| By Jason A. Churchill |  | By 11-29-2011 |
As it turns out, we're still learning about the new CBA as it pertains to the draft, and MLB.com shed some more light on the way clubs can handle their picks and pool of money in which they can spend.
In addition to values assigned to picks -- which clubs CAN go over without penalty as long as their team pool is not exceeded -- clubs that fail to sign a pick lose the value of that pick as part of their pool.
For example, let's say with a $10 million pool, for the sake of argument, the Seattle Mariners draft, oh, I don't know, Mark Appel from Stanford at No. 3, and they do not sign him. Their pool now becomes $4.8 million. They cannot use that $5.2 million assigned value for the No. 3 pick on other picks later in the draft.
What they can do, as far as anyone knows at this stage, is sign the player to a deal less than the assigned value and use the "savings" toward other picks.
So what we will see by a lot of clubs is above-value signings in certain spots and what used to be called "slot or below-slot selections on pre-draft agreements in other areas of the draft to "save" pool money.
It's another poor rule, because now the player has all the leverage and signability becomes an even bigger factor than it already is and there will be a lot more of the illegal pre-draft deals pounded out.
The other side of that, however, is if clubs were allowed to punt the pick and use the money elsewhere, that's exactly what would happen, and it'd probably happen far too often. I do like the idea, however, that the club would have some leverage, too. "Hey, if you don't sign, we can use the money to sign the rest of our picks."
It's worth reiterating here, though, that bonuses after round 10 are limited to $100,000 or that number, too, counts toward the bonus pool limits.
another-draft-rule
Comments
The following 9 comment(s) for this article are shown below:
| 1. By: jgstecker on 11-29-2011 07:33:54 Jason- Do you know if any rule is in place that prevents teams from going back to the old Scott Boras loophole From the late 90s? Could a team like the Yankees draft someone like Josh Bell in the second round and simply decline to offer him a contract at all. The Yankees would lose the pool money of course, but under the old rules Bell would become a free agent and then New York (or anyone) could bid as much as they wanted for him. |
| 2. By: Jason A. Churchill on 11-29-2011 13:11:38 No, that rule was eliminated years ago. A contract has to be offered. And with the new rules, he has to be SIGNED or the club loses the value of that pick from their overall pool. If the club does not even tender an offer, not only will they lose the value of that selection toward their overall aggregate pool of available monies, they do not get a pick the following year as a result of not signing the player. |
| 3. By: Tackeret on 11-29-2011 14:08:31 Jason- Slightly off topic here, but something related to the revised CBA and the introduction of more interleague play...Why would any team want to invest capital and resourses towards a DH? Given the expansion of interleague play isn't the position value greatly deflated in value? If the Mariners were to invest $20+ Mill/year into Fielder and Smoak rebounds into the player many believe he can be, one of them will be a bench bat 60+ games a year (if I am not mistaken). Am I mistaken in the way I am looking at things? As always, your insight is greatly appriciated and I love you site! |
| 4. By: Jason A. Churchill on 11-29-2011 14:19:29 No, Tackeret. The only way Smoak or Fielder could be a bench bat for 60+ games in a year is if they played 120 interleague games -- 60 at home, 60 away. Obviously that isn't going to be the case. There may half that number, at the very most, but it looks like it won't even be that many. There has to be an IL series going on all season, but it doesn't add an inordinate number of IL games to the schedule. |
| 5. By: DMac33 on 11-29-2011 15:29:34 Maybe I'm a bit naive, but I fail to see how the new draft rules are so bad. First, baseball is the only sport in the American landscape where location as much as anything dictates your future success (the NBA is a distant second). By that I mean that revenue/payroll is completely tied in many respects to the size of the market, the local TV contracts able to be generated, etc. In other professional leagues in the US, "small market" teams have the ability to compete by being smarter than the "big market" teams through the draft, etc. since payroll is completely tied to a capped system. The way MLB operates is much like the English Premier League, etc. where you often see the same handful of teams competing for top honors each and every year. Second, in most sports, the draft is designed as an organized way in which teams can improve their teams. In most sports, the manner in which players are drafted are often tied to a rookie cap that allows the teams to make the best choice possible for them based not on their ability to sign the player, but instead on the best fit for their organization. Historically, I don't think you can say that about MLB as teams have passed on talents based on a myriad of factors and richer teams have "wasted" later round picks on players with far greater talent than the rounds that they are drafted in where big money is thrown around as an enticement to sign said players. So in my mind, I don't see the problem by closing what I consider to be loopholes in the current system. I don't find it healthy for MLB to have franchises that don't have the resources to compete based purely on the location/revenue stream that they have. If MLB decides that they don't want a salary cap in place with a more even distribution of revenues (which may not be realistic given the vast difference in media contracts in MLB versus that of the other professional sports), then at minimum it is vitally necessary to level the playing field when it comes to acquiring initial talent via not only the draft but also for those that are currently not subject to the draft (which is another argument). I just don't see how having the same 10-12 teams sitting at the table competing for the championship each and every year is in the best interest of baseball when you consider that there are 30 teams in the league. |
