Why is MLB draft held midseason? Draft coincides with end of college baseball season
This week, Major League Baseball’s 30 teams will select the players they hope will one day lead them to World Series glory during the 2025 MLB Draft in suburban Atlanta.
The event, which runs this year from July 13 and 14, is something of an oddity among the major American professional sports leagues. For one, MLB teams have extensive minor-league systems in which a prospect will work their way through, meaning that, unlike the NFL and NBA, it could very well take even a top draft pick years before they make it to the majors.
Perhaps the biggest distinguishing characteristic isn’t with the draft itself, but when it takes place.
Since its inception 60 years ago, the MLB draft has been held in the middle of the ongoing season rather than after it, as is the case with the NFL, NBA and NHL.
Why is that? Here’s a closer look at why the MLB draft is held midseason:
Why is the MLB Draft held midseason?
In three of the four major American professional sports leagues — NFL, NHL and NBA — the draft is held after the season is complete and a champion has been crowned.
The 2025 NBA Draft began on June 25, three days after the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers in Game Seven of the NBA Finals. The Stanley Cup Finals wrapped up 10 days before the NHL held its draft. In the NFL, that gap is even more pronounced, with nearly three full months separating the Super Bowl and the NFL draft this year.
MLB, though, is staging its draft more than halfway through the regular season this year, and has held the event in the middle of the regular season every year since the first MLB amateur draft in 1965. While unusual among major American sports, the arrangement makes sense.
Due to the eligibility rules governing who can be selected, the MLB draft is overwhelmingly made up of college and high school players.
The college baseball season, which begins in February and ends in June with the College World Series, doesn’t align in the same way that the NFL and college football seasons and NBA and college basketball seasons largely do, with the World Series concluding in late October. High school baseball seasons, too, have wrapped up by the time the CWS comes to a close.
The MLB draft accommodates that timeline, with college players getting drafted at least a few weeks after their seasons have wrapped up, even though the MLB season won’t end for another three months.
It wasn’t always that way.
For much of its history, the MLB draft took place in early or mid-June, before the CWS ended. That changed in 2021, when leaders in baseball moved the draft back to July to coincide with the MLB All-Star Game. In each of the past five years, the draft has been held in the same city as the All-Star Game, with this year’s festivities taking place in Cumberland, Georgia, across the street from Truist Park, the home venue of the Atlanta Braves and the host site of the 2025 MLB All-Star Game.
The shift was beneficial for both MLB and its incoming players.
For professional baseball, it was a chance to more effectively market draft prospects as potential future stars of the sport and bring and extend the spotlight of the Midsummer Classic to the draft. In recent years, the draft has begun the day after the annual MLB Futures Game and wrapped up the day of the All-Star Game (this year, it will finish the day before the All-Star Game). Additionally, the break between the end of the CWS and the draft gives clubs more time to scout and research players they’re interested in selecting.
For players, it guaranteed them at least the opportunity to attend the draft. Under the previous calendar, if a prospect’s team was playing deep into the CWS, they were unable to be there in person to hear their name called.
When is the 2025 MLB Draft?
The 2025 MLB Draft will take place from July 13-14. The first night is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. ET, with the first 43 selections airing live on ESPN and MLB Network. After those, only MLB Network will be providing live coverage of the picks.
The first day will include the first three rounds of the draft, as well as compensatory rounds, competitive balance rounds and prospect promotion incentive selections. The second day will include rounds 4 through 20 and will be streamed on MLB.com beginning at 11:30 a.m. ET.