The Strasburg Rule: Why MLB Teams Should Be Allowed To Trade Draft Picks

(Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images)

There are a lot of things wrong with the current structure of Major League Baseball. Every year, about this time, we read about teams in smaller markets having to trade off their best players to contenders (typically, large market teams like the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox), and setting themselves up for another rebuilding cycle, only to repeat the process again in a few years.

There is some competitive balance to the game. Since the end of the Yankee dynasty in 2001, no team has repeated as World Series champion. In fact, it seems like a new team wins every year. But we've also seen the break-up of some potentially great teams, like the World Champion Florida Marlins of 2001, or the strong Cleveland Indians teams of 2005-06, because of salary issues.

Lately, we've even been seeing teams trade young stars in their arbitration years, when they're still under club control for a couple more seasons. There's no incentive to keep them until free agency and take two draft picks as compensation. Sometimes you can't sign the draft picks, either.

This isn't a plea for a salary cap in Major League Baseball. In fact, I don't believe there should be one. If the Yankees want to pay $300 million to their lineup, instead of those mere $200 million payrolls they've been carrying, bully for them. There should be a stiffer luxury tax for doing so--but the teams that get the money should be forced to spend it on player salaries themselves.

But I digress. What I want to know is this—why is MLB the only major professional sports league that doesn't allow for the trading of draft picks?

I think allowing these kinds of trades would help promote competitive balance, not hurt it. Does it mean the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers would be able to make deals and land the top amateur talent? Sure. But they'd have to give up something in return, too. Something that might be much more of a sure thing than the high draft picks.

What is Stephen Strasburg worth?

Let's use Stephen Strasburg as an example.

Strasburg is, by consensus, the best pitching prospect to enter the draft in some time; some have gone so far as to say he is the best amateur pitcher ever. The Washington Nationals took Strasburg as their No. 1 draft pick in June. To date, they have not been able to sign him, and they will lose their rights to him if they fail to sign him by Aug. 15.

Strasburg, through his agent Scott Boras, has made extremely high salary demands, even asking for a $50 million signing bonus. Boras based this request on the posting fee paid by the Boston Red Sox in 2006 for the rights to negotiate with Japanese star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. He claims that Strasburg is comparable to Matsuzaka. I think that's an absurd statement on several counts, but that's not the point of this analysis.

The point is that Boras is demanding a price for Strasburg, based on his perceived super-prospect status, that the Nationals cannot meet without damage to their major-league salary structure. They are, in effect, being asked to pay a near-free agent salary to a pitcher who has never thrown a pitch in professional baseball. A pitcher who, in fact, wasn't particularly impressive in either the 2008 Olympics or the 2009 NCAA Regionals--his two highest levels of competition to date.

But we'll set that aside. Strasburg has a lot of talent and could end up being many things as a top collegian coming to the pros. He could be Ben McDonald, the Strasburg of 1989, who had a decent career but never could stay healthy. He could be Alex Fernandez, Jim Abbott or Andy Benes, high draft picks who had good, but not great, careers. He could be a disappointment, like Calvin Schiraldi, or he could tear up his arm before he ever gets a chance, like Lance Dickson did. Or he could become everything people say he can—we'll say the next Roger Clemens.

Clemens is the best-case scenario. Based on past draft history, that's unlikely, but let's say Strasburg's talent wins out and he develops like the young Rocket did. In any case, there's almost no doubt that Strasburg will appear in the major leagues sometime in 2010 if he signs; he might even make his debut in September of this year.

One player doesn't matter much

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