Camden Depot: Fixing the Draft

[Stotle]

In the short term no one will notice if the international player pool goes down by 5%, or 10% or even 25%. But the owners will definitely notice right now if they don't have to "excessively" spend on international development, instead throwing in some much more modest wad of bills into a MLB-mandated fund and pocketing the difference. Long term maybe it stabilizes, maybe the kids keep coming, maybe the rooting out of corrupt and shady practices helps. Or maybe the financial incentives start siphoning off talent into other sports. Soccer has much deeper pockets than baseball.

Look at how teams are spending on international kids right now -- how much is being thrown away in taxes. Teams will spend on international kids. The Puerto Rico issue is a lot more complicated than "teams weren't incentivized to spend so they stopped developing kids."

Make one first year player draft covering all unsigned talent. Up the pool allotments. Talent will be more evenly distributed. Kids won't be screwed over by trainers, teams, etc. to the extent they are now. If they want to play soccer, great. I'd rather them play another sport than be jerked around, chewed up, and spit out by teams and trainers that are not in any way held accountable for their actions.

[Stotle]

No one here is advocating eliminating the "profits" in player development in various regions. IMO, it strains credibility to believe the excessive spending of the large market teams is a prerequisite to regional talent development.

Right. Teams would be forced to make decisions based on availability -- draft slots -- which places a premium on player evaluation and process. More scouting jobs, incentive to have your organization assisting in MLB-sponsored academies, incentive for your MLB club to host a dominican prospect team stateside for an amateur tournament (like the Mets and Blue Jays do with US travel teams, and the Angels do with the scout league amateur squads, now).

Maybe it strengthens the Domincan infrastructure so that the age 16 to age 17/18 are spent at an MLB academy runs by MLB club employees, including Domincan former MLB players, with focus on improving game skills (as opposed to how hard can you throw and what kind of BP can you take) and building up the social/linguistic skill set to help these kids more when they come to the US.

Point is, there will still be plenty of incentive for teams to be involved. There will be some pressure on MLB to transition to a new system, but a draft is the best way to go.

[DrungoHazewood]

Look at how teams are spending on international kids right now -- how much is being thrown away in taxes. Teams will spend on international kids. The Puerto Rico issue is a lot more complicated than "teams weren't incentivized to spend so they stopped developing kids."

Make one first year player draft covering all unsigned talent. Up the pool allotments. Talent will be more evenly distributed. Kids won't be screwed over by trainers, teams, etc. to the extent they are now. If they want to play soccer, great. I'd rather them play another sport than be jerked around, chewed up, and spit out by teams and trainers that are not in any way held accountable for their actions.

I don't disagree. Using kids from developing countries as throw-away labor isn't the best way to approach things (to say the least). But I'm (at least slightly) concerned that many owners would rather go cheap on international development and that'll slow/reverse the ever-increasing quality of play in MLB. Not a huge deal, but baseball faces some demographic and marketing challenges going forward and a (admittedly theoretically) shrinking player pool won't help. And for full disclosure, I'm not convinced a draft is really the best way to go about domestic amateur player allocation, either. If you cap how much you can spend why do you need a draft?

[Stotle]

I don't disagree. Using kids from developing countries as throw-away labor isn't the best way to approach things (to say the least). But I'm (at least slightly) concerned that many owners would rather go cheap on international development and that'll slow/reverse the ever-increasing quality of play in MLB. Not a huge deal, but baseball faces some demographic and marketing challenges going forward and a (admittedly theoretically) shrinking player pool won't help. And for full disclosure, I'm not convinced a draft is really the best way to go about domestic amateur player allocation, either. If you cap how much you can spend why do you need a draft?

I have been long intending to really dig into this but just have not had time. Off the cuff issues with the free agent approach (which Keith Law loves to push and I agree has its merits):

1. May force certain teams to pay a premium on talent below elite tier (e.g. the typical third rounder would rather get $500,000 from the Red Sox than the Rays/Brewers)

2. Because success rates are exponentially higher at the top of the draft, might be difficult to tier pool allotments enough to favor the "bad" organizations (this is a less convincing argument to me, as I think the promise of an extra million dollars is enough to encourage the high end kids to sign with the "bad" org -- BUT, if we are looking to get more money into the pockets of these kids, and will as a result be increasing all of the pool sizes, you start to move towards a system where we are really just increasing the money all teams have to pay to their amateur acquisitions, and that will in practice really only result in a lot more money going to the kids at the top)

Personally, I'm leaning towards preferring a five round structured domestic draft; three round structured international draft; and then an open signing period after that. Open signings are capped at a certain amount (maybe $500K). There's some creative stuff you could build in but I haven't fleshed it out enough to put in on paper and defend.