MLB CBA: What Are The Best Ways Around The Draft Rules?

You have to give credit to the Pirates for spending as much as they have over the past three years and hope alot of these guys come through. I think there are some good things in this mess for the Bucs. If we aren’t going to spend as much on the draft we can spend a bit more on free agents, players who are already proven. We can also spend more on international players. Maybe we can get an extra quality pick through the lottery thing. Also teams like the RedSox can’t trade for a guy for a few months at the end of the season and get the comp pick for losing him to free agency the following year.

is that this CBA does nothing to significantly level the economic playing field.

The theory behind changing the draft rules makes sense until one realizes that MLB is an inherently unfair landscape. I would really like to somebody involve in the negotiations explain in what way they think this CBA betters baseball. I bet they don’t have an explanation because they genuinely do not care… they just wanted to keep the cash cow the way it is.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Baseball is broken on and off the field. When it starts to go downhill in popularily it is going to be like falling off a cliff.

Good day.

Let’s just hold a Pirate Telethon every year. How many people are in or near the Pittsburgh area? We raise 60 million every winter and buy the best free agents. Problem solved.

make it happen!

have you seen the potential actual figures for the draft from Callis.

Total slot pool for top 10 rds in ’11 was $133 mil. @dknobler: MLB says bonus pool for ’12 #mlbdraft will be $4.5 mil to $11.5 mil per tm…

I read that as 11.5 M for the Astros and 4.5 M for the Yankees.

Assuming that is true and allotment is linear, the Pirates will get around 9.5 million next year just for their top 10 picks, and they presumably should get a bigger allotment for extra picks they get.

In trying to spin this CBA as positive all he could come up with beyond labor peace was that the luxury tax will be the same the next two years. There was also a little “hey we’ll get an extra pick here and there!” I almost felt bad for him having to try to defend it after spending the last 4 years talking about how the team would be built into a consistent winner by spending in the draft.

Baseball America

International signings will have a similar pool, with similar penalties. Going over by 0-5 percent kicks in the 75 percent tax; 5-10 percent includes the same tax and a loss of the right to sign more than one player for a bonus of more than $500,000. Go over by 10-15 percent and a team incurs the 100 percent tax and can’t sign any player for more than $500,000. Going over by more than 15 percent draws the 100 percent tax and prohibition to sign any player for more than $250,000.

Hadn’t seen this elsewhere.

Jonah Keri talks about the new CBA and how it affects smaller market teams, using the Pirates as an example:

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/10571/mlbs-new-cba-is-no-help-to-small-market-clubs

teams will figure out ways to sign players differently to keep spending down? Like have the deal you sign them for out of the draft just be a signing bonus amount instead of the whole amount with a clause that they have to sign the player to a real contract by a later date, or do signing bonus’ and yearly salary amounts count different towards that cap number anyways? I think this is more on the players or player agents i should say. It will keep players from asking for like 15 million like Strasburg did, or will it?Idk, could he then just say I’m not signing and be a free agent eventually then open to the highest bidder, the agents would love that, no draft, just free agents. What a mess baseball is, such dopes running it.

changing his tune a bit..

http://twitter.com/#!/jimcallisBA/status/139125816310239232

#mlbdraft spending cap may not be as harsh as initially believed: ht.ly/7CjAE. Won’t know for sure until we get actual $ numbers.

Ugh, so who knows. I’ll remain optimistic.

dirty, but hopefully better math. Using the slots from 2010 (couldn’t find 2011), and creating a curve out of that and applying it from a 4.5 to 11.5 million scale, the Pirates will be allotted ~7.7 million dollars next year at the #8 spot.

It seems we are still unsure about the number though.

This could actually make the draft more of a ‘sure thing’ since more hs players would go to college and grow and develop before teams pick them. Because this would reduce the guess work in the draft, the need to take chances on say, a robbie grossman, etc., would not be necessary. Early draft picks would have more incentive to sign even if they were hs players. The changes take away a lot of leverage from the draft picks.

The slots for the Nos. 1-4 picks in the draft are going to be $7.2M, $6.2M, $5.2M and $4.2M. Teams are not, however, required to spend that

and

The team picking first, for example, can take a player No. 1 overall for $4M and spread the remaining $3.2M out over other picks.

