The third volume of my Baseball Basics for Brits series is now available.  Its snappy title is “Volume 3. Players: Development, Contracts and Transactions”!

The idea behind this volume was to provide an overview of an MLB player’s career, not least because many of the aspects covered are quite different to the experiences of professionals in British sports. 

If you are a budding football star, you will be spotted by a club at a young age and will learn your trade in the youth ranks of that team.  In baseball, of course, a team’s active involvement with a player generally only starts when they sign them via the annual Amateur draft.

Once you become part of an MLB organization, your development path takes you through the minor leagues before the lucky (and extremely talented) few make it on to the Big League roster.  While Premiership teams may send their youngsters out on loan to the lower leagues, there is no formal structure that matches the MLB set-up over here.

Finally, in Britain, players are normally bought and sold in contrast to the baseball trade market.  It’s difficult for British newcomers to adjust to the standard practice of teams trading players to the other side of America without their consent, but there is an underlying logic to the system and this is explained in the volume.

You can find this latest volume, alongside the first two, by clicking the Baseball Basics for Brits heading in the navigation bar and scrolling to the bottom of the page.