Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Draft works like a dream for Washington

Monday and Tuesday last week showed the MLB amateur player draft in all its glory.  The system is not perfect, and maybe a perfect system that meets everyone’s needs is not possible, but you’ll hear no complaints from Washington.

A franchise that has bordered on the hopeless for most of its brief existence now has more hope than most.

On Monday, the Nationals selected 17 year old Bryce Harper, as expected, as the number one overall pick in the 2010 draft.  They still have to agree a contract with his agent Scott Boras, but Washington are unlikely to let him slip from their grasp.  Harper, a Wayne Rooney-esque man-child, is the type of talent that scouts dream of discovering.  His superhuman home-run-hitting feats have already attained mythical status and only injuries seem capable of halting his ascendency to star status once he hits the Majors in three years or so.

Any killjoy wanting to dampen the excitement surrounding Harper (‘wait ‘till he has played in the Majors for a few years’ etc) was soon firmly put in their party-pooping place by the Major League debut of the Nationals’ number one pick from the 2009 draft.  Stephen Strasburg unquestionably lived up to the hype on Tuesday night against the Pirates, which is scary when you consider just how much hype there was.

This is what the draft is designed to do, to take a team that is in the doldrums and give their fans a reason to be excited once again.   

The Washington Nationals were the worst team in baseball in 2008 and 2009, so they got first dibs in the 2009 and 2010 draft.  They could pick whichever player they desired and unsurprisingly they picked the outstanding talent both times.  For an organization such as the Nationals, outstanding talents would be far out of reach in any other circumstances.  The financial and competitive might of the Yankees, Red Sox and their ilk would leave Washington trailing in the dust.  However with the draft, the standard tactic of ‘make your best offer and we’ll double it’ doesn’t work.  The big boys cannot easily muscle their way into the negotiations and blow the smaller teams out of the water. 

And that’s got to be a good thing, hasn’t it?

Not if you’re the Yankees, obviously.  While it’s not particularly sporting, you can’t deny the logic that if the Yankees generate the most revenue, they should be free to spend it however they like on making their team the best it can be.  That approach is certainly much healthier than a middling team spending money they don’t have (‘financial doping’ as Michel Platini calls it in football) or a bunch of greedy owners charging fans the earth and pocketing the money while putting a second-rate team on the field.  If the Yankees can fit Strasburg or Harper into their budget (or even both), why should they be stopped from competing for them?

It’s a logical argument, but I’m not about to take the side of the big man against the little guy.  In every other case, they can use their financial muscle to their advantage.  They can cover up injuries or mistakes by trading for players during a season without fretting too much about the money they are adding to the payroll.  They can keep hold of their best players, rather than watch them depart as free agents.  They can snap up stars when they reach free agency.  Having one area of player recruitment where that financial advantage doesn’t help them so much is no great injustice.

The players selected in the draft might not see it that way, though.  They get no say in who picks them and have two options once they are chosen: sign a deal with that team or wait another year for the next draft to come along.  It would be wrong to state that a potential draftee has no bargaining power as they can float a large price tag prior to the draft to scare off some of the lesser teams and high school talents can threaten to go to college if their demands are not met.  However, they have relatively little leverage when it comes to contract negotiations and that was highlighted by the deals signed by Strasburg and the other major pitching prospect available over the offseason, Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman. 

Both are exciting talents, but Chapman is not as polished as Strasburg and also has the added unknown of adapting to a vastly different culture and way of life to what he has been used to.  In a normal market, both would go for a princely sum but Strasburg would get the more lucrative contract due to the greater certainty that he will become a Major League star.  Strasburg’s agent could only negotiate with the Nationals and he signed for $15.1m (a record deal for a drafted amateur), Chapman’s agent was free to negotiate with all 30 MLB teams, as international talents are not subject to the draft, and secured a contract worth $30.25m.

That doesn’t seem quite right, but $15.1m isn’t to be sneezed at for someone who had never played a professional game at the time he signed.  Teams do have to invest significant money in a prospect, with no guarantee that they will make it as a Major Leaguer (due to injuries, off-the-field problems or simply not developing as predicted), so it’s not as though players simply fall into their lap without any commitment on their part.

The one major problem with the draft from a ‘sporting fairness’ point of view is that essentially it involves rewarding failure.  Should the Nationals benefit so richly from fielding the worst team in the Majors for two years in a row?  Their 59-102 record in 2008 paved the way for signing Strasburg.  The Seattle Mariners were the second-worst team with a 61-101 record and I bet every M’s fan would have gladly sat through two extra losses if the consolation prize was one of the best pitching prospects in recent memory. 

So from restricting the free economy, to hurting a player’s bargaining power and rewarding failure, the amateur draft can be faulted from many different perspectives.  The current system may well change in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement for that very reason, with suggestions of an international draft and allowing draft picks to be traded already being thrown into the mix. 

However, whether due to its strengths, weaknesses or a combination of the two, the baseball fever spreading throughout Washington shows that the last two drafts have worked perfectly in the case of the Nationals.

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This week’s early MLB game schedule

There are seven early games this working week.  The highlights are a Tim Lincecum start on Wednesday and an excellent looking match-up on Thursday between Colorado and Minnesota in which Ubaldo Jimenez and Francisco Liriano are set to meet.  Jimenez’s outstanding season so far is well known, but don’t overlook the fact that Liriano has been somewhere close to his 2006 pre-Tommy John surgery best in his last two outings.  All times are in BST.

Monday 14 June

No early games

Tuesday 15 June

No early games

Wednesday 16 June

20.45. Baltimore at San Francisco (Jeremy Guthrie – Tim Lincecum)
23.35. Toronto at San Diego (Ricky Romero – Kevin Correia)

Thursday 17 June

17.35. LA Dodgers at Cincinnati (Chad Billingsley – Bronson Arroyo)
18.05. Washington at Detroit (Luis Atilano – Jeremy Bonderman)
18.10. Colorado at Minnesota (Ubaldo Jimenez – Francisco Liriano)
19.20. Oakland at Chicago Cubs (Dallas Braden – Randy Wells)

Friday 18 June

19.20. LA Angels at Chicago Cubs (Scott Kazmir – Carlos Silva)

All the above games can be followed via various resources on MLB.com (Gameday, At Bat with Gameday Audio and MLB.tv), while ESPN America’s MLB schedule can be found here. A complete schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com.