WHEN

Tuesday-Thursday, June 9-11

WHAT

Major League Baseball's first-year player draft, initiated in 1965, is held every June—historically on the first Tuesday of the month, but on the second Tuesday this year after beginning on a Thursday the last two years. It will be conducted by conference call among the 30 major league clubs. The clubs take turns selecting players in reverse order of their 2008 won-loss records, regardless of league, with adjustments in the first three rounds (as noted on the accompanying draft order of rotation).

The draft consists of 50 rounds—as opposed to two rounds in the NBA draft, seven in the NFL draft and 12 in the NHL draft. Each club is entitled to select for 50 rounds, but is not required to do so. The Washington Nationals have the No. 1 selection this year, marking the first such opportunity in the franchise’s history—dating back to the Montreal Expos. The old Washington Senators picked first in 1969, selecting California high-school outfielder Jeff Burroughs.

HOW

The draft normally originates from the commissioner's office in New York, but for the third year in a row the early portion of the draft will be held at a remote location.

In 2007 and 2008, the first five rounds originated from Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Fla., with the first round televised by ESPN and its family of networks. This year, the draft will originate from the new MLB Network studios in Secaucus, N.J., and will be spread over three days—not two as has been customary for years.

The first three rounds are scheduled for June 9 in prime time from 6-10 p.m. ET, and will be televised either by the MLB Network or MLB.com. Numerous club officials and projected first-round picks are scheduled to be in attendance.

Day Two and Three of the proceedings will be conducted in normal fashion from the commissioner’s office. The draft will resume with Round 4 on June 10 at 12 noon, and continue through approximately 30 rounds. The balance of the draft will be conducted on June 11, beginning at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Each team generally has 30 seconds to select a player, but additional time (up to five minutes) will be provided between picks in the first round again this year to accommodate TV coverage. Teams will continue to draft players until they pass or reach the 50^th round, whichever comes first.

The club that drafts a player will generally contact the player immediately after the selection. No team may draft a player unless it has registered the player's name with the commissioner's office, or his name has been submitted by the Major League Scouting Bureau.

The team that selects a player has the sole negotiating rights to the player and must submit a written minor-league contract within 15 days of selection. Failure to do so, however, no longer enables players to become free agents—as was the case in 1996, when four first-rounders took advantage of a loophole in the draft rules to push for and become free agents. All four players subsequently signed lucrative deals with the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks or Tampa Bay Devil Rays—notably Pennsylvania high-school righthander Matt White, who received a record $10.2 million bonus from the Rays. White never played in the big leagues.

Some significant rules changes were enacted with the 2007 draft. They were adopted as part of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players Association in October 2006.

Previously, a club's negotiating rights to a player attending a four-year college were lost as soon as the player physically entered his first class at the beginning of the fall semester. For a player attending junior college, the selecting club retained the negotiating rights to the player until one week before the following year’s draft. This was commonly referred to as the draft-and-follow process.

But the new rules established a firm universal signing deadline of Aug. 15—for all players (excluding college seniors whose eligibility has been exhausted). If a team does not sign a player by that date, it is forbidden from signing that player—regardless if he attends a four-year school or two-year school, or simply chooses not to attend or return to college. Effectively, the draft-and-follow rule, which had been in place for 20 years, was abolished with the 2007 draft.

A player who is drafted and does not sign with the club that selected him may be drafted again in a future draft—as soon as he meets the eligibility requirements again.

Correspondingly, any player who is eligible to be selected but is passed over altogether automatically becomes a free agent, free to sign with any club.

Additional provisions of the 2006 CBA agreement awarded clubs supplementary picks for the loss of ranked free agents or their failure to sign picks selected in the second and third rounds of the previous year’s draft.

Teams that have lost a Type ‘B’ free agent during the off-season are now awarded a supplemental first-round pick, but only after compensation is awarded to teams losing Type ‘A’ free agents. There are 10 Type ‘A’ free agents in this year’s draft and six Type ‘B’ free agents.

Prior to the start of the second round, there will also be three compensation selections awarded to clubs that did not sign first- or second-round draft picks in 2008. With 19 extra selections, that means the second round will start effective with the 50^th pick.

For several years, a team was entitled to a compensation selection after the first round for its failure to sign a first-round pick from the previous year’s draft. For the first time in 2008, teams received compensation for unsigned first- and second-round picks that corresponded to the equivalent draft position (plus one) in the previous year’s draft.

For instance, the Washington Nationals failed to sign first-rounder Aaron Crow, the ninth overall pick in 2008. They will receive the 10^th pick this year. The New York Yankees will also receive compensation (the 29^th pick) for their failure to sign first-rounder Gerrit Cole, and the Pittsburgh Pirates will get the 49^th pick for their inability to sign second-rounder. Tanner Scheppers. Both Crow and Scheppers, college juniors who elected not to return to college for the 2009 season, are eligible again for this year’s draft, while Cole is a freshman at UCLA and isn’t scheduled to be eligible again until 2011.

Teams which fail to sign third-round picks from the previous year are also entitled to a compensation selection, at the end of the third round. After four such selections in the 2008 draft, there is only one this year—to the Houston Astros for not signing Chase Davidson, now a freshman at Georgia.

WHO

Major league Rule IV rules govern which players are eligible for selection in the draft. The basic eligibility criteria can be described as follows:

Generally, a player is eligible for selection if he is a resident of the United States or Canada, and the player has never before signed a major-league or minor-league contract. Players who have played professionally in an independent league are subject to selection. Residents of Puerto Rico and other territories of the United States are also eligible for the draft, as are players who enroll in a high school or college in the United States, regardless of where they are from originally.

Eligibility Requirements

Certain groups of players are ineligible for selection, generally because they are still in school. The basic categories of players eligible to be drafted are:

--High School players, if they have graduated from high school and have not yet attended college or junior college;

--College players, from four-year colleges who have either completed their junior or senior years or are at least 21 years old. In the case of a college sophomore or even a college freshman (as is the case this year with Clemson freshman lefthander Chris Dwyer), he must have attained his 21^st birthday within 45 days of the draft. College players who have dropped out of school also may be eligible, providing they petitioned in writing to the commissioner's office no later than March 26—75 days before the draft;

--Junior College players, regardless of how many years of school they have completed, and

--players who have reached the age of 21 within 45 days of the draft date (this year that qualifying date is July 26).

A player who is drafted and does not sign with the club that selected him may be drafted again in a future draft, so long as the player is eligible for that year's draft. A club may not select a player again in a subsequent year, unless the player has consented to the re-selection.

Until 2007, a fifth-year college senior was eligible to sign a contract as soon as he finished his last class in college—provided the player had completed eight semesters in college prior to the start of his senior and the player’s college season was completed before the draft. But the fifth-year senior rule was abandoned, effective with last year’s draft.

One change that went into effect with the 2008 draft was the requirement that the top 200 prospects for the draft—as identified by the Major League Scouting Bureau—must take a drug test. Teams are notified which players test positive for performance-enhancing or illegal drugs, though a positive test does not result in punishment to the player. However, players in the top 200 who refuse to take a drug test will be ruled ineligible for the draft.

HOW TO FOLLOW THE DRAFT

a. MLB Network

b. Major League Baseball, on www.mlb.com

c. Perfect Game / Baseball Web-TV (details to follow)

--COMPILED BY ALLAN SIMPSON