotiated with. All but the best handful of players are acquirable by every team in the international market.

In the memo, the league clarified the rules around eligibility and what rules teams were breaking by encouraging players to change their eligibility. The memo says that encouraging players to make this change «shall be subject to significant penalties, including, but not limited to, the denial of player selection rights under the [MLB draft] or loss of benefits under the International Amateur Talent System.»

A recent example of a legal version of this maneuver was made by shortstop Lucius Fox in 2015. He was a native of the Bahamas who had moved to Florida to play high school baseball and was regarded as a fringe first-round prospect after his junior year of high school. Fox moved back to the Bahamas and