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Tuesday, June 6
Big bonuses bad news for bad teams



It's time once again for another June baseball draft. Which brings us to ask one question:

Rick Ankiel
Rick Ankiel was the 72nd pick in the 1997 draft, but received the highest bonus of any drafted player that year.

Why?

What exactly is this draft accomplishing nowadays, anyway?

Oh, it's great for Scott Boras' bank account. That's for sure. And it certainly ensures that the scouting directors of America will keep rolling up enough frequent-flier miles to vacation on the moon.

But let's ask one fundamental question -- and think before you answer it: Is this draft really doing what drafts are supposed to do -- namely, make the weak teams better by supplying them with the best talent?

Anyone who thinks the answer to that question is yes must have stopped paying attention around the year Rick Monday went No. 1.

"The intention of the draft," says Expos GM Jim Beattie, "is to provide the opportunity for the teams that are performing poorly to get the better players -- in other words, to provide an equalizing of talent. That's a good intention. But is it actually doing that now? Well, it's getting tougher -- because the teams that are performing poorly are the teams that are short on talent. And one of the reasons they're short on talent is that they can't afford the talent. So somehow, that needs to be addressed."

This isn't a coincidence, but Beattie and his Expos are Exhibit A in this argument. Last year, they had the sixth pick -- and used it in time-honored tradition, to take the fabled Best Available Athlete Who Would Sign For $1.7 Million. That was Texas high school pitcher Josh Girdley, who got the lowest signing bonus of any of the first eight picks.

This year, the Expos hold the fifth overall pick. They are said to be in serious pre-draft negotiations with Puerto Rican high school shortstop Edgardo LeBron. He wasn't even rated by Baseball America among the top 100 talents in the draft.

And if you think they're taking the 101st-best player where they should be selecting the fifth-best because they have a secret scouting report on LeBron that nobody else has, you've been watching too many Kevin Costner movies.

"A lot of us up there at the top of the draft -- and we've been up there too many years -- sometimes don't have the ability to pick the guys we'd like to pick," says Twins GM Terry Ryan. "Draft day ought to be an exciting day for the whole organization. But when you have players you say you can't take because of the money, I think that's bad for the industry. The bad clubs ought to get the good players. And that doesn't happen."

Boy, nobody ought to know that better than the Twins, who -- at No. 2 this year -- are picking in the top six for the fifth time in the last 10 drafts. As far back as 1983, they took Tim Belcher with the first pick in the country, and he told them to go jump in a Great Lake.

Ten years later, they drafted Jason Varitek in the first round -- and became the first team in the modern era to get a taste of the Boras draft-manipulation machinery that would become such a heart-warming tradition in future drafts. And in 1996, the Twins chose Travis Lee with the second overall pick, only to watch him sneak out a loopholed back door into free agency.

All that just paved the way for J.D. Drew and Boras to spend a year terrorizing the Phillies in '97, until they could stiff-arm their way to the Cardinals the next year for an $8.5-million package that essentially blew up the draft as we used to know it.

Once the going rate for "special" draftees got into that $8 million neighborhood, this draft became officially useless. And once Boras perfected the art of staging pre-draft war games to get his next tier of clients into the cities and tax brackets he decided they belonged in, this draft became even more worthless.

Take the case of a player who wasn't even a No. 1 pick -- but should have been: Rick Ankiel. Boras and Ankiel's father made life so miserable for most teams that had the nerve to even attempt to scout Ankiel before the draft that they were able to steer him to the Cardinals in the second round in '97 -- for top-of-the-first-round money ($2.5 million).

Everyone knew Ankiel wasn't the 72nd-best player in that draft. But by demanding more money than virtually everyone who came before him, he caused drafting position to become officially irrelevant.

"You just pass on those guys now," Ryan says. "You never even consider them. Then an Ankiel goes out and gets $2.5 million, and at age 20 or 21, he's the Cardinals' fourth or fifth starter, and it looks like money well-spent. The problem is, for every Ankiel, there are 12 Todd Van Poppels."

Van Poppel looked like one of the "special" players. Remember? But now he's just the very special poster boy for the roulette game teams play when they start playing "Who Wants to Be an 8-Millionaire?" with those "special" players:

Prospective top 10
1. Marlins: -- Adrian Gonzalez, 1B, Eastlake HS, Chula Vista, Calif.

