Harold Reynolds will be working the 2024 MLB Draft for MLB Network.
Prior to Sunday’s event, he appeared on Sports Business Journal’s Sports Media Pod, and Reynolds dissuaded the notion that the MLB Draft can’t compete with the excitement of other leagues’ drafts.
“The difference with our draft than football or basketball is you don’t see these guys play… and so you’re gonna go to the minor leagues.”
MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds discussed the growth of the draft becoming a more prominent televised event.
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“It’s continued to grow. We moved it to the All-Star Game to kind of coincide with all those events, so I think that’s helped bring about more notoriety,” Reynolds says. “The difference with our draft than football and basketball is you don’t see these guys play. And so, you’re gonna go to the minor leagues, they’re coming out of high schools…For example, I’m from Oregon. Nobody watched me play baseball.
“Those sports you have every Saturday, you know what you’re gonna watch. If there’s a big college basketball game, you watch them, and you’re familiar with the people getting picked. So, yes, all of a sudden, you get big crowds to follow. We’re getting there. We’re working through it. I think the process that we’re using and the format is getting better all the time.”
Host Austin Karp asked Reynolds if Major League Baseball needed an International Draft to even the playing fields.
“You know what? They’re working on it,” Reynolds said. “If you look at how, really, the influx of Latin players, particularly from the Dominican — you have all the academies…And if you look at a Major League roster, it’s 40-50% guys from Latin America. They’ve been trying to work that out. I know they’ve been trying to work on that during the last CBA. Maybe we’ll get there with the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. But I think International Draft would help probably the U.S.-born player more than it does right now.”
Reynolds believes the MLB Draft is on the rise. With its new format and growing notoriety, it could very well rival the excitement of other leagues’ drafts. Whether that happens in the near future, though, obviously remains to be seen.
[SBJ]