I’m reading this as 1-1 gives the Astros 7.2 million dollars to their allotment, and 2-1 will give them more (around 1 million?), and then 3-1 gives them more, etc, etc.

1-4 will give 4.2 million, and so on. 1-8 probably won’t give that much.

from Passan

As of now, the total money in the draft pool is around $200 million, and the number in the international pool is around $85 million.

That’s an average of 6.6 million per team. I’m not sure how the curve would work, but presumably at 8 we would get around there or a little higher.

we are all aware of the tax on spending over slot on the draft and in IFA now. Here are the consequences of spending over the luxury tax “Teams that surpass the luxury tax threshold of $178MM will be taxed 42% in 2012 and 50% in 2013.”
Also Yoenis Cespedes and Yu Darvish and other similar players from those two countries are not affected by the international free agency limitations. There you go Yankees.

Bud Selig be trolling.

here’s the loophole folks, and yes I stole it off twitter.

Never sign a protected pick, ever.

Next year, pick the BPA at #8 and lowball him. Do the same in the 2nd and 3rd round. Lowball your guys. Pick guys who are expensive to sign, so if they do surprisingly sign it’s a big boost value-wise.

Then, 4-10, the unprotected pick, take tons of high upside guys that will cost more, and spend 10 rounds worth of money on 7 picks.

In 2013, you will have 13 picks at minimum in the first 10 rounds. That will increase your cap. Take the now unprotected picks and go the typical cheap college route with them. “Pass” on protected 1st through 3rd round picks, and spent the rest of the now bigger allotment on rounds 4-10.

Now, hypothetically you are gonna miss out on an elite player. If you have the chance to get a guy you can’t pass up on, take him and sign him. Or, presumably a guy like Josh Bell (or Daniel Norris) will last to the 4th round. If guys like that aren’t, just use the second round pick which will provide alot less allotment.

The only potential flaw I see is if comp picks for unsigned picks get significantly less money allotted to them. So the 9th pick we have in 2013 only allots 1 million instead of 2.5 million (for example) that the 9th pick would have had in 2013 if it was simply a normal pick.

the record, if this is true from Passan

Starting in 2016, teams from the top 15 markets no longer will receive revenue sharing. Today, would affect Washington, Toronto and Houston.

It could be pretty nice for us. I’m unsure how much teams actually receive from revenue sharing right now, but if teams like the Cubs and maybe one or two more NL central teams lose that extra revenue, it will have to help balance things a bit.

Jayson Stark, (here) the low and high numbers look to be official

So the Astros, who draft first next June, will have an $11.5 million pool to work with, while the teams that pick last in each round get only $4.5 million in their pool.

Using the slots from 2010 to create a curve (4 million for the top pick, and .95 for the bottom pick) and matching that curve up over a curve from 4.5 to 11.5, the Pirates will get approximately 7.75 million as their allotment in the 8th draft slot. That does not include any extra money for any extra picks the Pirates may obtain.

New MLB labor deal runs through ’16, affects Pirates

That’s the PG’s headline today about the new deal. Oh really, it affects the Pirates?

An optimist take here:

First of all, the Pirates have taken their minor league system from the bottom half among MLB teams to the top half (or better) by greatly overspending in the last few drafts. This means they aren’t trying to dig themselves out of hole, and they aren’t about to graduate a bunch of prospect to the majors. So now the Pirates need to find a way to stay ahead of other teams to continue to have a top farm system.

Teams like the Braves are constanly churning out great prospects because they scout and develop talent well, not because they overspend or have top of the draft picks. So the Pirates need to focus funds to luring (overpaying) top scouting and development people into this organization.

Next, I would do an analysis of the chances of success for each draft position. There will likely be a dropoff somewhere after round 1 or 2. Pick best player available up to that dropoff level, lets say it is after round 3. Then use the next 3 picks on high risk players that will likely demand somewhere around the combined 4-6 picks with the idea that you are going to sign one of them. Then carry on with the draft until another calculated dropoff occures and do the same thing.

One other way to stay on top is to always spend up to your allotment. There will be teams that don’t do this, so you will be outdrafting those teams that don’t as liong as you have top scouting and development.

And do the obvious and go after IFA’s every season up to the spending limit.