Future Shock

Also, they don't need to shorten the signing window, they need to extend it. Teams should hold rights 1 years + number of years of college eligibility left.

From the players perspective, although amateur guys are not in the union, their talent is a direct replacement for the veteran players. If you make your replacement cheaper, that's simply undercutting yourself even more, especially with the recent trend of teams getting smarter about drafts vs FA.

this is the #1 issue for the players union.

Nice article Kevin G. How can you send this to Bud Selig to make sure he reads it? Listening to Bud speak, he's "all in" on some of the proposed "fixes". Is there any doubt he'll push it through? The union will give in on the draft to get other goodies. Won't they? Is there any word from the Union on fighting to keep the draft closer to what it is now and not make the changes in order to just "curb bonuses"?

There is no convincing economic rationale for the amateur player draft. ALL it does is depress signing bonuese and initial salaries, especially for the most talented amateur players (even though those players already receive the highest bonuses and initial salaries, they are depressed; players further down the talent scale are also being exploited, but not as badly).

End the draft.

Free the players.

Let the free market rule.

If you end the draft, then the Yankees and every other high spending team will always get the best players. That's a terrible idea. The whole point of the draft is to give the weaker teams first crack at the best available amateur players. You think the Nats would have had a chance at Harper or Stras if free market ruled?

I think slotting of any kind is an illegal restraint of free trade and un-American. The draft itself has resulted in more parity than there would otherwise be and the owners are lucky to get away with it. Instead, they want more. Their greed will ultimately lead the stripping of MLB's antitrust exemption and the abolishment of the draft.

"Hard slots mean that Major League Baseball has decided to steer players away from the game, as without the ability to exceed even recommended slots, a large number, if not a majority of, high school players selected after the first two or three rounds would elect to go to college or, even worse, attend college and pursue another sport. The minor leagues would quickly be stripped of talent, and MLB would be cutting off its nose to spite its face."

I'm not buying this at face value. Where is the evidence that hard-slotting the draft would hurt product on the field? The NFL moved to a 'hard' slot-based draft system without anyone suggesting that the product on the field suffered. And draft position is much more closely tied to success in the NFL than in MLB.

Even if I buy the assertion that a hard-slot system will drive players away from MLB, I can't believe it would be a 'majority' of high schoolers drafted after the first couple of rounds. You have to consider:

1. How many players that get drafted have the potential to play another sport professionally? (A sizable minority, but certainly not a majority.)

2. Of that set, how many would actually give up a baseball career for another sport based on the hard slot figure?

3. What would be the hard slot figures? (Perhaps I will buy KGs assertion if he is assuming the owners would set absurdly low hard slot bonuses. But remember, this would be negotiated so I assume the bonuses would be reasonable.)

I'm guessing the number of players who fit criteria #1 AND #2 above, given a reasonable figure for #3 is a handful AT MOST every year. Certainly not enough to 'strip' the minor leagues of talent. I just can't see a 'majority' of the mid-late round high school picks deferring the opportunity to get paid to play over a couple of thousand dollars. It's not like the bonuses after the first few rounds are significant anyway.

Of course, I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Show me the evidence.

Hard slotting, caps on spending! American sports are allowed to operate in ways that dictators would consider draconian and that Banks would consider unfair. All sportsman should be allowed to choose where they want to play and should be paid the market rate from the moment they turn professional.

Let them all be free agents. If the Reds can come up with $30 million to get Chapman I'm not buying it will mean the Yankee's sign every top talent. Also, even if the Yankee's did give Bryce Harper say $50 million, how much more are they going to spend? They aren't spending a $100 million on the draft every year. Also if teams had to offer a guy the kind of contract that gets you a decent FA, that would certainly effect team payrolls.

"If you want examples of active players that could have ditched the MLB for football, just look at Arod and Mauer."

Super. You name 2 examples in the last 15 years. Neither recent.

"How many players that get drafted have the potential to play another sport professionally? (A sizable minority, but certainly not a majority.)"

This is more accurate, except that it's a very UNsizeable minority. Jordan thought he was a baseball prospect. Yeah, right.

A Bo or Deion comes around maybe once a decade. Neither of whom, even in their cases, amounted to all that much of a baseball player.

It's been shown that having the very first pick in the amateur draft is an enormous advantage. With a free market system, yes the Yankees would have that very first pick every single year.

A free market really, really benefits those with the capital, those with money. Fine, if money floats your boat.

Oh, and a free market is very, very economically efficient. In case anyone thinks I'm a commie.

The Yankees already have an arena where they could blow everyone else out of tha water - international signings. But they don't always sign the big names. Presumably, even they have a budget. More spending on young players may mean less on older ones all round and certainly fewer free agents being overpaid.

