Good for "business" unless your drafted

Just to know how unfair the draft already is, consider that Strasburg, a highly polished Major League ready college pitcher who was considered the greatest starting pitcher to ever come out of college got half the money Chapman, an unfinished, lesser known quantity who is a middle reliever right now and PROJECTS to be more. Luckily there will always be teams like the Yankees and Boston who will try to use their vast financial assets to corner the market on talent even in the draft and will overpay so that astute agents can sometimes manipulate where a player is drafted and even who he ends up with. So I don't think strict slotting will fly. Buster Posey was worth the bonus and more.

What slotting will end is financially well off teams drafting a kid who's adamant he's going to college in the 10th round and offering him 1st or 2nd round money to get him signed.

MLB wants to impose NBA type slotting.
The goal is to control the 44th round pick getting 2nd round money. It is also, and more importantly, to control and pre-designate what every pick in rounds 1-10 will receive.

In addition to the hard slot, MLB is considering reducing the draft to 30 rounds. If inacted it will be business as usual. It will provide the big boys the edge to sign who they want for whatever they want after the draft.

quote:

Originally posted by Three Bagger:
Just to know how unfair the draft already is, consider that Strasburg, a highly polished Major League ready college pitcher who was considered the greatest starting pitcher to ever come out of college got half the money Chapman, an unfinished, lesser known quantity who is a middle reliever right now and PROJECTS to be more. Luckily there will always be teams like the Yankees and Boston who will try to use their vast financial assets to corner the market on talent even in the draft and will overpay so that astute agents can sometimes manipulate where a player is drafted and even who he ends up with. So I don't think strict slotting will fly. Buster Posey was worth the bonus and more.

Didn't the Reds get Chapman? The Yankees and Red Sox are pretty good at "blowing up" the free agent market, but a whole lot of teams join in when in comes to the draft. If it comes to a vote, I can see slotting coming into play. There are more "have nots" then "haves."

quote:

The goal is to control the 44th round pick getting 2nd round money. It is also, and more importantly, to control and pre-designate what every pick in rounds 1-10 will receive.

The goal is to implement price controls and thereby to enhance the bottom lines of MLB teams, at the expense of newly drafted players.

The so-called "antitrust exemption" enjoyed by MLB is not a matter of statute, it is the result of a highly criticized court ruling from several decades ago. Whatever justification the court saw at that time for viewing professional baseball as some sort of bucolic pastime, as opposed to an entertainment business, in modern times no one would take that position without being laughed at.

I do think slotting is coming, effective for the 2012 draft. I also think someone, perhaps a Boras client, will sue to challenge the seeming antitrust violation, and that may well result in the so-called exemption case being overruled by the Supreme Court.

BTW, it should be noted that slotting will impose caps, not specified bonuses. Teams will still pay below-slot money to, e.g., guys whose NCAA eligibility has been exhausted and who have no negotiating leverage as a result, just as they do now.

quote:

Originally posted by RJM:
What slotting will end is financially well off teams drafting a kid who's adamant he's going to college in the 10th round and offering him 1st or 2nd round money to get him signed.

Ironically, by eliminating the "over slot" aspect of the draft it might actually hurt many of the small market (low revenue) teams that currently take advantage of drafting players (with 1st to 3rd round talent) in the later rounds and paying them premium dollars to pass on college. These teams need to develop “home grown’ talent vs. going to the free agent market to fill out their rosters.

It's really ironic that franchises will wreck their financial budgets with poorly thought out ML free agent signings such as Lee-Houston, Zito, Rowand-San Francisco, Rodriguez-Texas, Wells-Toronto or throw away tens of millions like the Yankees on Pavano, the Japanese pitcher Ichigawa, Mondesi, etc., yet worry about saving an extra 5 to 10 million on guys who are going to need the extra money just to survive the pay scale of the minor leagues.