With all the hand-wringing about the increasingly outrageous bonuses amateur players are getting these days -- and none will be more outrageous than what Stephen Strasburg hauls in -- I can't figure out why baseball still doesn't have a NBA-style bonus structure.I mean, I know why. It's because the players' union has not allowed the owners to implement one in collective bargaining. One of these days the major league players in the union are going to realize: "Hey, all that money going to amateur kids could be going to us!"
And that would be good for the big-league teams and for the current big-league players.
Ed Price: Abolish the Draft Altogether
Here's how it works now. The commissioner's office has some "guidelines" for what the bonus ought to be for players picked in the different spots in the draft. But teams can simply ignore those guidelines and sign players for whatever they want.
The NBA, by contrast, has a first-year player salary system. You are drafted in X spot and you are essentially signed for $Y. No negotiation. No signing bonus.
In baseball, we get all sorts of ugliness.
Like teams passing on the best available player because they want too much money.
Or players holding out throughout the whole summer looking for a few extra bucks, thus slowing their progress toward the majors.
Or players filing grievances because their contract offers came a few minutes past the deadline.
Or players skipping their senior year of high school to circumvent the draft and become free agents.
The point of the draft is to create a system in which all the teams have a shot at all the players, fair and square, with the worst teams getting the first shot at the best players, thus helping competitive balance. But that's not how it works now. The players are not drafted in order of their ability. Signability is involved.
Major league players ought to go to their union and have the system fixed.
First of all, anyone who has made it to the majors has done a lot of hard work to get there. You have to last three years in the majors to be eligible for salary arbitration, and probably a fourth year before you can even make $1 million. Almost all 30 first-round draft picks are going to get at least $1 million before playing their first professional game.
Second, if you are a big-leaguer on a team in a small market, and you want to win, you want your team to be able to get the best amateur players it can. Small-market teams are already handicapped when it comes to keeping veteran players or signing free agents. The only chance for those teams to win is if they can get the best amateurs on draft day.
Finally, they ought to allow big league teams to trade draft picks. It would simply create more options. A team with a high pick that's in contention right now might choose to swap its draft pick for a player (or players) who could help immediately.
I'm not saying these changes would make a dramatic difference. We're only talking about a handful of players each year whose bonuses are so high that they skew the draft. In some cases, teams get an unexpected benefit, like the Twins ending up with affordable Joe Mauer instead of Mark Prior in 2001.
The only people who'd be hurt are the few prospects who would no longer be able to those mega-bonuses. But even they might benefit from getting out to play earlier and still having that carrot in front of them.
The really big money would be in the majors.
Where it should be.
