Major League Baseball

MLB ban on draft pick trades can hurt weak teams

Published Jun. 6, 2010 3:37 p.m. ET

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Kobe Bryant is chasing his fifth championship with the Los Angeles Lakers - the only NBA team he has played for.

It's not the one that drafted him, though.

John Elway is as much a part of Denver as the Rocky Mountains; he was originally picked by the Colts.

These little-remembered and short-lived careers - virtually nonexistent, actually - pop up every year around draft time, when a team owns a player's rights barely long enough for him to put on a ballcap and shake hands with the commissioner.

But not in baseball.

The Washington Nationals have the first pick in Monday's draft, and unless they're scared away by his salary demands, they are expected to take junior college catcher Bryce Harper.

There's one thing they can't do: trade the pick.

Unlike their counterparts in other major pro sports, baseball teams cannot trade draft picks or even trade players for a year after they were drafted, like the Charlotte Hornets did shortly after picking Bryant or the Colts did with Elway. The rule is supposed to keep struggling teams from frittering away their ticket out of the cellar, but concerns that it might be hurting those it's designed to help have many asking whether it's time to finally lift the ban.

``I have always been in favor of trading draft picks,'' former San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers, now a special assignment scout for the New York Yankees, wrote in an e-mail. ``I think it would make the baseball draft much more interesting, as well as allowing small- to mid-market teams more flexibility and a chance to be creative.''

With players that are largely considered interchangeable - a slugger doesn't have to fit into a scheme, like an offensive lineman or power forward - baseball has the most active trade market in sports. It runs from the winter ``hot stove league'' to the hype and rumors of the midsummer trade deadline that, for teams already out of the running, can be more exciting than the pennant race.

But while football, basketball and hockey teams can package players and picks to land a coveted star, move up in the draft order or even compensate another team for poaching its coach, baseball limits the market to current players and prospects so losing teams can't sell off their future along with their present.

``Could allowing trading picks help certain teams? Sure, it could,'' Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein said last week as he prepared for the 50-round draft, in which about 1,500 players will be distributed over three days.

``There are a lot of positives that could come from it, and then there's some potential danger that I know traditionally Major League Baseball has been worried about. It could hurt (teams) in the long run, because they'd be tempted to help themselves now, or they wouldn't want to spend the money on the draft picks so they trade them. It's a balancing act.''

It's true: Other sports are littered with examples of teams that were hamstrung for years after trading away draft choices.

But for each of them there's also a team that accelerated its turnaround by making a shrewd move for a player who, at the time, was just a draft number.

The Boston Celtics got Robert Parish and the pick that became Kevin McHale from Golden State for the No. 1 overall pick in the 1980 draft; the pair joined with Larry Bird to win three NBA titles. The Dallas Cowboys went from 1-15 to a three-time Super Bowl champion in the '90s by sending Herschel Walker to Minnesota in a package that grew to 18 players and picks (one of them became Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith).

And it's not like baseball teams haven't made some pretty bad deals, even without trading draft choices. After all, the Yankees didn't need to throw in any draft picks - just a bundle of cash - when they took Babe Ruth off the Red Sox's hands in 1920.

``I cannot think of any good reason why MLB would have such a rule, unless it is worried that the teams with the highest picks are not capable of making good decisions,'' said Richard Thaler, a behavioral economist from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business who has studied the NFL draft. ``... It has to help the teams with the top picks to have the option of trading them for additional picks.''

Consider also that the teams at the top of the draft are usually there because they are in small markets, which also makes it difficult for them to afford the signing bonuses the top prospects demand.

Towers' Padres lost 98 games in 2003 and owned the No. 1 overall pick in the '04 draft, which included can't-miss shortstop Stephen Drew. Teams were leery of Drew, whose brother J.D. was the No. 2 overall pick in 1997 and went unsigned after demanding nearly $10 million from Philadelphia as a signing bonus. (The older Drew went back into the draft pool and was taken by St. Louis fifth overall the next year.)

The Padres would gladly have traded the No. 1 pick for several lower selections, as football teams frequently do.

``Often, rebuilding organizations need multiple players to jump-start their organizations, rather than one elite prospect (and remember they are still prospects, not proven major-league talent yet),'' Towers wrote. ``Gaining multiple picks in a draft that they may deem strong, with depth, might be the best way to get back to becoming competitive again sooner.''

The Padres wound up passing on both Drew and pitcher Jered Weaver - another highly rated prospect being advised by agent Scott Boras - and took high school shortstop Matt Bush.

Bush has been with three organizations, and has yet to make it to the majors.

``In 2004, our farm system was void of great talent,'' Towers wrote. ``Gaining multiple picks that year most likely would have been of great interest to us.''

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AP Sports Writers Larry Lage in Detroit, Bernie Wilson in San Diego and Dennis Waszak Jr. in New York contributed to this story.

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