OFF THE WALL
FIRST YEAR PLAYER DRAFT
​
The annual 3-round First Year Player Draft is scheduled for February 3. Only those players who were drafted or were eligible for the 2024 MLB draft as well as International Players who are eligible for the 2025 signing period may be selected.
​​​​​
FYPD PREP
​​
The most successful owners in FullSlate keep their eyes on the prospects. From the MLB's FYPD and J2 signings, they place a respectable value on players who will impact their teams and keep them in contention year after year.
With that in mind, here are links to sites that will help formulate your draft strategy. (Click on the highlighted text.)
​
Baseball America's Draft Database for MLB's 2024 First Year Player Draft is a good place to start. While the 2024 did not have the impact players - as the did the 2023 draft - none were immediate Top 10 - there were still some highly valued players.
​
MLB.com's International Prospect list is their take on the Top 50 players eligible for the J2 signing period that runs from January 15 to December 15 , 2025. Notably absent from this list is SP Roki Sasaki who is expected to be posted in time for the J2 signing period.
​
If you are in one of the top 4 draft positions - and are considering trading your pick - keep in mind that Full Slate places a high value on these slots and will judge their inclusion accordingly.
THE DRAFT
​​​
In the few weeks since this column was posted discussing the Draft and possible upcoming changes, several "roadblocks" were encountered that made it impossible to create and present the 3rd draft option in a timely manner.
​​
This option was only under consideration as a compromise to the minority of owners who wanted to go back to the old-style restocking draft.​
​​
The idea of a salary cap using actual player salaries was scrapped, because they were far from being an accurate value of players.
​
Other more accurate metrics and values were researched, but there were none available (at this time) to include 2025 projections.
​
Also, during this time, another project was started with the intention of reviewing the Inning Scoring tables, which have not changed in 38 years!
​​
While gathering and parsing the necessary stats that the idea of creating player values that directly reflected the FullSlate scoring system became more obvious as a solution. However, the project is so encompassing that it will take weeks to finish.
​​​
With that in mind - and the upcoming First Year Player Draft - we have decided to open up trading, and table any draft option until we can conclude the project and present the findings to all owners.​
​​
Also planned is a brief questionnaire we want to submit to owners to help us better understand if there really is a need to change, or if we are just trying to fix a system that is not broken.​​