About the Draft Data

Signing Bonuses:  More readily available in recent years, TBC generally has first round bonuses for older years and in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, you'll start to see the top 10 rounds have signing bonuses. Bonus data is only available for signed players but a missing bonus does not indicate a player did not sign.

Completion of data:   The draft data is complete. TBC has every draft phase since the draft began in 1965. As of 1987, the draft was comprised of a single phase in June. Prior to 1987, consider the June-Regular phase as the main phase of the draft. As of 1998, the draft was standardized to 50 rounds instead of teams drafting as many players as they desired.

Drafting Schools:   Most players have their drafting school listed whether it was a high school or community college or college. Some players were not drafted out of a school and these players will have blanks in this field. Please note that throughout history, schools have closed and changed names and so some of the older players may have outdated information.

Player Profiles:   Every drafted player since 1965 has a player page on The Baseball Cube. Though we've tried to fill in as much profile data as possible, there are many players who will have no information and many others with partial information.

Positions:   The position listed for the drafted player is separate from the position listed on other pages on the site. This position has to do with the position they played when they were drafted. A better description would be the position that was listed next to their name on the source of the draft data when compiled.

Signed Players:  Indicates whether the drafting team was able to sign the drafted player to a contract and thus the player would start to play ball with the lower levels of the organization's minor league teams. TBC doesn't have complete and accurate signing information but we have deduced that many players did not sign based on the fact that they have draft instances in later drafts.

Duplicate players:   There are 64,000 draft records since 1965 and many times, players use different variations of their names when entering the draft and there may have been drafted out of different schools (i.e. High School and College), therefore, it is likely that there are players who are duplicated on The Cube. You can write a note to us if you find any. Note that its a challenge to match up names like Bob Smith, Steve Jones and Richard Davis.

Source of the Draft Data:   The data was compiled since 2002 from various web sites specializing in the draft including Baseball America and MLB.Com. For 2001 and earlier, the data was compiled through baseball almanacs and for the earliest of draft years, through the Baseball America draft almanac. There is the possibility of spelling mistakes in the data since a lot of the compilation was done at 3am.