![Florida head coach Kevin O'Sullivan greats Troy head coach Skylar Meade before the 2026 NCAA Baseball Championship Gainesville Regional championship baseball game at Condron Family Ballpark in Gainesville, FL on Sunday, May 31, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_2568,h_1444/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/213/01kvg8mr5nsw7hh11gn5.jpg "Florida head coach Kevin O'Sullivan greats Troy head coach Skylar Meade before the 2026 NCAA Baseball Championship Gainesville Regional championship baseball game at Condron Family Ballpark in Gainesville, FL on Sunday, May 31, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
One of the subplots that Kevin O’Sullivan has had to deal with over the years is having highly ranked commits to the Gators get drafted as a high schooler by an MLB team and having that player never actually make it to campus. Of notable players who never made it to campus, Florida had commitments from Christian Arroyo, Daniel Vogelbach, Jake Woodford, Riley Greene, Chase Petty, and Kyle Tucker, only for those guys to get drafted instead. Florida’s class of 2025 had Aaron Watson and Jordan Yost committed, only for MLB to come calling instead.
Well, there is a new proposal from MLB that would transform college baseball and would make a program like Florida a huge benefactor from the rule change.
Florida would benefit more than most from MLB’s proposal
Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that MLB has floated a proposal that would make it so players can not be drafted straight out of high school, make college players eligible after their sophomore year, cut the number of rounds in the draft from 20 to 12, and set the bonus pool from $358 million to $200 million.
There is a ton to unpack here, but it would be a departure from the current system that allows a player to be drafted straight out of high school, and if they opt to go to college instead, then they have to wait three years before they are draft eligible again.
Translation on the front end: All of those guys previously named would have been Gators under this system. For a guy like O’Sullivan, who built the Florida empire off strong recruiting classes and development, this could be a massive game-changer, especially since O’Sullivan still tries to largely build in-house even in the transfer portal era.
MLB isn’t floating this proposal because they want Florida to be successful; they are doing it to cut their own costs and limit risk on their own end. In the eyes of MLB, why pay huge money for an 18-year-old who you then also have to sink real money into in order to develop, when the power programs in college baseball can do it for you?
MLB has been trending in this direction for quite some time, trying to shed layers of its minor league system. And there are real concerns that the minor leagues could soon be a forgotten relic.
The benefactor, however, is going to be college baseball if this passes. The potential influx of top-end talent to the power conferences would only make college baseball grow more and more. As Florida fans saw with Wyatt Langford and Jac Caglianone, more and more college baseball players are leaving college essentially ready-made to get called up to The Show.
We’ll see if this proposal actually passes and whether or not it becomes a sticking point in the looming and upcoming labor negotiations that could lead to a potential lockout in MLB for the 2027 season. but if you are a Florida Baseball fan, and only a Florida Baseball fan, this proposal is something you would want passed.
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