The MLB draft is likely to undergo some changes in the next few years.  After so many over slot signings, it was easy for a lot of us to predict a more rigid slotting system that replaced signing bonus recommendations with enforced maximums.   Sure enough, Commissioner Bud Selig has been quoted by the Washington Post as saying that he’ll pursue such a revision for the next collective bargaining agreement.  No surprise there, although it’s not a foolproof plan.

A stricter slotting system may limit the numbers of high school players that sign with big league clubs.  For many top high school players, the only incentive of signing out of high school is the money.  A lot of these kids have full ride scholarships to great universities, but are convinced to go pro with large, over slot bonuses.  I’m not against kids going to college, and I think it’s great that some kids who otherwise wouldn’t go to college are able to attend because of their athletic skills, but Selig’s goal should be to get as much exciting young talent into professional baseball as possible.  The faster a kid falls into the hands of a professional baseball coach, the faster he can turn his tools into skills.

Rick Porcello was drafted out of high school in 2007 and is in the big leagues at age 20.  Before being lured into the Detroit Tigers organization by a $3.5M bonus, Porcello had signed a letter of intent with the University of North Carolina.  UNC is a great baseball program and he would have received solid instruction there, but Porcello wouldn’t be eligible to be redrafted until the summer of 2010.  Porcello is an exciting young Major League talent that fans enjoy watching right now, but he might not have made his big league debut until 2011 or later had he gone to college.  College would be great for him, but not for baseball.

Also, there are many great baseball talents– especially pitchers– that are ruined in college baseball.  There are some extremely selfish coaches out there who routinely put the program ahead of the player.  Rice University is notorious for overworking their pitchers, and many of them end up breaking down before getting through their prime years.  During this past College Word Series there was a game between Texas and Boston College that went 25 innings, and we saw Texas’ Austin Wood pitch 13 innings (169 pitches) and BC’s Mike Belfiore 9 2/3 (129 pitches).  The hurlers’ performances were epic and heralded as such, as they should be, but they also represented reckless decisions by their respective coaches.  Neither player would ever be subject to such stupidity in pro ball, no matter the circumstances.  Teams would sooner forfeit than risk their pitcher’s health.

A new slotting system poses its own problems, but Selig also mentioned that he’d be pushing for a worldwide draft.

This is troubling.

The concept is simple enough.  Instead of having an international signing period, all of those amateurs from Latin America, the Pacific Rim, Europe and wherever else would join USA and Puerto Rican amateurs in the draft.

That doesn’t sound so bad. Wouldn’t it be more fair?  This would give all teams access to top talent, rather than just the big spenders, right?

First of all, the top international amateur talents don’t consistently go to the large market teams.  Who landed the top talents this year?  Miguel Angel Sano hasn’t signed yet, but the Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins and Baltimore Orioles were the teams most in the running last I heard.  Wagner Mateo went to the St. Louis Cardinals.  Guillermo Pimentel went to the Seattle Mariners.  The New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and other high rollers certainly made their mark in the international market, but by no means did they hog the upper echelon prospects.   You might expect the Yankees or Sawks to outbid the competition, but the largest international bonus awarded to an amateur went to Michael Ynoa when he signed with the Oakland A’s, not the Yankees.

And just because a small market team is given the ability to pick a top talent before a higher payroll team has a chance, it doesn’t mean they’ll pull the trigger.  It would depend on how conservative the new slotting mandates are before knowing how it would change the way teams draft.  As the draft stands now, the best player available isn’t always selected.

After setting aside so much money for #2 overall pick Dustin Ackley, the Mariners passed up some great talents with their #27 and #33 picks because they could get Nick Franklin and Steve Baron for cheaper than they could get James Paxton, Max Stassi, Tanner Scheppers, or whoever else they may have deemed the best player available.   In 2004 the San Diego Padres had the #1 overall pick, and went cheap with Matt Bush instead of taking a more expensive player like Justin Verlander or any of the other very good players that went in that first round.  Bush was an epic failure, but that was the risk the Friars took by saving their money.  If a stiffer slotting system is put in place then maybe this type of thing isn’t as much of a problem, but until we see just where those values are set, there is little reason to think that the big time prospects won’t continue to slip to the teams willing to pay them.

And even if there is a new slotting ceiling, it doesn’t mean teams will max out with every pick.  There will still be cheap teams that will opt to go with cheaper players.

But that’s not the worst thing about going to an international draft.  In a response to ESPN’s Jayson Stark‘s piece about possible changes to the draft process, Craig Calcaterra of the Hardball Times recently reiterated a great point as to why an international draft could be a terrible idea:

As many around here have noted before, there will be way less talent coming out of Latin America if there’s an international draft because there will be no incentive for any team to find talent and set up academies to develop it if the competition is going to turn around and draft them. The imposition of the draft in Puerto Rico has dried up the flow of talent from that island, and it would do the same in the Dominican Republic. And if you think Hugo Chavez is going to allow the Americans to limit the power of his people to make the deals they want to make, you’re crazy.

I still subconsciously think of Puerto Rico as a baseball powerhouse, but was reminded of just how low the level of talent has dropped by the team the island fielded for the World Baseball Classic.  Puerto Rico was added to the draft in 1990 in what was supposed to be the first step in instituting a worldwide draft, but instead has been the only foreign destination added and has seen the level of talent coming from the island plummet.  The talented athletes are still there, but the academies and scouts aren’t as abundant as before.  There have been some great Puerto Rican players produced since then, but no where near the number coming out of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

In a way, it’s a good thing that Puerto Rico ended up as a test case, because if all countries were added to the draft in 1990 there is no telling what Major League Baseball might look like today.

I’m against a worldwide draft, but there are other ways of “fixing” the draft.  As mentioned in Stark’s article and in countless other places, one idea is allowing teams to trade draft picks.  This is common in other sports, but up until amateur bonuses started going through the roof and scouting got better, I’m not sure there was a need for it in baseball.

The Washington Nationals are obviously a rebuilding team in serious need of some good young talent.  Stephen Strasburg is a great pickup by them, but he’s just one player, and an expensive one at that.  Imagine if they were allowed to trade that #1 overall pick.  There may be a team wants Strasburg– a “once in a generation” talent– so badly that they’re willing to give up their first two or three picks for him, plus a couple of useful minor leaguers.  And on the flip side, maybe the Nationals can trade some veteran players that can’t quite command top prospects for extra draft picks, who are lower probability than established minor league prospects but still valuable to a rebuilding team.

There are other ideas out there.  Some would like to do away with the draft completely, and just dump all amateurs into a giant free agent pool.  I’ve read convincing arguments for this type of system before, though I can’t remember what it was that was so compelling and haven’t been able to retrieve the articles.  That’s great writing right there, but it is what it is.

The concern with this kind of system is that the big market teams would hog all the top talent.  And if a guy like Strasburg or Bryce Harper were part of a free agent pool, you can bet that they would go to the highest bidder, which would almost certainly end up being a large market team.  But there are only so many dollars to be spent.  The Yankees and Red Sox and whoever else have limits.  They couldn’t buy up all the top internationals and all the would be first rounders.  They have big league players to pay, after all.  And in some scenarios they’d still be giving money to small market teams via the luxury tax, making it feasible for the teams in need to bid against the big boys.

The draft is supposed to help competitive balance by allowing the worst teams to get the best young players, but that’s not how it’s happening right now.  At least not on a consistent basis.  In that sense, the draft is broken.

If you’re the commissioner, what would you do to make the distribution of amateurs a better process?