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Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009

Baseball draft needs an overhaul

It’s easy to say Major League Baseball’s amateur draft is broken. What’s not easy, however, is to come up with a solution that will fix it — or at least produce a system everyone can agree to follow.

Monday night, the Washington Nationals gave Stephen Strasburg, a college pitcher many are calling the best ever to be drafted, a $15.1 million deal, which included a $7.5 million bonus. The bonus far exceeded the slot ‘recommended’ by the commissioner’s office, which was only $4 million.

And right now, there’s really not anything anyone can do about it.

The slot is what the MLB office believes teams should offer players. Some teams stay at slot, while most do not. Of the 29 first-round picks signed before Monday’s deadline, 17 were signed for more than the slot.

Officially, when teams offer a player more than the slot recommendation, it must ask the MLB office for permission. Usually, permission is granted. But when teams ignore that process and sign players for way more than the slot regardless of what the office recommends, there is no punishment.

And therein lies a huge problem. If MLB allows teams to get away with signing at more than the slot, teams are going to do it if there are no repercussions. So if there’s a fifth-round pick a team really, really likes, but the slot is only $150,000, and that player demands $400,000, the team could agree to that amount and not be punished.

So why have the slotting system if that is going to happen? Well, it’s a good question, particularly in light of the huge deals some players drafted in the fifth through 10th rounds received. And it’s a question that might be answered when baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement comes up for discussion in 2011.

Baseball is the only major sport that does not have a draft/rookie salary scale. The NBA changed its course after the Glenn Robinsons of the world got $60 million deals out of college. And while the NFL pays more to its top picks, there are still limits on what a team can give a player who is drafted.

Part of the reason those sports changed their rules was the unhappiness of the veteran players, who grew tired of seeing unproven kids getting huge contracts. And that’s now happening in baseball, too. Strasburg has great potential, but veteran pitchers certainly can’t enjoy seeing a kid get that much money before he proves one thing in a major league uniform.

Braves president John Schuerholz is leading a group to study how to fix the draft. There is little doubt these excessive bonuses could lead to a true slotting system, one in which teams must follow bonus guidelines when signing players.

But that’s not enough. Baseball is the only sport in which draft picks cannot be traded. This needs to end. What if a team has a high pick but needs to get more picks to pack its farm system — quantity over quality if you will? A trade would allow that. Or what if a team is trying to make a trade but has a weak farm system? Trading future draft picks would provide more flexibility.

Even if a true slotting system helps keep teams in check, there must be some regulation on international prospects. If every team is on par for domestic talent, teams could still overspend for international talent. So somehow, some way, they’ve got to include the international players in a new, revamped draft, so the top players in that market can also be spread around to the weaker teams.

It would have almost helped the cause to make these changes if the Nationals had not signed Strasburg. If the worst team in the game had not reaped the reward of getting the top pick, what would be the point of it getting the top pick to begin with? That’s why the teams with the worst record gets the top pick the next year — to hopefully make the team more competitive in the future.

Teams still have to make correct decisions to build a solid farm system, but it’s just not fair with every team not on an even playing field. The big market teams will continue giving in to the agents, at least until there are strict limitations on what players can receive as bonuses.

If the NBA and NFL can do it, certainly Bud Selig can figure out baseball needs this, too. But then again, this is Selig we’re talking about.

Talk Braves Baseball with Bill from 3-6 p.m. today on The Bill Shanks Show on Fox Sports 1670 AM and online at www.foxsports1670.com