The Minor League Free Agent Draft (or MLFAD) is an annual Effectively Wild competition where the objective is to choose the minor league free agents who will get the most playing time in the upcoming season.
The MLFAD has evolved into very competitive event, with hosts sometimes secretly conducting large amounts of research and data collection in the days before the draft.[1] It is also one of the key factors in the elevation of Willians Astudillo to the status of unofficial podcast mascot, as he was a pick in the 2018 edition of the draft.
Overview[]
As suggested by the name, eligible players for this draft are minor league free agents: Those who have more than 6 years of minor league service time and are not on a 40-man roster.[2] The pool of players is obtained from Matt Eddy's annual list of minor league free agents on Baseball America. It's mostly players you've never heard of, although there are often surprisingly prominent players you have heard of, and some players who were big-leaguers eight years ago that you had forgotten about.
Each player earns a point for each major league plate appearance (for position players) or batter faced (for pitchers) during the following season. Player performance is not considered. All that matters is playing time, although better performance is certainly correlated with playing time.
Since the draft takes place at the end of the calendar year, several weeks after the list of minor league free agents is generated, many players are eligible for the draft despite no longer being free agents because they have signed with a team in the interim. The sweet spot is to find a strong player on a terrible team.
Starting in 2021, a "control group" of randomly-selected players is added to the mix. The control group (usually) does terribly, which at least demonstrates that there is some skill to this exercise.
Rules lawyering[]
Position players do not earn points for pitching appearances, and pitchers do not earn points for plate appearances.[3] (Citations: 2014 Steven Tolleson and 2022 Christian Bethancourt did not earn points for their position player pitching appearances. 2015 pitcher Clayton Richard did not earn points for his plate appearances.)
Only regular season games count. (Citations: 2023 Franmil Reyes did not earn points for his postseason plate appearances.)
Summary[]
Year
Sam
Ben L
Jeff
Meg
Ben C
2014
353
93
2015
560
629
2016
303
898
2017
707
375
2018
1,240
591
203
2019
586
548
1,640
2020
488
94
177
2021
1,311
569
2022
422
56
1,459
2023
352
504
320
2024
1,080
681
593
TOTAL
4,237
6,393
1,843
1,987
2,372
AVG*
605
630
922
453
791
RECORD
4/7
4/11
1/2
1/5
1/3
*The 2020 results are excluded from the average due to shortened season. Point totals for the 2019 draft have not been adjusted for the draft going 11 rounds instead of the traditional 10.
↑In Episode 607, Sam says, "I thought it was easy because I spent six minutes preparing. Ben thought it was hard because he spent four hours preparing."
↑There are some less common ways to become a minor league free agent. Here's an explainer.
↑A two-way player has never been drafted, but presumably they will receive credit in both categories.
