Saturday, August 9, 2014

Open Comment Thread for Potential Rule Change - Put more established players into the off-season free agent pool with transaction order based on salary cut

Suggested to me this year:
I just wanted to offer one possible idea that may increase a "rebuilding" team's incentive to retain big money studs rather then trade them to a short-term super team.

As the system sits now, the team with the worst record gets first crack at the top 3 picks in the redistribution draft. That alone Is a huge incentive for teams to tank, Along with the top weekly picks they receive along the way. This may help parity since it allows them a mechanism for gaining assets, but it also may diminish the in-season competition. In short, what if the redistribution picks were ordered as a result of total dollars of players released to free agency at the time of the 28 man roster crunch?

It seems this could possibly incentivize struggling teams to think twice about trading a 10 million player for future salary relief. It may still be practical to do such a thing, but it think it would help some. Last year was a huge haul with Tanaka and others I remember. Also, I think it would make the redistribution draft a huge event if suddenly guys like Miggy or Kershaw were floating around. Doubtful the top redist picks would net a bigger haul then trading one of those studs, but it does seem increasingly difficult to move high priced talent in the off-season.
Your thoughts? (I'm personally in favor of no change as this would be something difficult to track and I do feel there's importance for teams that finished at the bottom one season to get first crack at the draft list)

Also note this change is as much about preventing dumping of players for salary reasons and for tanking late-season to get a better draft position (leaving some teams even more non-competitive during the last few weeks of the season).

5 comments:

Mike Lehman said...

What do you think about cutting the picks to 1 per round. This would offer several of the poorer record teams to pick up an impact player

Roland Dupont said...

Dumping high salary players in exchange for prospects is a time-honored tradition in real-life baseball and I don't think it should be discouraged in BWB. The current process of giving the top 3 picks to the worst team is a great benefit to one team, but Mike's idea of spreading the wealth around would benefit several teams and would also reduce the advantage of tanking to get the worst record.

Unknown said...

The redistribution draft normally has a limited number of true impact players who would go to the first several teams. By the time the better half of the league picks, a number of their picks would be gone, thereby limiting the number of players they would end up with. The poor teams would have already benefited each week through the season with getting the first shot at free agents. So, I think having only 1 pick per round of the redistribution draft is fair.

jason said...

changing to 1 pick per round would be a huge benefit. I saw mentioned elsewhere that another option would be to limit the number of guys you can keep (or the number of guys you can put under salary), which would also get more talent in the pool. You might try a limit of 25 players to see how it works out. Would people keep their high priced guys, or would they turn to their prospects? either way there would be more talent in the pool.

Kevin said...

I REALLY like the idea of teams only selecting one player at a time in the redistribution draft. And I'd likely side with Jason on reducing the number of keepers....sorry if this isn't supposed to be the topic. 26 keepers would certainly add a nice influx of talent to the draft.