2. Twins: Matt Harrington, RHP, Palmdale HS, Palmdale, Calif.

3. Cubs: Luis Montanez, SS, Coral Park HS, Miami.

4. Royals: David Espinosa, SS, Gulliver Prep, Miami (if Boras' price is right) or Adam Johnson, RHP, Cal State Fullerton.

5. Expos: Edgardo LeBron, SS, Ramom Power HS, Las Piedras, P.R.

6. Devil Rays: Joe Torres, LHP, Gateway HS, Kissimmee, Fla.

7. Rockies: Chris Bootcheck, RHP, Auburn, or Jason Young, RHP, Stanford.

8. Tigers: Bootcheck or Matt Wheatland, RHP, Rancho Bernardo HS, San Diego.

9. Padres: Mark Phillips, LHP, Hanover (Pa.) HS.

10. Angels: Dane Sardinha, C, Pepperdine, or Scott Heard, C, Rancho Bernardo HS, San Diego.

  • Consider that half of all players taken in the first round don't make any more than a cameo appearance in the big leagues.

  • Consider that about two-thirds of the players taken with the first two picks -- theoretically, your special $8-million kind of players -- never even make an All-Star team at any point in their careers.

  • Consider that no pitcher taken with the No. 1 overall pick has ever won 20 games.

  • Consider that only four hitters taken with the No. 1 overall pick (Junior Griffey, Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones, Jeff Burroughs) have ever hit 40 home runs.

    So why would a team short on cash want to fork over $8 million to a kid with no professional at-bats when the odds are that long? And if the teams at the top of the draft are dodging the kids who would normally go that high because of the price tag, then what's the point?

    "Every year now," says Phillies scouting director Mike Arbuckle, whose blood pressure is only now returning to normal after that Drew nightmare, "you've got players being maneuvered (by agents like Boras) to specific clubs, whether it's via money issues or guys saying they don't want to play in certain towns. And if that's going to be the case, I would say, unequivocally, that this draft is not working the way it's supposed to."

    So what should baseball do about it? That's the question. Here are some of the answers being tossed out there:

    Signing deadlines
    The way the rules read now, some teams can spend almost an entire year playing negotiating pepper with their draft picks -- up until two weeks before the next year's draft if a player doesn't go back to school. Or those talks can stretch until the day the player starts classes if he does go back to school -- whether that's in September, January or the first day of the semester of his choice.

    Boras, in particular, has used that lack of a firm deadline to maximum effect. He's sent Drew to the Northern League and Bobby Hill to the Atlantic League. He's had other players register for classes but then never actually attend any. He's had numerous clients threaten to go back to school, when they actually had no intention of ever using another No. 2 pencil.

    The longer these marathons last, the more nervous some teams get. And that's one of many reasons draft bonuses have been escalating at an insane rate of 25 percent per year in recent years.

    So Indians scouting director John Mirabelli proposes a firm August 15 signing deadline as a means to bring this process to a head with the lowest Maalox dosage possible.

    "One thing I really think baseball should do is, we should put artificial pressure on ourselves," Mirabelli says. "Just say the deadline is August 15 and eliminate all the loopholes."

    No more Northern League threats. No more mad chases up the classroom steps. No more marathons. Sign by August 15 or think about the rest of your life.

    "You offer your $2 million or whatever," says one scouting director, "and you say, 'Take it or leave it.' Then you stick to your guns. Obviously, J.D. walked away, and an occasional guy will. But say Minnesota takes Matt Harrington at No. 2 this year and offers him $2 million. Is he really going to turn his back on $2 million coming out of high school? Very doubtful."

    "Eliminate the loopholes," Mirabelli says, "and I think the draft could still work."

    Try on a cap
    Up there in the big leagues, there's still a better chance the Players Association would allow all teams to play games wearing dresses than allow a salary cap on major league salaries. But if you listen to the rumble out of those clubhouses every year come draft time, you find a very different sentiment on the concept of a bonus cap for draft picks.

    "I think the players' union ought to get involved," says Royals scouting director Terry Wetzel. "I think major league players would like to see major league players getting the money instead of amateur draft picks."

    The union is obviously skeptical of a cap like this. But much of its membership is heavily in favor of it, just the way NBA players were before their union approved a similar cap.

    "I know the perception of some players is, the golden goose is going to keep kicking out more dollars, no matter what," Arbuckle says. "But the truth is, the more money that's spent on amateur players, that's $2 million or $3 million less for the big-league players. That might not be true on every club. But those clubs are the exception, not the rule. And I know that I personally would feel better, even if the total money spent comes out the same, if it were going to a guy who's been in the big leagues than a kid who you have no idea what he's going to do."

