MLB Competitive Balance Lottery 2012: Draft Experiment Poor Attempt at Parity

Parity won’t be achieved by a draft pick or two.

On Monday, July 16, the MLB will hold its first annual "Competitive Balance Lottery." While at least Bud Selig is trying, he’s going to have to come up with something better than this to establish parity in the majors.

Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com explained the new wrinkle Selig added back in November. He wrote:

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The 10 smallest-market teams and the 10 lowest-revenue teams will be placed in the lottery to have a chance to win one of six extra picks in 2013. This doesn't mean there will be 20 teams in the lottery. There will be plenty of crossover, with the expectation of having 13 teams involved.

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According to Mayo, those 13 potentially lucky teams this season will include the Arizona Diamondbacks, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays. Any awarded pick is also tradable, but it can only be dealt by the team that won it (i.e. a max of one trade), only during the regular season and only to acquire players.

First off, the MLB draft is such a crapshoot that Selig can’t possibly expect to provide competitive balance with a single pick. The New York Yankees boast the best record in baseball as well as a $198 million payroll, which is by far the highest in baseball, according to USA Today. One roll of the dice won’t make up the difference between the Yankees and the Pirates, as Mark Appel made perfectly clear when he spurned the Buccos after they drafted him eighth overall by electing to turn down their $3.8 million offer and return to Stanford.

But perhaps the funniest aspect of Selig’s attempt to basically give to the poor is that seven out of those 13 teams currently have winning records. On top of that, Miami and (World Series champion) St. Louis are eligible for the lottery despite each of them having one of the 10 highest payrolls in the league (via USA Today).

MLB should scrap the "Competitive Balance Lottery" because it won’t come close to achieving what it was created to accomplish.

David Daniels is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report and a syndicated writer.

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