Draft and follow

If I'm not mistaking, the team holding the DFE rights to a player has until midnight on the Monday one week before the following year's draft to sign a player. For example, the draft generally begins on the first Tuesday in June (which would be June 5 this year) so the deadline for signing DFEs would be midnight on Monday May 28 if the draft is June 5th.

As for whether it will hurt the player for this year's draft, I think the answer is probably not. If a player is drafted by a team and doesn't sign, he does have to consent to allow that particular team to draft him again. Other than that, unless he was drafted last year as a junior and is now a senior (in which case he would have lost some leverage and will probably get somewhat less money), or unless he was hurt or didn't produce, I don't think it would hurt his draft status. Even if the original negotiations were bitter, the player is probably still going to do ok (see Hochevar, Luke).

One other note, the players who sign this year as DFEs (drafted in '06) will be the last, because starting this year teams will face an August 15 deadline to sign their draft picks.

Emanski's Heros pretty much nailed it.

Here's an exerpt from mlb.scout.com:

The rules have since changed. The term draft-and-follow has gone extinct starting in 2007. Drafted players, other than college seniors, must be signed by August 15.

The draft-and-follow enabled clubs to maintain exclusive rights to a drafted player up until one week prior to the next year’s draft, if that player attended junior college. The club, however, lost any rights when a drafted high schooler decided to attend a four-year college or a drafted college player returned to school and attended his first class.

Draft-and-follow was often employed to enable an emerging player to gain another year of experience but still allow the drafting team the option to attempt to sign him before he would be eligible to re-enter the draft the following June.

Teams no longer have that luxury.

Considering the player would be back in the draft, I don't see it as a negative for him with other interested teams.

quote:

One other question, could this hurt his chances for this year's draft?

TPM,
I don't believe the DFE status, alone, impacts one way or the other.
What impacts is the performance of that player this Spring. If he has played/performed well, then he has the leverage. The team with his rights knows they likely will lose that player in the draft if they don't sign him, so the price goes up, unless they have identified someone with equal or better talent at a lower price in the upcoming draft. On the other hand, if the player has not performed well in the DFE status, the team has all the leverage and will bargain accordingly.
BA has some articles last May/June on 3-4 DFE's who did very well and got a big bonus. Might be why DFE's are soon to be extinct.

Thanks.

A webster wrote to ask me some questions and I had no clue.

Hope they get to read this.

they will some times ask you to sign a paper allowing them to draft you again the next year if you did not sign with that team. i can't remember if they can't draft you again,if they don't sign you?

quote:

Originally posted by 20dad:
they will some times ask you to sign a paper allowing them to draft you again the next year if you did not sign with that team. i can't remember if they can't draft you again,if they don't sign you?

My son had to sign a form saying that the Orioles could draft him again since he didn't sign with them his jr year.

If I remember right a couple years ago a team tried to draft a player (called his name and everything) that they hadn't signed the year before . They neglected to get the form signed by the player and couldn't draft him again.

quote:

Originally posted by Tiger Paw Mom:
Does anyone know when a 2006 player drafted is approached by the drafting team? What is the time frame, is it up until draft day or a few weeks before. What exactly is the process?

One other question, could this hurt his chances for this year's draft?

Here are the general rules for the draft...

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/draftday/rules.jsp

"A Club generally retains the rights to sign a selected player until one week prior to the next Draft, or until the player enters, or returns to, a four-year college on a full-time basis. A selected player who enters a junior college cannot be signed until the conclusion of the school's baseball season. A player who is drafted and does not sign with the Club that selected him may be drafted again at a future year's Draft, so long as the player is eligible for that year's Draft. A Club may not select a player again in a subsequent year, unless the player has consented to the re-selection.

A player who is eligible to be selected and is passed over by every Club becomes a free agent and may sign with any Club, up until one week before the next Draft, or until the player enters, or returns to, a four-year college full-time or enters, or returns to, a junior college. In the one-week period before any Draft, which is called the 'closed period,' the general rule is that no Club may sign a new player."

I appreciate all these responses as I'm the webster who asked Tiger Paw Mom about it...

I think we're pretty clear on the timeline, but we still wonder what to expect in these last couple of months prior to the 2007 Draft.

If anyone's been there, we're specifically curious as to when the club holding the rights might begin to make their interest level (in actually signing the player) known, so that the player knows where he stands with the club.

We know they will either take a pass and let the player know they are not interested in signing him OR that in April or May they'll begin to state their serious level of interest and begin negotiating with him, even though they cannot actually sign him until the season ends.

If we are wrong, and they don't approach or begin negotiating until the baseball season ends, that sure leaves a short time period in which that's all supposed to unfold.

During his initial scouting period, we learned about round and slot $ so he could intelligently discuss that with the scouts. Unique to the DFE players, though, is that standard slot and round $ don't seem to apply. So, is there any guideline or precedent to follow during negotiations at the end of your Draft-and-follow year?

Our son is at a strong JUCO now and is having a pretty good season. He has a letter of intent to go to a ranked D1 next year, so those factors would seem to be solid leverage for his negotiations. But without any precedents to look at, we're pretty clueless.

Other than looking at the roster of the team who drafted him to see who all is in line ahead of him, so to speak, we aren't sure what else to study up on to get a good sense of where he stands.

Finally, is he out of order if he just simply asks his scout what they're thinking, or does need to wait for his scout to initiate that?

Thanks all, for taking the time to read this.

ktcosmos