The premise of most "The draft needs to be fixed!" articles is that the $ given out to some of the players is too high. That leads to discussions of slotting, etc. I think KG's view is more correct - the draft is intended to lower bonuses by limiting a player's negotiating leverage, and it works (See Chapman, Aroldis). Kevin's proposal is intended to remove some of the pretense from the proceedings (drawn signing periods where nobody begins negotiating until an hour before the deadline) and allow teams to trade picks if they're unwilling to pay the freight for the talent, or simply think they can gain an advantage through flexibility, etc.

Makes sense to me.

bcmurph, you're list isn't very enlightening without noting just where all those guys were drafted. If you're a highly-sought after college football recruit who gets 5th-round drafted in baseball and chooses baseball instead, yes that's something. If you're a 1st-round baseball draftee who accepts a college football scholarship instead, yes that's something.

How many of those 'somethings' are on your lists? I'd predict darn close to zero. Players choose whatever sport they're best at. Almost none are top prospects at both. Unless you very, very creatively redesign 'top'.

I see a lot of "the Yankees will sign everyone," followed by "no they won't, look at these 3 guys that signed with someone else." Of course both of those comments are missing the point. The big-market teams won't sign everyone - it's impossible - they'll simply sign more than their fair share of the available talent. They already do this via the free agent market but it would be further exaggerated by making the draft a free market as well. Our brains aren't really wired to observe when a team signs 1/20 of the top talent available vs. 1/30, which is why the conversation devolves into specific player examples, but would anyone disagree that consistently signing a disproportionate share of talent is an advantage, and that having greater financial resources in a free market provides you with that opportunity? We might disagree on the extent to which that advantage should be neutralized, but it is certainly an advantage, and one that would increase if the draft is made a free market. I personally prioritize league parity over ensuring amateurs are paid full market value, but I recognize that that's a personal preference and others might feel differently.

Good article, Kevin. I have to agree that capping spending would diminish available talent. You have to wonder whether Jackie Robinson would even play baseball nowadays? Or would he play CB for USC? NFL draftees make a lot more $ - though whether that's why they choose football over baseball, I'm not sure. Maybe it wouldn't happen in the next 5-10 years, but over the next few decades I believe it would.

Kevin, maybe you could do an article about how the draft has affected Puerto Rico. When did it hit? What great PR'cans came before and after it?

Hi KG. Good article again. But speaking of 'fixing' the draft, I'm surprised you haven't written anything about Loux being given FA status. I'd be interested in your anticipatory take on what will happen. I assume you think the right thing happened.

Any chance the bind that the late deadline puts college coaches in so much as registers for Selig and the rest of MLB?

I agree with the article though the concern I have about trading draft picks is I can see some franchises trading draft picks for cash, then pocketing the cash.

Does anybody have a theory about what would happen to the international signing rules, including the crazy July 2 deadline?

By the way, I hope College start using either wood bats or some sort of non-aluminum bad.

This will help scouts tons

Turning the amateur talent pool into a free market system would allow these kids to be compensated more according to their talents, but it removes one of the advantages that smaller market teams have. I can't imagine MLB would want to give up the only advantage that smaller market teams have in this way, you would be making the game completely free and a game of resource allocation, which sounds alright until you realize that every team is generally smart enough to use the capital it has available to good effect, leaving us with a system where those with significantly more money reap the rewards at the expense of the less fortunate teams. While its fair, I would contend that it certainly doesn't make for a more entertaining product and thus would probably be bad for baseball on the whole.

The small teams have to have some even playing field or advantage somewhere or they become very uninteresting very quickly unless they get lucky on some small signings.

The main issue I see here is why anyone would bring this up in the first place. The MLBPA wouldn't want this because it drives the total pool of money available for current members down, and MLB wouldn't want this because it hurts competitive balance. If the draft changes at all during the bargaining agreement I'll be shocked.

I agree with most of the proposals in the original article minus the elimination of soft slotting. Soft slots are a brilliant tactic for subtly driving down bonuses at the margin and there is no reason for MLB to abandon them. Basically, through soft slotting, MLB gets first say and gets to suggest how much draft positions are worth. If they do this well, they should be setting those values at just below where they think an unslotted draft would value those picks. If a player wants $600,000 but is drafted at a $550,000 slot, it's pretty likely that they will rapidly accept their slot offer rather than negotiating and holding out for a small marginal gain. Obviously, this has no impact if a player's perception of their value and their slot are radically different. But, a good system of soft slotting allows MLB to set the starting point for negotiating, which is a valuable ability.

I am fully on board with the fears of hard slotting driving talent away from the game and would be pretty frustrated with ownership if they make such a short-sighted move.