Gammons: Teams Reluctant to Part With Prospects

Hughes has been untouchable for years, and only now he’s untouchable in the actual games and showing why it’s a smart move to hang onto him.

Hallady would be nice, but the Yanks don’t win the WS this year or next, then its a waste and they may not be able to win after that either with no future players in the pipeline.

my understanding was that Selig was not allowing over slot bonuses to be finalized until the deadline so that the players picked under them won’t want twice as much, which of course they would.

 If this strategy worked in keeping down overall bonuses by 10%, this will be better for the small market teams in the long run. If they go up 10% every year, those 1 million bonuses will be 2.5-3 million bonuses in 10 years. The best thing about baseball compared to other sports is that the team gets basically the same high pick the next year if they do not sign, so its not the worst thing in the world for the team if someone does not sign.

I don’t think he should allow Strasburg to sign for more than twice as much as the last biggest bonus. We don’t want this turning out to be football where the worst teams want to trade out of the early first round because they can’t afford the give a guy who has never played a down, be the highest player on the team good or bad.

I think the biggest problem is that the whole draft process needs to bargained for better my MLB to even out the problems with small market/big market teams.

1) There should be some sort of International free agent draft, separate from the other draft. If Strasburg goes to Japan or a Cuban goes to Mexico first, and a team drafted him in the international draft, they team retains the rights to that player for at least 3 years at which time the player is now eligible to become drafted again. These picks in the International draft can be traded/sold, so at the very least the small market team can get prospects/$, rather than nothing, out of having top picks and drafting the best possible players.

2). In addition, the revenue sharing plan should include small amounts from the top 5 revenue teams, regardless of the total amount, to transfer to the bottom 10 revenue (not payroll) teams. I’m thinking 3% which would mean about 20 million going from the (Yankee’s +4) or 2 million apiece to help those 10 teams compete in the draft. You could even go sliding scale, so that the Yankee’s pitched in more and the worst 3 teams got more.
 

when Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harrang were one of the best 1 two punches in any rotation