Thought Experiment of the Day: Draft after minor league apprenticeship

[DrungoHazewood]

Think about the title of this thread for a minute. What would be the impacts of drafting after each player has already spent some amount of time in the minors, say at least a year? Would this be an advantage or a disadvantage to a small or mid-market team? Would costs go up or down? Would it benefit or disadvantage the minors?

Ground rules:

- Most of the minors become independent entities. Let's say everything below AAA is no longer directly affiliated with MLB. MLB gets to keep a AAA affiliate as a taxi squad.

- MLB teams cannot directly sign any amateurs. I considered a bonus baby rule, but that just screws stuff up, and you end up with 18-year-olds with no business being in the majors staying on someone's roster all year doing nothing and getting 12 ABs.

- Players get into this independent setup by some combination of free agency and minor league drafting, not all that relevant. All amateur players have to go through this, no matter where they come from. 25-year-old Japanese and Cubans and Koreans and the like count as professionals, so MLB teams can directly sign them. But everyone else has to be signed by a minor league team first.

- MLB has a draft each year, but it's a draft of eligible minor leaguers who've played at least a year. Maybe there's a set fee paid to each minor league team based on how good the player is (i.e. draft position). Maybe there's a negotiation. I could go either way.

Discuss.

I'll throw in my two cents if the back-and-forth gets going.