Otherwise, nice insight from someone with actual CBA experience.

Padres would have been able to sign Stephen Drew instead of having to go with Matt Bush. There would be less power for guys like Scott Boras to hand pick a team before the draft.

Also, I’m basing this on the assumption that teams would be able to use the “bottom line” savings on more players that can help the team. Big assumption, I know.

The penalties for going over the slot recomendations had to be severe in order to make sure big clubs wouldn’t continue to promise the prospects big money if the refused to sign with small clubs

Except as mentioned above, the Pirates were the top spending team in the draft last year, and teams like the Royals/Twins/Angels spend far more money in the international market than teams like the Yankees.

Also, allowing small market teams to use more money in the international market than big clubs helps, so I’m not sure what the outrage is about here

This is the part I found on the link in the earlier post:
Clubs will be given a “pool” of money to spend on bonuses for draft choices. The amount of the “pool” for each club has not yet been reported, but is believed to be based on prior amounts spent on the draft. Danny Knobler reports that MLB says the bonus pool for the 2012 draft will be $4.5 million to $11.5 million, depending on how many picks and on where a team picksThere is at least on report, as indicated in our first update to this story, that there is a mix between the bonus limits for spending on international free agent players

Not sure how smaller market teams are given an advantage. It might be interesting to make it a sliding scale inverse to draft position (#1 team gets most money, #30 gets least) but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

It’s an unfortunate byproduct of today’s society of “I got mine”. Players already have their contracts, why should they worry about future players’ contracts if it doesn’t have any effect on them currently?

Take away the anti-trust exemption and let the free market rule.

I have watched my Padres take players like Matt Bush simply because players like Stephen Drew told them he wouldn’t sign. Draft slotting (even a soft slotting like this) will help small market teams in the draft. Also, allowing small market teams to use more money in the international market than big clubs helps, so I’m not sure what the outrage is about here. Did I read this wrong?

Like Craig points out, its the amature players that are hurt by this.

By my calculations, TWENTY teams went 16% or more over slot this year, which would have triggered 100% tax & loss of two 1st-rders #mlbdraft—
Jim Callis (@jimcallisBA) November 22, 2011

In other words, this doesn’t screw over a few teams. This, more than likely, screws over YOUR team.

Bingo, that’s my only problem with this CBA. Looks like the players gave and gave and gave, and got nothing for it more than a higher ML minimum salary (which is not meaningless, however).

MLB has evidence that this was becoming a problem and tried to remedy it. And just because one player chose either, to not to play along or was not was that highly courted does not prove that the practice was not being implemented.

Sounds to me like you are just blatantly anti-union and will spin it any way you want to make it sound the way you want to believe.

To threaten not signing, it would have to be a HS player as college draftees have very little leverage. The only big name from the 2011 draft that stands out to me directly contradicts your argument (Josh Bell, signed by the Pirates after previously being thought to be unsignable).

It never fails to amuse me to see the Major League Baseball Player’s Association lumped together with industrial and trade labor unions. Talk about comparing blueberries and watermelons.

But what is in it for the owners

Because the owners, just like their brethren in the NBA, can’t stop themselves from offering too much money to bad players. I think it’s been Klaw that’s been tweeting how annoyed some owners are that Gerrit Cole got $8M this year. That’s $8M over the first 6 years of his deal (with probably arbitration raises) or $1.3M per year. That’s less AAV than the Orioles just gave to the Korean pitcher they signed. Or a greater value contract than Clint Barmes’s new deal.

Also, the players don’t care about this because amateur players aren’t covered by the CBA. They were pretty dumb not getting any concessions for this however.