HOUSTON, TEXAS - OCTOBER 26: Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred looks on prior to Game One of the World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park on October 26, 2021 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)
MLB needs to change its rules for trading draft picks
News came out earlier this week that the Atlanta Braves had traded some impressive MLB prospects to the Kansas City Royals for … a draft pick. Like you, my first reaction was, “Wait, you can’t trade draft picks in baseball!”
Well, it turns out that you can. Not always, though. Just one specific type of pick can be swapped: the competitive balance picks at the end of the first round for small-market teams. Those teams can trade those picks, and the bonus pool money associated with them, for anything you can trade your starting catcher for … but just those 10 or so picks, not the hundreds of other picks that will get made this weekend during the MLB draft.
It’s time that MLB change the way that teams can trade draft picks
By reading this blog post, you have already self-selected as someone with an unhealthy interest in baseball (or as a member of my family). That probably means you could win a drinking game explaining such esoterica as the balk rule, 40-man rosters, and the Curse of the Bambino, if such things existed (the drinking game, not the Curse). It probably also means you would be more likely to sit at home and watch the draft if you knew there was a possibility that the Baltimore Orioles could trade the first pick for, say, somebody who was on an MLB roster right now.
Instead, MLB has yet again taken something that could have been fun and made it so convoluted that fans are more likely to ignore it than pay attention. By the time you get halfway through the part about only being allowed to trade competitive balance picks, your brain has moved on to something on Netflix.
I get why they don’t want to trade draft picks. MLB general managers must break out in hives when they trade prospects for established players, because if just one of those prospects turns out to be Jeff Bagwell, the GM who traded him will be known for that above whatever else he accomplished in his career. At least when the Boston Red Sox did that, they had two full years of minor league play by which to assess Bagwell’s potential. If you trade a draft pick, and someone happens to use that pick on Mike Trout at the end of the first round, then you become the guy who traded Mike Trout, even though when you traded the pick Trout was in high school.
Plus, general managers have to be saved from themselves. Every team within five games of a Wild Card at the trade deadline will be pressured to deal picks to get them over the hump, even though we all know that can often be a bad idea. Why can I picture a scenario where we tune in for the draft some year and find out that every single pick has somehow been traded to Tampa Bay?
But they call it the big leagues for a reason, because when you get to this level, you should be ready to put your big boy pants on and deal with some pressure. So, let them trade picks … or don’t let them trade picks. Either way, just don’t do this “one toe in the water” approach that creates more confusion than excitement around the MLB Draft.
