72. That's the number. Our final board featured 613 players. 72 fewer players are going pro from our final board than the average from our boards from 2022 through 2025. That's a huge number. And the reason isn't that the players got worse. It's that the math stopped working.
For a long time, the MLB Draft operated on a simple premise: even a modest signing bonus beats the uncertainty of college ball, especially for a high schooler without a strong path to a power-conference roster. That premise is dying. NIL money and the transfer portal have given amateur players, particularly ones already committed to power-conference programs, a form of present-day earning power that didn't exist even three years ago, and it's rewriting the calculus pick by pick.
Where the High Six Figures Went
Go back and count the presumed six-figure high school bonuses in this class and you'll find it's …