RC Vote Needed for the Following Proposal on Rookie Bonsuses

[h4cheng]

Changing my vote to #5.

[Dan Wood]

I could go with 5...so that's 3 for 5...out of 7 members....who has yet to vote?

Then we get then treat of discussing numbers

[rcankosy]

I believe that eliminating the bonuses would achieve the same objectives as # 5 without the burden of establishing draft budgets by team and tracking rookie bonuses.  It seems as if the main objective is to get the top talent into the hands of the neediest teams without compromising their ability to compete in the regular season.  I see no advantage to option # 5, because a reasonable draft budget would allow teams to afford the rookies they want regardless of bonus level.  Some top prospects fell to the better teams this year, because some teams could not afford the rookie bonuses.  Please let me know if I am missing something, because simpler is generally better, unless there is an advantage to draft budgets that I am missing.

[VolsRaysBucs]

I'm good with #5 as well.

[rcankosy]

To be clear, I would like someone to explain the practical advantages of # 5 over # 2.  # 5 sounds good in theory, but the same objectives could be achieved by # 2 without the extra work of establishing draft budgets and tracking bonuses.  A draft scenario comparing one option to the other would be ideal, because I don't see a difference between the two options and # 5 involves a lot more work.

[Dan Wood]

I tend to agree Roy, but there seems to be a concesus of maintaing the bonuses. Giving teams a budget limit adds to the strategy of the draft. Again, I am fairly open to any of the suggestions on the board, but those are the positives that I can see coming from option 5

[h4cheng]

#2 would eliminate any strategy besides picking the best player. With #5, teams would still need to take money into consideration which is more realistic. My vision of the draft budget would be a supplement. Teams are still welcome to spend regular cap space on the draft.

I think what #5 is doing essentially it to shrink the gap in cap space between big market and small team. A cleaner solution might be to bump up the cap space of smaller market teams so we dont have to keep track of 2 caps.

[rcankosy]

I realize that we are trying to emulate real life, and a draft budget appears to add strategy, but I do not believe that it will.  Let's take the Orioles as an example.  We would need to give them a large enough budget to accommodate the best and 31st player available in the draft.  Apply that same logic on down the line to the the other teams.  The second you separate the draft budget from the regular one, all the teams would have funds readily available for the players that would probably fall to them in the draft.  Where is the strategy assuming everyone drafts the best player available and they have the cap budget to do so?  Again, it seems like a lot of work for nothing unless someone can provide a workable example of how the supposed strategy behind a draft budget would come into play. 

[Dan Wood]

My thinking on it is as such...

Giving a team a draft budget (cap) that is all they would be allowed to spend in the draft, unless they wanted to spend some of their money and sign the player to a MLB contract, add that player to their 40 man, and not receive any benefits of having said player as a prospect (see Mike Trout as an example).

In my head #6 works better because that way the cap amount is fluid from season to season. ANd would emulate the way the Rays were built. High picks until they got good, then the gravy train runs out. The numbers I had more or less imagined were 10 mil for the lower end teams and 3 mil for the higher end (rich or playoff teams depending if we are talking 5 or 6) and 5 mil for the guys in between. Again the numbers can be finagled.

I tend to agree with Howe that #2 doesn't involve any strategy because of all of the auto picking that goes on here.

[mattpily]

I like option 5 and 6 but if I had to pick just 1 I would go with 6