MLB to introduce ‘Draft League’ for top prospects

NEW YORK — Major League Baseball is creating a minor league for top eligible prospects leading to the summer draft.

The wood-bat MLB Draft League is launching with five teams and could add a sixth, MLB said Monday. Teams will play a 68-game regular season that includes an All-Star break coinciding with the draft in early July.

MLB also announced that the eight-team Pioneer League will lose its affiliated status and become an independent “Partner League.” MLB has pledged to provide initial funding for operating expenses and will install scouting technology at league stadiums. The Pioneer League spans Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Utah and had been a Rookie-level affiliated league since 1964.

Teams in the MLB Draft League are going to communities that lost franchises when MLB began shrinking the affiliated minor leagues from 160 to 120 teams. The reduction this offseason followed the expiration of the Professional Baseball Agreement, which governed the relationship between the majors and minors. MLB has planned to eliminate the separate governing body of minor league baseball.

The founding members of the MLB Draft League are located in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New Jersey: the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, the State College Spikes, the Trenton Thunder, the West Virginia Black Bears and the Williamsport Crosscutters. MLB said it is in discussions with a sixth team that it hopes to announce soon.

The season will run roughly from late May through mid-August, broken into halves. The first half will be a showcase for draft-eligible high school, college and junior college players. Following a multiday break for the draft, rosters will be restocked with the best players passed over by MLB teams who are still interested in signing.