CBA Negotiations

[DonBarclay]

Some of the recent MLB proposals have the potential to really hurt the Brewers in some areas that they excel at. Largely, they’ve built up the organizational strength through savvy navigation of the draft pool money (Pratt being a prime example), a great hit rate in international players, and trading veterans at the right time. A few items from the recent proposals severely threaten their ability to maintain their edge:

1. Draft reduced to 12 rounds. 

2. High school players are no longer draft eligible and requires 2 years of college.

3.Draft becomes hard slotted - no more drafting lesser players high to save slot money for high level, low propensity to sign players later. 

4. International draft - will get less of the Chourio, Made, Pena, etc. type players. 

5. Salary floor - the Brewers will almost certainly hover right at the floor. Making trading off higher priced veterans a potential challenge. If the floor must be maintained for the full season, they’ll need to give out more extensions to young players and/or have/keep higher priced veterans to mix with the lower priced youngsters. 
 

I can’t help but wonder how these potential rule changes may color this year’s trade deadline as well. Put aside the potential lockout, I would think that a club like the Brewers may be very hesitant to deal minor league depth knowing that it will become harder to replenish.

Short term, they’ve built a great system that will keep them competitive for years to come. Long term, hopefully Arnold and company can find new roster building advantages to exploit, because the current ones are about to get much more difficult to execute if some of these proposed changes are adopted. 

 

[Brian]

Here is a CBS Sports article on it also.  

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-draft-proposal-high-school-international-cba-negotiations/

[rickh150]

If local TV money is pooled, the other stuff is minor.  We could still excel at building a minor/major league roster with now added $ to extend even more players.

[Underachiever]

The proposal to ban high school players is stunning. It sounds like MLB would like the colleges to take on the development costs of young talent. The article cited how colleges "have made college baseball an increasingly important pathway that is producing major league-ready talent at an accelerated rate." Is MLB jealous that the NFL has a ready-made minor league and they don't? There aren't enough college baseball programs to take on the additional players and give them playing time for their development. And if the UW is any indication, I don't see schools adding baseball anytime soon. 

MLB seems to be telling us that colleges, with their aluminum bats, limited seasons, and practice limits, will do a better job at refining talent than if the player makes baseball a full-time job in the various Rookie leagues, A ball, etc as they do now. I don't buy it.

And the international 18-year-olds would be eligible for the international draft, so I guess they would still go through what's left of the minor league system? Because they aren't going to college.

[DonBarclay]

MLB claims within their current proposal that they won’t be decreasing the number of minor league teams. That feels hard to believe, and I’d imagine will be another negotiation point that comes up. The 18yo international players will go to DSL/ACL/FCL before going to A+. 20+yo college players don’t need A, and can go straight to A+. This would almost certainly result in the eventual destruction of Low A.

[nate82]

19 minutes ago, DonBarclay said:

This would almost certainly result in the eventual destruction of Low A.

I agree.  Also won’t happen until expansion at the MLB level and 2030.  The current deal with MiLB clubs ends in 2030.

[DonBarclay]

23 minutes ago, nate82 said:

I agree.  Also won’t happen until expansion at the MLB level and 2030.  The current deal with MiLB clubs ends in 2030.

It will be interesting to see how things shuffle when that happens. Brewers own the Warbirds, so you’d think they move them up to A+ and potentially Wisconsin to AAA, with Nashville going away as an MLB city. 

[Samurai Bucky]

4 hours ago, DonBarclay said:

2. High school players are no longer draft eligible and requires 2 years of college.

Not at the University of Wisconsin... 😡

[nate82]

49 minutes ago, DonBarclay said:

potentially Wisconsin to AAA, with Nashville going away as an MLB city. 

Wisconsin stadium is too small for AAA.  Biloxi probably goes from AA to AAA for the Brewers and then move the Warbirds/Wisconsin to AA.  

[wiguy94]

4 minutes ago, nate82 said:

Wisconsin stadium is too small for AAA.  Biloxi probably goes from AA to AAA for the Brewers and then move the Warbirds/Wisconsin to AA.  

If Wisconsin is too small for AAA then so is Biloxi. It's capacity is only like 200 people bigger than Wisconsin.

[Thurston Fluff]

I'm not that worried about losing the advantage we've had by our draft strategy. Every other team saw what we were doing and were bound to copy our strategy. Finding and exploiting market inefficiencies is a never ending cycle. Today's cheap route is tomorrows expensive one.

