MLB Shortens Draft To Two Days Beginning In 2025

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The MLB draft is getting shorter…in time.

In 2025, the MLB Draft will become a two-day event, with rounds 1-3 taking place on opening night. The entire rest of the draft (rounds 4-20) will be completed on day two, Baseball America has confirmed. Last year, there were 103 picks through the end of round three. Joe Doyle first reported the news.

This is a change from the format in recent years where the first, supplemental first round (competitive balance, compensatory and PPI picks), second round and supplemental second round took place on Day 1, with rounds 3-10 on Day 2 and rounds 11-20 on Day 3. 

This will likely make the television broadcast longer and allow the broadcast to announce more picks. Day two and the now-expired third day of the draft are a conference call that’s also streamed online than a televised event. The 2025 MLB Draft will begin July 13, 2025 in Atlanta.

While having 17 rounds of picks on one day may seem like a lot of picks to fit in, it actually brings back memories of past years’ drafts. MLB has never had a problem rolling through a thousand picks in a day if they need to. Now, the entire draft is just over 600 picks (last year there were 615).

MLB cut the draft to 20 rounds in 2021 (after a coronavirus-shortened five round draft in 2020).

From 2012-2019, the draft was 40 rounds, with the vast majority of those rounds taking place on the final day of the draft. From 1998-2011, the draft was 50 rounds. And before that, it was as many rounds as MLB teams wanted it to be, with the Yankees taking the draft to 100 rounds in 1996 for the longest draft in MLB history. That 100-round, 1746-player draft took three days, with the vast majority of those picks happening on Day Three.