| 6. By: Jason A. Churchill on 11-29-2011 17:57:01 Yeah, because the Browns, Bengals, Lions, Redskins, Rams, Niners, Bills, Dolphins, Carolina and Jacksonville have competed in the NFL the last five years. Texas, LAA, Det, Min, CWS, Cle, TB, Bos, NYY have all made the postseason in the AL the past three years. That's nine of the 14 teams. ATL, Phi, STL, Mil, Cincy, SF, Col, LAD and CHIC have made the postseason in the past four years. That's 9 of 16 teams. It's not anywhere near what you say, Dmac33. That's 18 of the 30 teams in the league that not only had winning records and challenged for the postseason, but got in. six other orgs had 85 or more wins and finished within six games of the postseason MORE than once during the past four years. And the new draft rules suck because it doesn't HELP the small market clubs, which is what it was originally designed to do. That's at least the fifth time I have written that here. The Royals and Pirates have a good shot to start winning soon because of the draft. Hosmer, Moustakas, Gordon, et al. The new rules trims the advantages of drafting high. Does it completely ruin the draft? Of course not, but it WILL lengthen the rebuilding process for struggling organizations, there is no doubt about that. The new restrictions hurts the game -- for example, it could very well push a few two-sport starts toward football. It's not going to be the very top prospects, usually, because $4-7 million for the top 5 is still big money. But some of the later first round or second round types? Absolutely, they'll head to school. How is that good for MLB? All it does is help the owners save money. |
| 7. By: DMac33 on 11-29-2011 18:45:24 There are a few issues in the NFL that stand out (namely the importance of the QB position). Most of the NFL teams that you've mentioned have had significant QB issues during that time period - however to be fair, the Bengals and Carolina have won division titles during that time period and San Francisco is clearly going to win one this season. The biggest problem with the "diversity" that you illustrate above is that of those 18 teams that you mention, I really only see 7-10 of those clubs being legit title contenders on a consistent basis going forward. That isn't good for the game in my opinion. 85 wins means you get a few more bounces go your way over the course of the season. 90 wins means that you are competent but normally a step below the cut. It's the teams that win 95+ that to me are the legit title contenders (most years). I don't see how people can say that teams that compete with $200MM payrolls against teams at $60MM in payrolls (and I'm not saying per se that you are advocating this) is operating on the same playing field. I get what you are saying regarding the two-sport prospects. And in all honesty, that's an issue that baseball needs to figure out a way around better than they have. The problem that I see with the current draft system is that there are a few teams that can shoot the moon on paying for picks (particularly those of players that say that they aren't going to sign and go to college instead). So I applaud a system that tries to eliminate that and tries to make it where teams can choose players based on merit. I get what you are saying regarding that the rules potentially don't go all the way to fixing the system ... and why would anybody expect MLB to get things right (they normally don't). But I will go as far as saying that a system that allows teams to draft players based on merit instead of financial considerations is a step in the right direction. I will also go as far as saying that I definitely wouldn't be against an orderly process for distributing talent outside of the US/Canada via the traditional draft system. |
| 8. By: Saltydawg05 on 11-29-2011 22:53:13 Will teams have different draft pool totals? For example the M's draft 3rd and slot is $5.2 mill (not sure but amount doesn't matter) if Yankees draft 28 and slot is only $1.2 mill (again not sure of actual number). Does that mean the Mariners draft pool is $4 mill more? (assuming all other rounds are the same money for slot) |
| 9. By: Scruggers on 11-30-2011 02:00:16 I see Jason's point about the new CBA being bad for small market teams. My initial thoughts were much like DMac33's, but I was missing the point that even though teams with early selections are dropping a bunch of money on their picks and will adjust their picks based on money, it's still MUCH cheaper to bring in that talent through the draft than free agency. Steven Strasberg signed for $15 million over 4 years. That's ridiculously cheap for that talent, and that's the greatest major-league ready talent to come out of the draft in years. What I don't understand is why small-market teams would allow the double-whammy of draft compensation changes and the watering down of the wild card (which I actually like for the sake of regular season competition... too many World Series winning wild card teams for my taste - though I'd rather see a 7-game Division Series). What did they get in return? |
Haven't created a Prospect Insider account yet? Sign up!
|
|
 |
|
|
| Copyright 2010 Prospect Insider | Created by AQ Central Prospect Insider is optimized for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome |