The latest proposal advanced by MLB during a collective bargaining session with the MLB Players Association is a complete overhaul of its amateur entry system.
The most noteworthy items include:
• Banning high school players from the domestic draft and requiring anyone eligible to be at least two years removed from high school. An international draft would also be created. The minimum age for international entry would move from 16 to 18. The minimum age for the domestic draft would be 20 on Sept. 1.
• College players would be eligible after their sophomore seasons instead of after their junior years.
• The ability to trade draft picks — with some restrictions — would also be implemented, and competitive balance picks would be eliminated.
• A reduction of the domestic draft from 20 rounds to 12 would occur, as would the reduction of draft lottery teams.
ESPN.com’s Kiley McDaniel and Jeff Passan crafted an extensive post outlining many more details and nuances about the ripple effect on MLB, international youth development, college baseball and the minor leagues.
But perhaps most germane to the players’ union is that MLB wants to hard-slot bonuses for draft choices and cap them at $200 million. That’s approximately what international players currently get, but it is half of the current allotment for domestic draft picks. The league also wants to cap any undrafted player from either pool at $10,000.
The union issued a stern rebuke of the proposal in a formal statement, as it did in response to MLB’s initial plan to tie a salary cap to the upcoming CBA.
“MLB made another set of proposals that are flat out bad for baseball, ones that would cripple the next generation of players and damage the future of our game,” the statement read.
Of course, the union is going to push back against anything MLB wants at this stage of the conversation. But if the league is asking for a cap, this is an early signal to current MLB players that more of the available funds will go to them rather than to future prospects.
As outlined in that ESPN.com piece, “A $200 million-a-year haircut is staggering, even if the players were expecting something like it. As part of MLB’s 50/50 revenue-split salary cap proposal at the outset of negotiations, it promised major league players would make more money than they are making this year. Considering that figure plus the $600 million in amateur bonuses last year adds up to more than 50%, MLB needed to trim somewhere. And it chose amateur spending.”
It’s also akin to what the NFL did when it introduced a slot system and limits on draft-choice spending in 2011.
So that’s why the MLBPA doesn’t like the idea. Because it’s an element of what makes a cap system work, and the union prefers that you never consider such a thing possible.
Even though there is plenty of evidence in place to the contrary for anyone to see if they’ve ever watched pro football, hockey or basketball.
Unfortunately, from a league perspective, if there was ever hope the MLBPA would curb its saber-rattling over draft changes in the name of embracing a larger carve-out for current players, that’s not happening.
The players just want more, more, more, and if anything in the CBA suggests “less” of anything, they’ll reject it.
Especially at this early stage of the game.
I have no doubt MLB genuinely wants these changes. Passan and McDaniel went into great detail as to why the league would advance such proposals, independent of them being a negotiating tactic.
But I also think the league wants a cap more.
Cynically, I also wonder if these draft proposals are just chips the league is putting on the table, with the sole intent of sacrificing them as preemptive concessions to achieve a cap.
Or, more likely, making them known as key components that they can boast when the union holds fast against the cap, and has to give in to the league’s demands on draft changes as a concession in the opposite direction, to eventually get a deal done.
To be clear, that’s not enough.
MLB needs a cap/floor system with significant teeth and restrictions, or it’s never going to achieve the competitive balance the fans desire — and deserve.