Eliminate the Draft

Jonathan Bernhardt is worried about tanking:

This year, the White Sox, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Diego, and probably Minnesota — along with Tampa Bay, which continues along with a bottom-three payroll year-in and year-out — are all planning to some large degree not to contend. Atlanta is at least signing pitchers they can get innings out of and flip at the deadline; Philadelphia’s rotation is actually half-decent, and they might be good next year. But every team which views its goal at the major league level this season as ‘get a high draft position’ rather than ‘win baseball games’ makes the next team to embrace that same goal less likely to succeed.

And that’s without reckoning with the moral component. It’s worth remembering that we’re essentially soberly nodding here and saying that it’s alright for teams to intentionally throw entire seasons. That’s what trading Manny Machado and blowing up the Orioles’ core on the heels of an 89-win season is; it’s throwing the season. If it’s done mid-July as part of a full-on firesale instead of during the winter, then it’s throwing the next season, and likely the season after that. It is not trying your hardest to win baseball games on an administrative level.

Players who engaged in that sort of behavior on the field would be blacklisted, and rightfully so; it’s insulting to the fans who pay money to watch the game, and it’s fundamentally anti-competitive behavior. Yet more and more, this is the expected behavior of front offices around the league.

It is amazing to me how many problems the draft creates. At this point, no draft and universal free agency would produce a much better system, once that would be tougher to game. Teams would not be able to hoard players, since players blocked in a system would go somewhere else when their contract was up. Plenty of trades would take place. There would be no incentive to tank. Front offices would need to work harder, but instead of trying to find ways to game the draft, they could simply be doing player evaluation. Free movement of players is good, and both sides should embrace the concept.

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