International Draft to come soon?

[nate82]

MLB and the MLBPA are looking to have a deal done by June for an international draft.

 

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/03/mlb-mlbpa-talking-worldwide-draft.html

 

This may start to even the playing field a little bit on international players depending on how they decide to implement this.

[splitterpfj]

The devil is in the details, but I hope they get this worked out, it's long overdue.

[TheCrew07]

I hoped with the last agreement they would get something done, an international draft won't come soon enough for me.

 

Maybe that will be the impetus to get the Brewers more involved in Latin America, lucking their way into an Aoki isn't going to happen very often.

[jjkoestler]

What is the downside to an international draft?

[sveumrules]

The main upside from the owner's point of view is that it will allow for greater control over the bonuses, which many of them feel have been getting out of control for some time.

[RobertR]

The downside is that every player is not readily available for scouting, medical evaluation, etc. What do you do with the Cubans? Is it really reasonable to throw the Asian players and Latin players in the same pool? Etc.

[TooLiveBrew]

The other main downside could be for the players themselves (as was alluded to by svuemrules)

[homer]

The downside is that every player is not readily available for scouting, medical evaluation, etc. What do you do with the Cubans? Is it really reasonable to throw the Asian players and Latin players in the same pool? Etc.

 

 

Not 100% apples to apples but the NBA makes it work with a global pool (Euro and South American mostly but still)

[RobertR]

Oh, I don't doubt it could work or that it's not a worthwhile idea, but I'm expecting that whatever form it takes, it's not going to go as smoothly as the domestic draft. I'm expecting that there will be a bunch of issues the first several years.

 

Considering there are only 2 rounds to the NBA draft, I don't even think they're comparable. Still, it will undoubtedly even the playing field a little bit, but having boots on the ground and connections is still going to give big money teams an advantage.

[Patrick425]

I hope the next thing the talk about is allowing teams to trade draft picks.

[JackNicholson1974]

In theory this is great, but with so many kids playing in alleys or fields in the Domincan Republic, Venezuela, or some other island, it seems like a logistic nightmare.

[Invader3K]

Well, it's probably going to come down to which teams have the best scouting departments, which seems like how it should be.

 

I'm in the camp that says this is long overdue.

[homer]

I think as long as there's an age minimum, say 17 or 18, then the good players in places like the Dominican will be well known to pretty much everyone.

[monty57]

Well, it's probably going to come down to which teams have the best scouting departments, which seems like how it should be.

 

I'm in the camp that says this is long overdue.

 

I agree. If you make a system in which everyone has an equal shot, and some people make bad selections because they didn't do as much homework, then I'm okay with that system. I'm less okay with a system in which everyone knows the player's good, but only the ones with a built-in economic advantage can sign him.

 

It will be interesting to see how it works in Japan (where players generally come to the U.S. when they're around 30 after a career in the Japanese League) vs Latin America, where players are signed when they're in their mid-teens.

[igor67]

MLB tends to behave gentlemanly towards other businesses, but I wonder if having the International draft framework in place they might just decide to drop their existing agreements with Japanese baseball and just draft whoever right off the bat?

[splitterpfj]

Buster Olney says MLB is offereing concessions to the players to get a Worldwide Draft, including such things as an increase in the minimum salary, and less service time before arbitration.

[EdgarDiazRocks]

The rules for negotiating with Mexican and Korean players is already crazy. How do you get around that? What becomes of the Latin American Academies?

 

So many questions.

 

It's a good idea in theory....

[TooLiveBrew]

Buster Olney says MLB is offereing concessions to the players to get a Worldwide Draft, including such things as an increase in the minimum salary, and less service time before arbitration.

Take that, small markets!

[monty57]

Buster Olney says MLB is offereing concessions to the players to get a Worldwide Draft, including such things as an increase in the minimum salary, and less service time before arbitration.

Take that, small markets!

 

Yeah, this would suck.

 

Pretty much any team with an actual budget (read: any team not in a mega-market) would immediately be pushed over their budget. For example, let's assume this goes into effect next season and league minimum is put at, say $1MM. The Brewers have seven guys (Weeks, Braun, Gallardo, Ramirez, Gomez, Lucroy, Gorzelanny) under contract for $62.55MM and one (Aoki) with an option for I believe $1.5-2MM. Everyone else would cost more. League minimum guys would now be $1MM and all arby eligible guys would be "further along" in arby, with the baseline (league minimum) raised. Axford would probably get $10MM next year.

 

I would have to guess that this would push the Brewers over $100MM, a figure at which they lost money last year. I have a hard time believing the owners are going to agree to tear up the current CBA when it would mean a good share of them would lose money. I'm not talking about making less profit, I'm talking operating at a loss.

 

Teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and Dodgers would be giddy with this concept, but I can't imagine it'd go through... maybe if the minimum is only raised $10,000 or something, but not anything of significance.

[igor67]

I think you'd be better off keeping the 3 years to Arby and letting them be free agents after 5 years. Teams do seem like they have gotten better at not over paying those guys in between average and replacement level once they get into arby. The higher minimum is a little bit of a squeeze on smaller markets, but there are a lot of guys who toil for a pretty brief major league stay and I'm OK with there being a little more pie for them rather than adding more zeroes for guys already signing for 100's of millions.

[James Zumstein]

I hope MLB doesn't give up too much as far as arby terms go. I would much rather see an increase in the slot recommendations for the newly drafted players. I think you could do that in a way that still would end up costing teams less than signing players as free agents, but would still increase the average signing bonus of the majority of the players that are getting drafted. That way the teams can still alot a certain percentage of their overall operating costs to scouting, without having to alter the costs of all of their other departments.

[endaround]

Adding another year of arby does very little since teams still have the ability to just release players. If it works haow 4 year arby works now, the cost is really small. And baseball is rolling in money. (of course they are trying to still kill off pensions).

 

The way for this to really work is for MLB to take over the academies and then have teams draft 18 year olds there. Otherwise the system will be a mess. But that would cost a small amount of money so it likely won't happen.

[1992casey]

The downside is that every player is not readily available for scouting, medical evaluation, etc. What do you do with the Cubans? Is it really reasonable to throw the Asian players and Latin players in the same pool? Etc.

The owners and players agreed to an international draft about a decade ago, but it was never implemented. There must have been a significant downside that stopped it.

 

It's possible that the downside could have been cost in that teams would have to commit to doing some scouting that they wouldn't have been doing previously.