I don't like the idea of not allowing high school kids to be drafted. Mostly because I don't think it's fair to postpone people who from getting potentially seven figures for two year for arbitrary reasons. There's a system in place to deal with kids that age and there's no good reason not to use it. That said I don't think it means colleges will turn into developmental leagues more than they are today. Teams already scout independent leagues do there is a viable route outside college.

When it comes to an international draft I'd prefer they just have on draft and be done with it. I get the problem with the age differences between the two but that could be worked out. If there is two separate drafts fine. I don't think it will hurt the Brewers much. It's the scouting and player development in those areas that helped the Brewers succeed there. 

The draft reduced to 12 rounds may end up becoming a market inefficiency the Brewers can exploit so I'm not at all concerned about it.

Overall, the Brewers are successful because they're a well run organization. Whatever rules are in place it will find a way to make the most of it. If there's total revenue sharing of tv money a floor won't hurt. Aside from a floor with no revenue sharing, I think the Brewers can operate effectively even if some of their current strategies won't work as well.

[Jopal78]

43 minutes ago, Thurston Fluff said:

I'm not that worried about losing the advantage we've had by our draft strategy. Every other team saw what we were doing and were bound to copy our strategy. Finding and exploiting market inefficiencies is a never ending cycle. Today's cheap route is tomorrows expensive one.

I don't like the idea of not allowing high school kids to be drafted. Mostly because I don't think it's fair to postpone people who from getting potentially seven figures for two year for arbitrary reasons. There's a system in place to deal with kids that age and there's no good reason not to use it. That said I don't think it means colleges will turn into developmental leagues more than they are today. Teams already scout independent leagues do there is a viable route outside college.

When it comes to an international draft I'd prefer they just have on draft and be done with it. I get the problem with the age differences between the two but that could be worked out. If there is two separate drafts fine. I don't think it will hurt the Brewers much. It's the scouting and player development in those areas that helped the Brewers succeed there. 

The draft reduced to 12 rounds may end up becoming a market inefficiency the Brewers can exploit so I'm not at all concerned about it.

Overall, the Brewers are successful because they're a well run organization. Whatever rules are in place it will find a way to make the most of it. If there's total revenue sharing of tv money a floor won't hurt. Aside from a floor with no revenue sharing, I think the Brewers can operate effectively even if some of their current strategies won't work as well.

An International Draft is worthless. The owners can’t compel foreign players to come to America so draftees would have all the leverage. If the money or organization isn’t right, the foreign player can simply refuse to sign, and no team is going to waste a draft pick for a player. They are uncertain of if they can get in their organization (Similar but different Herb Kohl went all the way to China to talk Yi Jinlian into agreeing to play for the Bucks after being drafted). Further, Japanese teams control players for 8-9 seasons which is why there’s the posting system. MLB can agree to whatever they want with their players but NPB does not have to abide by it. 

[Thurston Fluff]

42 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

An International Draft is worthless. The owners can’t compel foreign players to come to America so draftees would have all the leverage. If the money or organization isn’t right, the foreign player can simply refuse to sign, and no team is going to waste a draft pick for a player. They are uncertain of if they can get in their organization (Similar but different Herb Kohl went all the way to China to talk Yi Jinlian into agreeing to play for the Bucks after being drafted). Further, Japanese teams control players for 8-9 seasons which is why there’s the posting system. MLB can agree to whatever they want with their players but NPB does not have to abide by it. 

I don't think you'll find many players in Latin American countries who won't sign. Their choices aren't the same as the Japanese or Korean leagues are. I seriously doubt a 17 year old kid is going to say no to an opportunity to get life changing money. Setting that aside, there are plenty of scouts and academies who already know them enough to know which ones are going to be a problem to sign. It's not going to be the problem to find signable players as you seem to think it is.

[Jopal78]

21 minutes ago, Thurston Fluff said:

I don't think you'll find many players in Latin American countries who won't sign. Their choices aren't the same as the Japanese or Korean leagues are. I seriously doubt a 17 year old kid is going to say no to an opportunity to get life changing money. Setting that aside, there are plenty of scouts and academies who already know them enough to know which ones are going to be a problem to sign. It's not going to be the problem to find signable players as you seem to think it is.

Depends, there won’t be many worth the slotted pick if the current financial format continues with an international pool. Yet the next Soto or Acuna would know they’re going to get paid when eventually drafted and would hold all the leverage to choose where they go by threatening to sign only if drafted by certain teams.