The Rangers and compensatory draft picks
July 31, 2008 by Josh Lile
Filed under Major League Baseball, Rangers
The Rangers were completely quiet on the trade deadline this year after being as active as anyone last year. Texas comfortably rests in baseball purgatory: 11 back in the division, but 4 games over .500. They’re on the local radar, not quite on the national radar, and not completely drowned out by Cowboys training camp. That might seem bleak, but its a major improvement from this time last year. Not looking to sell, and with a massive cupboard of prospects, the Rangers were able to tell prospective trade partners “Give us pitching, or give us death”.
Well the Rangers got no pitching at the deadline, but that’s fine. The main surplus still remains at catcher. All 4 guys are young enough that deals could be completed in the offseason, or at the next deadline. I’d be one to argue that the return on Gerald Laird could be higher this coming offseason when teams will be more willing to make deals. Teagarden, Saltalamacchia, and Ramirez will just be a year older. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m disappointed slightly, but I understand why nothing happened for the Rangers. They have one specific need that is always hard to deal for, and always expensive.
Texas didn’t present me with any irritation for the 2nd straight trade deadline, but the rest of the league did. I’m sick and tired of hearing about draft pick compensation. I think the idea of draft pick compensation is a great help to lower market teams. They don’t have to be afraid to lose free agents as badly as they had to in the past. Draft pick compensation gives these teams leverage in trade talks.
Two problems arise though. One problem with draft pick compensation is that teams like Boston and New York can easily exploit it by allowing players they don’t want anymore to leave so they can recoup picks then sign replacements. The rich are just getting richer. The sandwich round in between the first and second rounds is now massive. Wouldnt smaller market teams be better off without those 10-20 extra picks crammed in there for, more or less, the more successful clubs?
The main problem is what we witnessed today. What happens when these GMs overstate the leverage draft pick compensation affords them? The trade market collapses. Middle relievers and fringe to slightly above average closers end up having inflated values that no one wants to pay. There are many examples to choose, but the one that pushed me over the edge was Will Ohman. He isn’t a bad player, but 10 teams were reportedly interested. Why are we waiting for draft picks that will cost 1-1.5 million to sign?
Why does it make more sense to make a deal than hope for compensatory picks? There are several reasons that make the whole system look inefficient. First of all, any prospect is by definition closer to the majors than a late first round pick in a draft that is 11 and a half months away. These prospects also have pro experience which draft picks won’t. This whole process slows down the building time for franchises.
Hoping for draft picks is also a fairly significant roll of the dice for a franchise to take. These teams make several assumptions or hopes regarding the players they keep. For one that assume they have their player slotted correctly. How can they be for sure that a player is a Type A or a Type B? Last year the Rangers threw out that Gagne would be a Type A. Not so. The other issue is if the free agent is signed by a team with a protected pick the value of the picks is even less than before. It’s a literal crapshoot.
There are two ways to eliminate this problem. The first is to reconfigure the compensation system. Make Type A free agents worth an unprotected 1st round pick or a 1st round compensation pick instead of both. Type B free agents then can be worth a 2nd round compensatory pick. Would these teams be willing to gamble on a pick being somewhere in the 15-70 range? Doubtful. The other quick fix is to institute a slotting system in the draft to keep players from dropping due to signability. Rick Porcello, Craig Hansen, Andrew Brackman, and numerous others, wouldn’t land in the laps of the top franchises, or potentially make compensatory picks worth more than they should be.
I usually have bigger Rangers issues on my mind around the trade deadline, but this year that isn’t the case. The league has great parity going right now, but within a few years that is going to end unless the draft pick compensation system is reworked. The rich are getting richer via the draft, and lower teams can’t compete if they think the draft is going to help them in the same ways. Thankfully the Rangers were smarter than that last year, or else 2008 might have caused me to lose even more of my hair.
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August 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Josh, speaking from the perspective of a big market team, these small market teams no longer can complain about not being able to compete for top talent in the draft. Typically teams like NY, Boston, Detroit have had players slip to them, or have reached for signability cases. Yet even with all the big time draft signings, there total amount spent is right around 6-8 millon dollars.
