The 2011 June Amateur Draft, A Last Hurrah

This year’s Rule 4 Amateur Draft will be held on June 6-8. College and high school players are feeling its heat in the final weeks of their season. But the paydays awaiting them will make it worth the sweat a little longer. This year’s well-publicized affair will be the last in the 46-year history of the draft to be governed by the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). Likely changes will pump big money into the pockets of 2011 draftees.

What will the 2012 draft look like after the two sides hammer out new rules for the game? And more important, just how good will this one be? Baseball America says this years draft will be as good as the 2005 draft when 26 of the first 30 players chosen made it to the major leagues–names that include current stars such as Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Justin Upton.

Answers about the depth of quality talent in this draft will take time to unfold. However, speculating on what appears to be a record number of high end players has huge implications for franchises that live and die by the infusion of new talent–the ones whose payrolls are annually well south of $100 million.  The surging Tampa Bay Rays will have an amazing 10 picks among the first 60 selections in the draft.  As Branch Rickey–the great dean of building championship organizations–knew, there is no substitute for quantity.  Great talents need to be gathered in quantity because the failure rate is so high.  Tampa will add the kind of quantity to their already top tier organization that would bring a smile to the “Mahatma’s” fierce countenance.

In the negotiations that will lead to a new CBA, Bud Selig’s team–the Commissioners Office–will be pushing for what they have been unable to weedle and cajole: hard and fast slotting of the Rule 4 draft.  Selig has pushed baseball’s ownership to adhere to annual projections for what each “slot” in the draft is worth. Each year the Commissioners Office has sent to teams a comprehensive listing of suggested values for each pick in the draft. Owners that curry favor with the Commissioner or otherwise believed in his wisdom followed the “slotting” recommendations as closely as possible. Yet as teams have realized the import of signing amateur talent, more and more they have come to ignore them completely.

Teams like the Yankees and Tigers have paid them no heed from the beginning and made a mockery of the system. The result was that players like Rick Porcello–who should have been a top selection in the 2007 draft–fell through the first round unchosen because of “signability” concerns. Porcello wanted a bonus commensurate with his value–one well over “slot.” He was taken 27th overall by the Detroit Tigers because none of the teams drafting in front of the Tigers wanted to waste a pick if they could not get him to sign a contract. The Tigers turned the logic of the draft on its head by signing Porcello to a $3.6 million bonus–the fourth highest in 2007–after taking him near the end of the first round.

In 2006 the Tigers were the American League champions. The amateur draft has always been one of the key mechanisms for maintaining competitive balance in baseball.  The worst draft first. But Porcello is exhibit A in the case for how that system has been subverted by the Yankees and other teams. Championship teams continued to garner the top talent because they were willing to pay top price and ignored the Commissioner’s slotting demands.

Next year–2012–will be different. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom. Bud Selig wants to remake the amateur draft completely as his final mark on the game, one that takes a giant leap for competitive balance and will be his last hurrah before retiring. Supposedly the demands from management will be for hard slotting that cannot be ignored by teams like the Tigers and Yankees. A cap will be set for each pick. More importantly, there is a push to make the draft comprehensive across the board, encompassing international talent as well as American amateurs. Latin and Asian players could be required to enter the draft in June as well.

To organize the international signings and coordinate them as part of the June draft strikes me as overly ambitious, but it might get done. What seems more certain–in the uncertain world of baseball–is that there will be hard slotting requirements that limit bonus money to levels far below the near $10 million level to which they have climbed. And there will be a signing deadline that occurs much earlier in the summer.

For the last two seasons the signing deadline has been in mid-August.  Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and the rest of the Scott Boras talent waited until the stroke of midnight as the deadline approached before finalizing their first professional payday. Now the deadline is likely to be moved up by at least a month. As a result, the Harpers and Strasburgs will report to minor league camp before the season is over and will get just that much more training time after signing.

These looming changes for 2012 will have huge impacts on this year’s draft. High school players like Porcello were given large bonuses to lure them away from college commitments. Now they will be unable to negotiate beyond a set amount. Smaller bonuses will mean they are more likely to attend college. And maybe that is a good thing for all concerned.

One certainty is that slotting suggestions from the Commissioner’s office for this last draft–to held in slightly more than five weeks–will be completely ignored by almost everyone–except maybe Jerry Reinsdorf. Teams like San Diego and Toronto that have five picks in the top sixty selections, will not chance having any of them walk away unsigned. Not only is the level of talent likely to be less in 2012, but if teams fail to sign a player this summer they may not be compensated in next year’s draft. Currently if a team fails to sign a top pick they receive a bonus pick in the next draft. San Diego failed to sign Karsten Whitson last year with the ninth pick and has a top pick this year as a result. The 2012 draft may not include that provision.

So all bets are on spending as much as necessary to bring in a record catch this summer. The gluttony will be ugly to watch as record signing bonuses are registered on that last night before the clock strikes 12 times.

Washington has three picks at the top of the draft, going sixth, 23rd, and 34th before picking again at number 61. They gained two of those picks by letting Adam Dunn walk.  When the White Sox signed him they gave up their 23rd pick and Washington gained the 34th as well. Tampa Bay’s entire 2010 bullpen signed elsewhere and it is those free agents that netted them their numerous picks. Teams like Tampa and Washington will be putting as much money as possible into this draft.

So where do you find out who is going where and when. Baseball America is the best industry source. This week, Jim Callis, Executive Editor of Baseball America will provide an early look at the draft and other organizational issues during the Seamheads Podcast Network’s “Outta the Parkway” show.  The show will air this Friday at 7 pm eastern time and it’s gonna be a good one.