The Minor League System

I have no idea how these things happen but I woke up this morning pondering the existence of the minor league system in Major League Baseball. It might be a brief piece I saw the other night on James Loney and the MLB Draft or it might be all the talk of the upcoming Draft.

But in the middle of all this pondering, something stuck in my craw.

Why is it that MLB is the only one of the major four sports that have such a drawn-out and [possibly] bloated minor league system to work through to hit the big time?

NBA? You get drafted, you're on the big team's roster more often than not and sometimes have an immediate and huge impact. The NFL is the same way. Not sure on the NHL but occasionally you do hear about some wunderkind.

But MLB? Someone who gets drafted in MLB may wait YEARS before making the big leagues if they ever make it all. Is MLB that much harder of a sport? Is there that much difference between the sports in the quality gap between high school/college ball and the pros?

I decided to do a little research to see just how this plays out.

Thanks to this super-helpful report on sport participation up on the NCAA website, I can provide the following information...

In 2006-7, the following participation numbers were recorded.

Baseball - 29,846 (in Div I/II/III)
Basketball - 16,640
Football - 62,459
Hockey - 3,957

Okay... so from there, we look at the drafts for each sport...

MLB - 1,502 players were drafted in the 2006 MLB Draft
NBA - 60 players are drafted
NFL - 256 players were drafted in the 2009 NFL Draft
NHL - 211 players were drafted in the 2009 NFL Draft

Now, let's look at slots available for those players (and yes, I realize the math is flawed based on international, non-roster players, etc.) And of course, all of this is quite theoretical.

For the NBA, every team can carry a max of 15. At 30 teams, that means there are 450 jobs available in the NBA. Of the total number of NCAA basketball players, about 3% will get one of those jobs and rarely - and I do mean RARELY - do one of the sixty drafted not play immediately in the NBA.

For the NFL, every team can carry a max of 53. At 32 teams, there are 1696 jobs available in the NFL. Theoretically, up to 3% will also get a job in the NFL. And again, RARELY do those players not immediately play for their NFL team.

For the NHL, every team can carry a max of 20 players. With 30 teams, that makes 600 jobs in the NHL. In theory, about 2% of those college players will get a job. The numbers are probably really off on this one because of the amount of international players in the NHL who don't come through the NCAA system.

And finally, there's MLB...

At 30 teams... and I'll be generous and go with the 40 Man Roster... there's 1200 jobs available at the Major League level. Again, in theory, up to 4% of the NCAA players will end up in the Major Leagues. That's close to the other sports so that makes sense. However, when we look at draft numbers...MLB is the only sport where more players are drafted than are already in the Majors.

The Dodger organization alone carries seven minor league teams... three rookie ball teams, two A affiliates, one AA, and one AAA. That gives the Dodgers a grand total of 131ish listed players in the minor leagues with two teams not listing rosters. If we assume another 25 per team there, the Dodgers creep close to 200 players in their system. Let's say 150 to be conservative. If we assume the rest of the MLB teams do the same, that's another 4500 jobs open in the MLB system for a total of 5700. With 5700 jobs in the system, you can now theorize that about about 20% of NCAA players will get a job in the MLB system.

So, the numbers are fascinating to me but the real question is... why?

Any thoughts?