A few items of note on Friday night as Derek Lowe's bid for the Majors' second no-hitter of the week falls by the wayside …
- Rangers prospect Leonys Martin can opt out of his five-year contract and choose to go through the arbitration process if he has enough service time to qualify for arbitration before the contract expires, MLBTR has learned. Martin, 23, is a Cuban defector whose deal with Texas became official on Tuesday.
- Angels reliever Jason Bulger, who was designated for assignment on April 27, cleared waivers and accepted an assignment to Triple-A Salt Lake, tweets Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times.
- Diamondbacks right-hander Daniel Hudson was part of the ill-fated trade between the Padres and White Sox in May 2009 that was vetoed by Jake Peavy, according to Dan Hayes of the North County Times (via Twitter). Peavy later accepted a trade to the South Siders at that season's deadline, but that package did not include Hudson. Instead, Clayton Richard, Aaron Poreda, Dexter Carter and Adam Russell went to the Friars. Hudson was later dealt to Arizona at the 2010 trade deadline in exchange for Edwin Jackson.
- The current collective bargaining agreement is set to expire at season's end, and hard-slotting for draft picks could be implemented in the new CBA, writes Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. Hard-slotting would affix a set price to each draft pick and preclude drafted prep players from using the threat of going to college as bargaining leverage. One scouting director told Mayo he expects to see more players sign this year since it could be their last chance to negotiate a hefty signing bonus.
Hard slotting is dumb for baseball. It takes soooo sooo long for top prospects to make an impact in the major leagues what’s the point in guaranteeing them so much money. I don’t want to see the nonsense that goes on in football that no one wants the top picks cause they don’t want to pay top pick money. That’s stupid.
Hard slotting puts a cap on what a draftee can earn. If the slotting follows what Selig normally suggests then, if anything, it will lessen then money handed out and give some leverage back to the teams.
Yup. Only problem will be highschoolers will likely opt to College because they may not be able to get that big bonus.
I think they should keep it the way it is or put a limit on how much teams can go overslot from the recommended slot. Maybe somewhere between 3-5 million is the most overslot you can go. So the most 1st overall pick can get is the recommended slot + 3-5 million overslot.
Meh, the argument has it’s pros and cons both ways. The thing is though, teams lose out on having their prospect(s) get any MiLB action because of the long drawn-out process of negotiating for 2 full months. This will eradicate that.
Also, this will piss off Scott Boras for losing leverage in those negotiations. Whatever screws him over makes me very, very happy.
If it pisses Scott Boras of im for it.
I think the cons outweigh the pros. Teams will be losing out on a lot of highschoolers, teams won’t even bother drafting them high if they can’t sign them and it will completely change the outlook of the draft.
I suggested the overslot limit so that can prevent Boras from asking 16+ like he did with Strasburg.
One thing I would like to see is trading picks. I think that would be pretty awesome. I don’t know if I would want it in trades for players but it would be nice to trade up or down in the draft.
Why not just move the draft into the winter altogether? Have it on February 1st, and that still gives the GM 2 months to sign draftees before the season starts. It also doesn’t interfere with the signing of free agents much, since most of that goes down in December/January.
Baseball must be the only North American pro sport that holds it’s draft in the middle of the season.
It depends if the signing bonus is affixed into the hard slotting, unless thier is a limit on what a team can offer it doesnt eliminate the competitive advantage large revenue teams have when picks “fall” because of thier contractual/bonus demands.
I hope the new CBA allows teams to trade draft picks.
The only argument against it is the argument that high schoolers could refuse to be picked by any team except team x, a ploy that trading picks could facilitate. However, it is clear that the CBA does need a major overhaul in terms of the draft (should include the world, trades, overslot rules, etc.)
I agree that it needs to be redone. ONe thing that is been talked about is taking out free agent compensation. I am one that disagrees with that, I personally really like the compensation process we have right now. Keep it they way it is but add in pick trading in some sort of way and it could add another great dynamic to the game.
This year’s deep draft would be a great time to trade draft picks.
A team with a top ten choice could trade with a team that has number of picks in the first round and supplemental round. That top 10 team could end up with 3 or 4 of the top 50 overall picks and immediately restock their farm system while the other team gets the big name player…though we all can look back our own team’s “great” draft choices that were busts.
And a very nice by-product of trading draft choices would be the additional fan interest on draft day and before.
A yearly arbitration style hearing between the players association and the owners to set the slotting value would be a interesting way to insure draftee’s get appropiate deals. Any CBA deal would last 5-10 years and would have to include raise’s based on inflation, It’s also hard to see the MLBPA not demanding year to year changes based on ever increasing revenue. At this point the only thing that Owners have going for them is that most collegiate and high school players lack the noteriety of other major sports (NFL,NBA) and cant use that durring negotiations.
Good thing for the Diamondbacks that Peavy declined. Towers wound up with his man anyway.
From Jayson Stark’s column of May 6th regarding Leonys Martin:
• Here’s a review, from one international scouting director, of the Rangers’ new $15.5 million Cuban signee, Leonys Martin:”Great body. Looks like an NFL wide receiver. Plus arm. Very good outfielder. My question is whether he’s going to hit. He had problems hitting balls [inside] against average teams and average pitching. And when he saw good pitching, with increased velocity on the inner half, he had real trouble. So off what I’ve seen, he’s just a fourth or fifth outfielder. And that’s a lot of money if that’s all he is.”