Now are you telling me with all the revenue sharing money they receive they can’t find another 5 million dollars? Heck most teams waste that money on crappy players instead of investing it into the draft. If there was any reason to get rid of draft compensation it would be to get the union to stay away so they could discuss trading picks.
I was glad to see this year a lot of teams spend heavily on the top picks and not allow them to slip so low. The Yankees go lucky when Gerrit Cole slipped to them at #27, but in the past you may have seen a ton of other guys slip to like Hosmer and Buster Posey who said he wanted $11 million dollars (which was clearly BS but I’m sure it will take close to 7 million and an MLB contract).
August 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I don’t think its necessarily about money all the time. I agree with you that revenue sharing has helped these smaller teams out a significant amount. The fact that the Pirates took Pedro Alvarez says enough right there. However the way the draft is set up it would be very easy for players to put it out there that they want something crazy to sign in an effort to drop to a good team. Craig Hansen is a good example. I remember the Marlins promising him an immediate roster spot, but he still said he wouldn’t sign with them.
I’m not blaming any of the bigger franchises for exploiting this. It’s smart and their respective GMs would be nuts not to take advantage of it. My main beef with the draft is all of the compensatory picks though, but I also don’t like how MLB doesn’t have a hard slotting system. I think the best talent should go first, and that like every other sport they should have a slotting system.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Josh I agree, and that is why free agent compensation needs to go. If the union doesn’t need to take a heavy interest in the draft, the league would be able to possibly pass through a lot of ways that would help the draft. But as long as the MLB teams are tied up in draft compensation, the Union will be its strong, annoying self.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Btw I’m going to have to start calling Arlington Stadium the Field of Screams. Last year Hughes went down there, and today Joba. What a nightmare Arlington is for the Yankees. I can only hope that this stiffness is somehow brought on by heat, and not anything serious like a rotator cuff tear or a labrum tear. Pitchers come back from elbow injuries, shoulder injuries are career killers. The life of a young pitcher is just so fragile as we saw out there today.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Why do you think the Texas pitching gets worse as the year goes on? They had a 3.9 era in May. Over 6 since. The heat is a killer. I don’t think there will be a contending team in Texas until they, sadly, put a roof on TBiA. It was 107 last night then 106 tonight. Thats a killer.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Some places are just not meant to have baseball teams. Florida for one, since I think of it purely as a spring training site, and you can say the same for Arizona, although its tough to not have a team in Phoenix since it is now one of the largest cities in the US.
Clearly Atlanta shouldn’t have any sports teams, as they just refuse to support anyone. And Texas is quickly rising up that list as you can’t have teams playing in 100+ degree weather. Although I’ve heard Houston is a decent place to play, perhaps because they have a roof to some degree? Know anything about that Josh?
August 5th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Well Houston has had the Astros for 40+ years, and the Rangers have been around for 30+ with generally good fan support in I believe the 4th largest market in the US. I wouldn’t lump them in with the Floridas of the world.
The Astros have pretty much always been under a roof. They wouldn’t have been viable without it. It’s way too humid in Houston to play 81 baseball games in the summer. The thing with the Rangers is that they will always draw support if they are putting a solid product on the field regardless of the weather.
Would a roof help the Rangers? Possibly, but I don’t think you can overlook how bad the pitching ultimately is. This year the Rangers era is higher on the road than at home. The organization has just never done a good job of acquiring/developing pitching. That’s changing now with the loads of talent in A and AA ball, but the tangible results probably won’t be there for another 2+ years.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Well Jon Daniels has taken steps in the right direction by acquiring some arms in his blockbuster with Atlanta last year. We’ll see Harrison tonight, as I’m curious how the lefty does.
And while the Texas pitching has been bad for awhile, do you think former GM Jon Hart had anything to do with that? THe knock on Hart always was his ability to find pitching, while he was always able to build a strong offensive ballclub. Take a look at the teams he assembled while with Cleveland. Those teams had a ton of offense but always lacked bigtime pitchers. His rotations in Cleveland were built on a group of over the hill veterans. Although the team did develop Colon and Sabathia (and technically Jaret Wright but he didn’t last long), pitching was always the concern.