Baseball decided from the start of its draft in 1965 to forbid the trading of draft picks for fear teams would squander them. The rule was strengthened in 1985, in response to the Expos' dumping first-rounder Pete Incaviglia in a one-sided trade with the Rangers because he wouldn't sign with Montreal. Ever since, picks have been tied to their teams for a full year after they sign.

But there are rumblings for change. Executives generally won't speak on the matter because of the gag order on issues involved in the Basic Agreement negotiations, but some do anonymously. "I think you need to have the ability to trade draft choices," one GM said. "Maybe you can trade future draft choices only the current year. You can trade down and get a few extra selections. There's a lot of good ideas we need to kick around. There's not just one magic bullet. Our draft rules are several years old, and a lot of it is antiquated."

At a Round Table hosted by Baseball America several years ago, this issue was debated by Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo (also owner of Phoenix's NBA franchise), MLB baseball-operations chief Sandy Alderson (then president of the Oakland A's) and Gene Orza, second-in-command of the players union. One exchange illustrated baseball's difficulty with the issue:

Colangelo: I do think we should allow teams to trade draft picks. Have restraints. You can only do it twice every three years. But think of it as an asset. Because right now, the smaller markets are being taken advantage of ... If they had the ability to maneuver a little bit, they'd maintain some value. If (a GM) has the first pick, and someone at No. 4 was willing to give him two players and that pick for the first pick, that's the kind of flexibility that gives you the opportunity to address the problem. The flexibility right now is one-sided.

Alderson: My response to that is if I had the No. 1 pick in the country and the player we'd like to select is Pat Burrell, let's say, or J.D. Drew, and everybody in baseball knows that I can't possibly select that player for economic reasons, then I don't have the leverege to go out and convince someone else to give me two outstanding players. So what I'm saying is that while you have the pick, the economic reality is most people would know that you can't sign that guy. So you don't have the same leverege for a trade as you would have, perhaps, in one of the other sports.

Orza: If you know that you can't sign the guy, then anything you get is better than nothing, right?

Alderson: I think that's the prevailing philosophy among a lot of clubs. Anything is better than nothing.

Orza: ... The reason there's a rule that says you can't assign draft choices is to protect small-market clubs from big-market clubs to buy up all their draft choices. Isn't that a fact? Isn't that why the clubs enacted that rule unilaterally?

Alderson: No, I don't think it was a big-market, small-market issue. I think it was in reaction to an NBA situation that existed in Cleveland where an owner traded his draft picks four or five years into the future. That would mortgage the future of a franchise, small-market or big-market. And that's not something in baseball we'd want.

Franchises have been mortgaging their future with large, back-ended major-league contracts (Colangelo's Diamondbacks in particular) to such an extent these days that protecting draft picks seems quaint in comparison. In other sports, trading a draft pick can be wise or foolish -- just ask the Cowboys and Vikings about the 1989 trade of Herschel Walker for a slew of picks that landed Dallas in the Super Bowl -- depending on the teams' evaluation skills. The decisions are made because each GM thinks he's outsmarting the other guy. Baseball doesn't encourage that type of environment; instead, it seems more scared to allow it.

Could the Pirates get an established starting pitcher for the No. 1 pick in the upcoming June 4 draft? Instead of looking at signability before ability at No. 2, could the Devil Rays trade down to get the Rangers' No. 10 and second-rounder, hoping that the second-rounder could someday become the next Scott Rolen? Just how valuable are these draft picks, what with the wait for them to develop and the risk they never will? Though there surely wouldn't be more than a handful of picks swapped each year -- selections are worth less than those in other sports because the rate of return is relatively low -- teams would be afforded another way to skin the cat, one that involves as much wits as wallet.

"When we give baseball clubs the opportunity to act foolishly, somebody will. That's a given," one former GM said. One forgotten point should take precedence, though: If a GM makes foolish decisions, perhaps his boss should hire someone who doesn't.

Alan Schwarz is the Senior Writer of Baseball America magazine and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.