    So how would a cap like that work? There has been talk about a cap on total money spent per club per year -- for all signings. There has been talk about including the entire player-development system under a spending cap. But the worry there is that teams could circumvent that cap by handing out big-league contracts to players so they wouldn't fall under that umbrella. So another concept gaining steam these days is an NBA-type "slotting" process in which the signing bonus for each pick would be pre-determined.

    "I don't think we're talking about stopping the train or backing it up," Arbuckle says. "Just slow it down. We've got to stop paying $7 million or $8 million to guys who have never played an inning of pro ball. You throw out the exceptional situations, like what a Pat Burrell or a Drew got, and start with the numbers Josh Hamilton got last year ($3.96 million as the No. 1 overall pick). You start at $4 million for the No. 1 pick and work your way down from there."

    Fewer rounds
    Once, teams could draft as many players as they wanted in any given year. Then the draft was limited to 50 rounds. Now there is sentiment to cut that limit dramatically.

    "We're drafting for 50 rounds, and teams are signing 20-25 guys," Mirabelli says. "So let's cut it off at 30 or 25 rounds -- make it mean something to get drafted. Bigger pool. Fewer slots. I think it would be an improvement. That way, you can't take a guy in the 27th round and give him $900,000. You've only got so many picks. So you'd better take a guy where he belongs."

    International draft
    One of Boras' constant complaints about the draft -- and probably his most valid -- is that if some of these players were floating onto the shores of Costa Rica on a raft instead of living in San Diego, they'd be getting paid two, three, four or even five times what they're getting as draft picks.

    But you know baseball's response to that complaint isn't to make everyone a Cuban citizen. It's this:

    Worldwide draft.

    Baseball-operations VP Sandy Alderson is a huge fan of this idea. And he has many supporters. But some baseball people worry that it looks better on the drawing board than in reality.

    "The problem I have is with trying to enforce it," says one front-office man. "Our draft is set up around the educational system in the United States. But outside of the States, you're often looking at a whole different system. A lot of these kids don't play in any organized leagues. So how would we prevent clubs from hiding players until after the draft? I know this is a hot topic for Sandy, so it will continue to get pushed. But I don't know if it's enforceable."

    No draft at all
    All of these ideas have their merits. We'll grant that. But we say: Maybe we're trying to fix a contraption that's so broke, it can't be fixed. So why tinker? Let's blow the whole thing up and have no draft at all.

    Yeah, it sounds crazy. Yeah, it would mean the Yankees and Dodgers and other big spenders could throw $8 million or $10 million at every "special" player that came along. But the odds show that over time, they would make some very expensive mistakes. Lots of them, in fact.

    And in the meantime, those other teams -- the teams that don't want to be forced to pay their draft picks more than they pay their starting rotations -- could spend money in a far more efficient way: On players they actually wanted to sign, for dollars they actually wanted to spend.

    Of course, the catch is, you would have to convince those lower-income teams this would be a good thing for them. And they admit they need convincing.

    "We'd get killed," Ryan says. "If we had a kid we liked for $100,000, one of the bigger-revenue clubs would offer him $200,000. If we offered him $200,000, they'd offer him $500,000. The same 10-15 clubs that monopolize the international market now would monopolize the market here."

    But those teams would also blow a ton of money on kids that vanished more completely than Amelia Earhart. So it seems to us the clubs that scout the best would get the most out of the system. And that sure isn't always how it works now.

    "The one thing I like about this idea is that it would force us to be aggressive," Mirabelli says. "I'd go out and hire the best scouts around. And instead of paying our scouts like $25,000, I'd try to hire the 15 best scouts out there and pay them $100,000 apiece. Then I'd send them out there to beat people to the best players, to turn over every stone and look for players underneath every one of them."

    Why isn't that better than the current system, where money still talks and, when it doesn't, dishonesty walks?

    We go back to our original question: Does this draft work the way it was supposed to? Does it get gavel-to-gavel coverage on ESPN, as baseball draftniks everywhere hang on every pick? Has it made the Minnesota Twins any better?

    Let's review the answers: No. No. And no.

    So let's drop this draft into Scott Boras' dumpster and let free enterprise rule. It isn't guaranteed to be a better way. But face it: It can't be any worse.

    Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com.
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