MetfanBren
Mets & U2...
USA
Posts: 189
(11/16/02 11:57 am)
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International Draft A No-Go, For now
This was one of the few things that made sense to me, during the whole strike soap opera. Turns out that they spent all their time on issues more important to them, and forgot about this. You'd think this would be a no brainer though, even for the players. Guess not.
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espn.go.com/mlb/columns/s...61393.html
Friday, November 15
Worldwide draft remains a mystery
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By Alan Schwarz
Special to ESPN.com
It was obscured by the Darren Baker Rule machinations and the Great Billy Beane Watch, but the most significant topic discussed at this year's General Manager's Meetings could have been the worldwide draft. Significance should not be confused with imminence, though.
Once again, the worldwide draft -- something that has been discussed in baseball circles with increasing frequency and fervor for more than a decade -- will have to wait at least another year and a half to be implemented, if indeed it is ever implemented at all; this sucker is baseball's answer to Universal Health Care. And even if it does see the light of day, for every executive who believes a worldwide draft is necessary to improve competitive balance, another feels just as passionately that it will hurt. You'd get more consensus if you asked if it's less filling or tastes great.
Three months ago, the worldwide draft was close to a done deal. The owners and players signed off on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement on Aug. 30 with an understanding on a new draft, covering players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and most other countries, that could be in place as early as June 2003. (Details, however many, were to be determined by a joint committee.) Other significant changes to the draft included a new compensation system -- no extra selections for losing free agents, but much stronger compensation for teams that don't sign a high pick -- that could have saved clubs millions in bonus payments.
Problem was, these agreements were reached in such a rush -- quite literally as the owners' Rob Manfred and the union's Mike Weiner, after all night discussions, were walking down the corridor on their way to announcing the new CBA -- that each side ultimately had a different interpretation of what they had agreed to. So they agreed to send the whole thing to a committee of management and union representatives, with no idea what they might ever agree to again.
"I don't have any expectation of how this will work out," Weiner said. Manfred characterized any chance that the changes would be resurrected by the committee as possible, but not likely.
Some executives, most notably MLB operations chief Sandy Alderson, have pressed for a worldwide draft because of the large-revenue teams' advantage in landing premium talent. The Yankees, Dodgers and Braves annually snag the most promising prospects, though many, such as Jackson Melian, Omar Moreno Jr. and Glenn Williams, have been flops. A few, like Alfonso Soriano (Yankees) and Francisco Rodriguez (Angels), have become stars.
Other club personnel counter that placing international players under one draft umbrella will hurt the small-revenue clubs who scout well, sign many players cheaply and wind up with some excellent ones. (The Expos' Vladimir Guerrero is one prime example.) Still more detractors say that questions about prospects' eligibility and even names would make the matter hopelessly unwieldy.
Other considerations on a new draft include allowing the trading of picks (something most executives favor), the number of rounds (probably between 30-40) and whether team academies in the Dominican and Venezuela would be run collectively by Major League Baseball. A system must be devised through which all clubs are notified which specific players may be selected, to avoid the hiding of players by clubs wishing to sign them as free agents afterward. And while MLB's existing protocol arrangements with Japan and other Asian countries would probably supercede a new draft -- for instance, Alderson said current Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui would still be a free agent under a worldwide draft -- some question how feasible it would remain to treat some countries differently from others.
Executives at the GM meetings were generally split on both the concept and details of a worldwide draft. "It's time that all 30 clubs can have the same information and access to players -- why should the Yankees always have the pick of the litter?" one AL GM said. But one NL executive added, "It's gonna be a mess. There's no way to police which players are eligible, because records there are so sketchy."
Some said they preferred how the international market mimics old-time scouting, when scouts would scour the backwoods for players and eat what they caught. Even one small-market GM said he preferred being shut out from the Sorianos and Rodriguezes if it means having unbridled access to everyone else. "We can get the job without it," he said. "There's only a handful of players you're not involved in."
The joint management-union committee, which should be selected sometime in the next several weeks, will probably consist of about eight or 10 members. Alderson said he will serve on it along with fellow MLB executive Frank Coonelly, two general managers and perhaps a scouting director. The union side will include at least Weiner and second-in-command Gene Orza, and perhaps special assistant Tony Bernazard for his knowledge of international matters.
One of the more revolutionary Players Association ideas -- and unpopular ones among many scouting personnel -- is the supplanting of individually-run club talent academies by an MLB network, in part to streamline age uniformity and also to save money. Detractors of that proposal don't want to extinguish club self-interest in running academies, fearing MLB red tape could hamper talent development. That's a fair point: MLB has repeatedly announced intent to build a goodwill baseball academy in urban Los Angeles, but it has been delayed for three years and might never be built.
Most executives do expect some form of worldwide draft by 2004 or 2005, assuming the management-union committee can come to similar agreements as were made in the CBA talks. Alderson said the matter would have to be hammered out by summer 2003 to be put in place by 2004.
"We've come to an understanding on a lot of it," Alderson said. "I don't think there are a lot of major issues involved."
Then again, that's what they thought three months ago.
Alan Schwarz is the Senior Writer of Baseball America magazine and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone." ~~Bart Giamatti
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