Reading Goldstein’s, and others’, tweets, this all seems very bad for us and the “competitive balance” it strives for.

Donald Fehr must be devastated by this labor “peace”.

a massive reduction in draft pick compensation for free agents

On one hand, this seems very bad for small-market teams. On the other hand it seems ridiculous that one year of a Kevin Millwood-type veteran can net a team a high(ish) draft pick.

I’m not sure that I understand all the hatred for this CBA. In particular, I don’t understand why the draft limits will hurt the small-market teams.

My understanding is that each team will have a total limit of how much they can spend on the draft (except for bonuses < $100,000 after the 10th round). The team with the first pick will have the highest bonus pool ($11.5M) and the team with the last pick will have the lowest bonus pool ($4.5M). And if you go more than 5% over the pool, you lose draft picks.

So let’s say the Tribe gets a bonus pool of $8.5M. The Yankees will only have a bonus pool of, say, $5M. How does this benefit the Yankees? They won’t spend more than $5.25M on draft picks, whereas the Tribe can still spend $8.5M. Yes, maybe the Indians won’t give a $2M bonus to that guy in the 3rd round…But no other team will either. So I guess it’s possible that less players will sign, and maybe this prevents the bad teams from getting markedly better in a given year. But eventually that player who wouldn’t get the $2M bonus will be a college senior. Either he’ll have to take a lower bonus, or he won’t play in the majors. It’s not like the Yankees/Red Sox/Phillies are going to swoop in and grab all these high priced guys later in the draft. They don’t want to lose their picks any more than the small-market teams do. So they won’t have the extra money to spend.

By my logic, the only result would be that less players would sign and enter major league baseball, and there’s the general complaint from national scouts that people will choose other sports over major league baseball. But there will still be plenty of people who play baseball. So what if some of the two-sport people don’t choose baseball? Yes, maybe we’ll miss out on “great” players, like Matt Kemp. But all that would mean is that the average ability of a major league baseball player would shift. Sure, maybe it would be “bad” if the quality of major leaguers was such that Orlando Cabrera was deemed the MVP. But any dip in quality would go equally. All that means is that the definition of greatness would shift to fit the current mold of a major leaguer, rather than an earlier mold. But you know what? That’s what happens in baseball anyway. The major leaguer of today is completely different than the major leaguer of 50 years ago.

Sorry if this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’m a little tired, but I’m mostly just confused. So if someone out there could explain to me why this hurts the little guy, and why my logic is wrong, I would appreciate it.

Wow…lots of changes to the draft and amateur player acquisition. John Pertotto has a free piece up at BP recapping some of the changes.

Players selected after the 10th round do not count against a club’s signing bonus pool if they receive bonuses up to $100,000. Any amounts paid in excess of $100,000 will count against the pool.

For the first time, clubs with the lowest revenues and in the smallest markets will have an opportunity to obtain additional draft picks through a lottery.

Picks awarded in the Competitive Balance Lottery may be assigned by a club, subject to certain restrictions.

Jim Callis, at BA, also has a free piece up

It is surprisingly hard to find freely available information on total draft signing bonuses by team…but I’m not sure this is such a negative to small market teams as many of the commentators seems to indicate. First, the cap actually seems quite high. As best as I could find, here is what the Indians have spent on the draft (approximately) each of the past four seasons:

2008: $7.0M
2009 $4.7M
2010: $9.4M
2011: $8.2M

Without knowing exactly where we stand in relation to the cap, it is possible over the last four years (which includes three drafts characterized as “aggressive”) we would never have exceeded the cap. The system does seem to advantage teams who have a lot of resources but play like crap anyway (looking at you, Mets), given that the size of the available pool depends on your record. But it would seem to prevent wealthier organizations from swooping in and nabbing guys who slip because of high draft bonus demands (a la Porcello in Detroit). The distribution between top 10 round picks and later round picks seems to put all the pressure on those first 10 rounds. I would suspect you’ll see teams switch to a more aggressive approach with those first ten picks, rather than strategies that attempt to balance risk/reward. Smaller teams might lose in all of this, but i doubt the loss will be so systematic as to disadvantage teams year in and year out. If anything, I think it prevents wealthy teams from intelligently exploiting the draft to their own advantage. The only obvious loser seems to be amateur players, who get completely screwed in the new CBA.