There is a “competitive balance lottery” that awards lowest-revenue and smallest-market teams extra draft picks. There will be six draft picks immediately after the first round given out via lottery to teams with 10 lowest revenues, 10 smallest markets. From an MLB/MLBPA release: “A club’s odds of winning the lottery will be based on its prior season’s winning percentage.” For the teams that don’t get one of those six picks, they will be entered in another lottery open for all teams w/ 6 picks after 2nd round.

After the 10th round, the money will not count against the pool unless a pick is signed for more than $100,000

how long does it take to adjust to the new CBA undercutting your entire organization building strategy? DM doesn’t exactly seem like the type that can adjust to that sort of change easily.

it’s gonna be really ugly in a few years. Essentially this team has to win soon or else they won’t win for decades.

1) I don’t think it so easy to say that there will definitely be an angle for small market teams to “work this new system.” This system disadvantages small market teams, period. It won’t be catastrophic, but it’s a step in the wrong direction.

2) In order for a small market team like the Royals to remain competitive, they’ll have to continually re-stock their minor league system. To the extent that the new CBA makes that harder to do, it hurts the Royals going forward.

The two biggest “enemies” that Tea Party members small market fans irrationally lash out at at Selig, who is a mere figurehead in these negotiations, and Boras, who was probably vehemently against the CBA. It sucks for the Royals (and, believe it or not, other small market teams), although it isn’t clear right now how the small market owners actually thought about this and disagreed with it.

Making Selig the sole, or even primary punching bag is laughable, though. This was stupid on the part of baseball, selfish on the part of labor, but they both played a part in the worst aspects of this new CBA.

The top guys (typically Boras clients) will still get paid. It will be the later rounds that are squeezed out.

Hysterical. Well done.

it’s all very stupid. At least the union has the “excuse” of narrow self-interest (for current members). Baseball is hurting itself, not just MLB, but internationally.

$2.9 mill. That’s less than what we paid for Elier Hernandez ALONE, no?

is push international talent to soccer or other sports.

and even national talent to other sports.

Baseball already has a problem of getting African American athletes to play baseball instead of football or basketball, this deal is going to make this quite a bit worse it seems to me.

I really hate the idea of losing talent to baseball because of less money in a part of the game which was hardly a problem to begin with.

But the union can’t allow spending cuts to current players (for good reason, admittedly), so you have to cut player salaries somehow.

On the other hand, should this raise KC’s payroll by 10mil or so each year? At least it should, but it probably won’t.

While the Royals have no doubt been one of the best examples of exploiting the old draft system to their benefit, I have to think that eventually teams like NY and BOS would have really put some effort into doing the exact same thing. It’s already hard enough to compete for veteran FA’s with teams like that, given the cash at their disposal. With no draft and international spending cap, what was to stop the big market teams from blowing the small markets out of the water with overslot draft money, international FA signings, etc.?

And hey, maybe imposing caps at this level will be the first baby step toward a hard salary cap for MLB payroll. A fan can dream, can’t he?

…but it seems like this isn’t an across-the-board cap on draft spending. It is a form of slotting.

So, the higher you pick, the higher your draft-cap will be. That, obviously, helps the teams drafting higher and that has been the Royals for quite a while now.

Also, no one seems to be talking about it yet, but it looks like revenue sharing has improved from the small-market perspective.

Teams that surpass the luxury tax threshold of $178MM will be taxed 42% in 2012 and 50% in 2013.

Unless things change pretty dramatically, that looks like a perpetual 50% tax on the Yankees going forward…

It’s dumb…but I think the Royals and other small market teams can still find ways to build successful systems.

Yes, it will just be harder now than it was before. And it has been pretty hard as it is, given the revenue and spending disparities between the large and small market teams. There was a little way that appropriately motivated and smart small market teams could help build up their minor league system. Now that way is gone. That’s a bad thing for small market teams like the Royals. It isn’t catastrophic, but it’s bad. An uneven playing field (overall) just got a little more uneven.

Selig reacted to the best wildcard race in years by making so that such a race would never happen again

Playing out a foul ball isn’t really a big deal, I suppose.

Traps present a real problem, though. I don’t see how that can possibly work.

One mitigating factor would be that players and coaches already watch the play for themselves and have to make split second decisions based on what they see. An umpire’s call may be delayed, and probably is most of the time for purposes of making a tag or run decision. I don’t know any of this for sure, just offering it.

That will be distrubuted to losing teams when teams surrender picks for violating the slot rules.

The “sign a player to a one year deal and trade him” thing. A player will not bring compensation now unless he played for a team all year.

…and we also need to see how the signing bonus market is affected.

There are a lot of moving pieces.

But I could be wrong.

What some people are forgetting is that agents are still going to have their clients holding out for as much money as possible. They’re not going to care about the team’s draft strategy, which may involve spreading the money out. And if necessary, agents will tell their clients that they’re worth a team getting slammed with a 75% luxury tax or possibly losing picks.