PHOENIX — James Clark is a young man with enticing options on his baseball horizon.
The promising 18-year-old shortstop was taking infield practice Tuesday during the MLB draft combine at Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, where Clark fluidly handled ground balls before firing to first base. His defensive skills are one of many reasons the California native has a chance to be selected as a first-round pick in this year’s draft, which will take place in Philadelphia on July 11-12, the weekend before the Phillies host the MLB All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park.
And if Clark decides he’s not ready to start his professional career, he’s committed to play on the diamond next spring for Duke University, which has a successful baseball program and an elite academic reputation.
“It’s going to be a difficult decision,” Clark said of choosing between the Blue Devils and the MLB team that drafts him. “But it’s a good one to have.”
If MLB gets its way, it’s a decision that future prospects won’t get to make.
Team owners recently proposed banning high school players from signing with MLB teams, raising the age for international amateurs and slashing the money spent on signing bonuses in ongoing negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. The current five-year CBA with the MLB Players Association expires Dec. 1.
If the league gets its way, starting in 2028, a prospect for the amateur draft would have to be at least 20 years old by Sept. 1 of his signing year and two years removed from the graduating year of his high school class — a restriction that also would eliminate players who completed their first year of junior college.
There are dozens of current MLB stars who signed as teenagers, including Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Chicago Cubs, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels, and Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals. And earlier this season, Pittsburgh Pirates phenom Konnor Griffin, a shortstop, made his MLB debut at 19 years old.
Crow-Armstrong was selected as an 18-year-old with the No. 19 overall pick in 2020 out of Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles. He was committed to play college baseball at Vanderbilt but decided to begin his pro career instead.
The center fielder hopes other young ballplayers will still have that option in the future.
“I got an opportunity to grow up in a really real-life setting and I was really grateful for it,” Crow-Armstrong — who made his MLB debut in September 2023 and was an MLB All-Star for the first time last year — said earlier this week. “I think if there’s any sport you can go straight (to the highest level) from high school, it’s this one.
“You’re afforded a lot of time in the minor leagues to develop, and that’s kind of the point.”
Cubs pitcher Ben Brown was drafted by the Phillies as a 17-year-old in 2017 in the 33rd round, which doesn’t even exist anymore after MLB shortened the draft to 20 rounds in 2021. The owners’ most recent proposal would shorten the draft to a dozen rounds starting in 2027.
Brown said he has fond memories of staying in hotels with roommates in the lower levels of the minors, learning how to budget money on a low salary and being on his own while trying to make it in baseball.
“It was the greatest blessing in the world for me to go into pro ball at a young age,” Brown said. “I had to work in the offseasons. I did plenty of things just to show up to spring training early. And the Phillies took amazing care of me as a young kid.”
Of course, for every Ben Brown or Pete Crow-Armstrong, there are countless high school signees who never reached the majors. There also are lots of baseball players who want to go to college, earn a degree and then embark on their pro career if things work out.
Roch Cholowsky was a highly rated shortstop coming out of high school in Arizona in 2023 but instead played at UCLA for three seasons. Now he could be the No. 1 selection in next month’s MLB draft after a standout career with the Bruins.
Still, he had plenty of friends who went straight to the pros out of high school.
“It’s different for everybody. Whatever is best for you,” Cholowsky said. “A guy like myself needed to go to college. I got to play three years of unbelievable baseball at UCLA, learn a lot and really grow up.”
College baseball has grown rapidly in recent years for many reasons, including that NCAA Division I programs can now offer 34 scholarships instead of the old cap of 11.7. There’s also some money from NIL deals and revenue sharing available for players at the top programs, though it’s usually not like the high-dollar deals for their football or basketball counterparts.
Ole Miss baseball coach Mike Bianco has been at the school for 26 years, leading the Rebels to three of their seven total appearances in the College World Series and the program’s lone national championship in 2022. Bianco said the college game has become more enticing during his coaching career, with more and more young prospects deciding it’s the best option. If MLB bans teenagers from signing out of high school, it likely means NCAA baseball becomes even stronger.
Bianco’s four sons all played at least some college baseball.
“Even if they had been potential first-round draft picks, I would have made them go to college,” he said. “At the major college level, you’re playing the best amateur baseball in the world. You’ve got a support system that’s different than the minor leagues, and you’re getting educated in lots of different ways.”
In the 2025 MLB draft, 56 college players were selected in the top 90 picks.
Thanks to a variety of factors — especially money and technology — the MLB and NCAA versions of baseball have never been more similar. It’s part of the reason former University of Tennessee coach Tony Vitello is now the manager of the San Francisco Giants despite never working or playing for a pro organization before he was hired last fall. That’s a first in MLB history.
Athletics slugger Nick Kurtz was last year’s American League rookie of the year after playing three college seasons at Wake Forest, with the former star for Chattanooga’s Baylor School needing just 210 plate appearances in the minors before dominating MLB pitching with 36 homers and 86 RBIs in 117 games.
Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes was a star pitcher at LSU before being drafted in 2023 and needed just 34 innings in the minors before making it to the big leagues. He was obviously ready, getting voted National League rookie of the year in 2024 and winning the NL Cy Young award last season.
From the perspective of MLB teams, it has become advantageous to let prospects develop in college instead of drafting them as teenagers, paying large signing bonuses, and then trying to project their growth. Currently, each MLB team runs five levels of domestic minor leagues, which can get expensive.
Streamlining that process is enticing. The minors are already shrinking, with MLB having cut 40 minor league affiliates back in 2020. MLB has said it will not seek to reduce the 120 minor league teams in the top four levels when it negotiates new professional development licenses in 2030 to replace expiring 10-year deals, but the makeup of those 120 teams will surely be different if no players are signing out of high school.
“These guys trust (college) programs,” Arizona State coach Willie Bloomquist said earlier this year. “They say, ‘We’ll just watch them in college in three years at a Power Four (conference) program, see how they develop, and then we’ll go get them.'”