| Sport: | Baseball |
| Classification: | Collegiate summer (partial) Independent (partial) |
| Founded: | 2021 |
| Director: | Sean Campbell[1] |
| Teams: | 6 |
| Country: | United States |
| Champion: | West Virginia Black Bears (2023) |
| Most Champs: | West Virginia Black Bears (2) |
| Website: | www.mlb.com/mlb-draft-league |
The MLB Draft League is a baseball league that began play in 2021.[2] Created by Major League Baseball (MLB) and Prep Baseball Report (PBR), the league operates a split-season format of 80 games with a hybrid amateur–professional structure: for the first half of the season, the league operates as an amateur collegiate summer baseball league to serve as a showcase for top draft-eligible prospects leading up to each July's MLB draft; after a break for the draft, play resumes for the season's remaining games with paid professional players who have exhausted their amateur eligibility.[3]
The league's six teams were formerly members of Minor League Baseball's New York–Penn League, Eastern League, and Carolina League before MLB's reorganization of the minors for 2021.[4] [5] In 2021, each team in the league played a regular season, with an All-Star Break taking place around the MLB draft.[6] The season was expanded to 80 games per team beginning in 2022.[7]
In 2024, MLB announced that the league would be expanded by two teams in the near future and that it would extend its support for the league through 2030.[8]
| Team |
| Year(s) |
|---|---|---|
| West Virginia Black Bears | 2 | 2022, 2023 |
| Trenton Thunder | 1 | 2021 |