Interesting article from Grantland... My one change would be that players would be required to go to the highest bidder. This should also be immediately implemented for the NFL, which would be fantastic.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9348666/the-mlb-draft-work-quite-possibly-immoral-replace-it
4 comments:
It would be very, very, VERY interesting, that's for sure. I'm afraid I side with Rany on the total free market aspect, though. For some of the reasons he listed, as well as others (tax rates, for one thing), I think it's only fair for players to be able to decide who to sign with, as opposed to being forced to go to the highest bidder. His point about college hitters being worried about Seattle is a good one. Wouldn't you rather take less money if you thought the lower offer would lead to more earnings in the future?
I'd love to see MLB adopt something like this. As constructed, the draft is really about keeping costs down for teams that are already making money hand over fist, whether they are a well run team or not.
I guess my problem with that is that you cannot really parse out the variables that are within a organization's control vs the variables that are outside their control. Everything else being equal, players should sign with the team that invests the most risk. Otherwise, San Diego gets a sunshine bonus and Toronto gets a cold weather tax. Or, maybe when all is said and done, variables outside the organizations control are not all that significant. I guess you could look at free agent signings to figure that out, but a free agent is so much different than a draftee I'm not sure it would be a useful comparison.
Hmm, that is true. It would be unfortunate and unfair for the Yankees, for example, to get a bonus for Aura and Mystique. That said, I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes if you scale the money pool to reverse standings.
This sounds like a great idea to me. I think I sympathize with letting the players pick any team, and having any "aura" advantages be compensated for by properly scaling the teams' caps.
One thing I'm wondering about though. Does a higher draft spending cap actually help a last-place team if that team has a small budget to begin with? I guess it would as long as all the caps are small fractions of each teams overall budget. But the caps can't be TOO small as long as draftees keep demanding large bonuses.
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