MLBPA Draft Lottery Proposal is an Overcomplicated Mess
The proposal makes sense for players, but will not have the effect that players think it does.
The ongoing lockout between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association is, at the end of the day, about one thing: money.
But sometimes those conversations about money seep into the onfield product. We already saw the results of one of those with the ludicrous adoption of the universal DH rule. But now, MLBPA wants to change the composition of the draft. Significantly.
First off, you can tell right away that this proposal is overly complicated. The NHL draft lottery is only for the first two picks in the draft with the only qualification that the team missed the playoffs. The NBA Draft Lottery is only for the first three picks in the draft, again with the only qualification that the team missed the playoffs. In both cases, the rest of the non-playoff teams pick in the reverse order of their record.
The MLBPA proposal puts all of those ideas and puts them into a blender, with all of the various permutations about who can pick where. It also puts the “competitive balance” picks into the equation even more by giving bonus picks to playoff teams among the 10-lowest revenues in the league a bonus first-round pick, plus any team under .500 among the 10-smallest markets with the 10-lowest revenues will receive a second-round pick.
All of this of course is madness. And here’s why.
As far as the bonus picks go, it’s going to allow more teams to stockpile talent. If a small-market, low-revenue team like the Rays for example continue to make the playoffs, they are going to get two extra draft picks in the first two rounds, giving them potentially four of the first eighty picks.
Know which team does not have a talent deficit? The Rays.
But the lottery is the real problem here because it assumes that every team that fails to make the playoffs is tanking. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Let me present you with the 2018 Baltimore Orioles.
The magic of the playoff teams from 2012, 2014, and 2016 was long gone by the time we got to 2018. We just didn’t know it yet. The Orioles were attempting to compete. Many fans and analysts, myself included, though the team had a shot at one last run at the playoffs.
That of course did not happen as the bottom fell out and the team finished 47-115. So why did that happen? Partially it was bad luck; the team lost ten games more than their Pythagorean record suggests they should have. But realistically, the team collapsed because Chris Davis hit .161, Joey Rickard was the primary right fielder and nobody on the team could pitch worth a damn.
Now since that time, the Orioles have indeed tanked. But that first team did not.
Luckily, the Orioles were lucky enough to pick #1 in the 2019 draft and took a generational talent in catcher Adley Rutschman. But under the union’s proposal, that may not have happened. The Orioles could have theoretically not drafted until #8 in that draft. That #8 pick was third-baseman Josh Jung. He might be a fine ballplayer, but he is not a generational talent like Rutschman.
Had the same thing happened in 2020, the Orioles would have fallen to #10 instead of #8 given the byzantine rules the MLBPA wants to use, the Orioles would not have selected outfielder Heston Kjerstad and instead would have pitcher Reid Detmers.1
Had the same thing happened in 2021, the Orioles would have fallen to #12 instead of drafting fifth. The Orioles would have catcher Harry Ford instead of Colton Cowser, who is rocketing up prospect lists.
Under the MLBPA proposal, here in 2022 with fewer top prospects in their system, the Orioles would be forced to draft #18 overall instead of #1. While we all understand the MLB draft is a crapshoot, the difference between drafting first and drafting eighteenth is enormous.
How is this supposed to help competitive balance? Instead of the Orioles restocking their depleted farm system with top-level talent for several years, they would be forced to take lesser talent. How is that supposed to make the Orioles competitive?
It’s not. But remember, the MLBPA is a union. They don’t have the best interests of baseball at heart here2. The point of all of this is to force teams to spend more money on salaries. In theory, the players want you to believe that by spending more, teams will be better. But as I wrote about in August as it relates to the salary floor, it isn’t always that simple:
Just because you throw a lot of money at a guy does not mean that your team is going to be any good. Nor does it mean that the player getting paid is going to continue to perform at a high caliber level. The league is littered with underperforming players with bad contracts the poster child of which is the Orioles own Chris Davis, a contract so bad that I think O’s fans wanted to throw a parade when he announced his retirement….
…the Orioles are relatively efficient in cost per win this year. Certainly more efficient than the Rangers, who are spending $40 million more for the privilege of being basically just as bad. It also shows how teams that don’t have massive payrolls can be consistently successful. The Tampa Bay Rays (you know, the defending American League Champions) have a payroll nearly $30 million under this proposed salary floor. What good is spending another $30 million going to do? Yes, it would allow them to keep some of the players that they have traded. But part of their success is trading affordable players for better prospects. It is possible that spending more would make the Rays a worse team, not a better one.
The players wrapped the salary floor under the guise of “competitive balance.” But yet their draft proposal wants to sacrifice long-term competitive balance by punishing the teams that need draftable talent the most.
If (and that is a BIG if) a draft, it should only be for the first three picks in the draft and have weighted odds similar to the NHL draft, where the team with the worst record has a 25% chance of selecting overall. Anything more than that unfairly impacts the game in ways that are unnecessary and not beneficial to the continued growth and success of the sport.
Given Kjerstad’s health issues and Detmers already making the bigs, the Orioles might have come out ahead here.
Neither does Rob Manfred, as well all know.