Pro/Con: Trading draft picks

There are some pretty high dollar franchises that ended up with some high draft picks this coming year.  Heck, just look what the Cubs did.  They sign Soriano and did not have to give up their 1st round pick to get him.  I may have a few issues with trading #1 picks but I think the Type A free agent rule that allows teams to retain their #1 pick if it falls in the top 15 is a bit outdated.  In a way a team is kinda trading their pick by signing another team's Type A FA already anyway.  But they should not get the benefit of keeping their Top 15 pick and signing a high priced FA.  How many low budget clubs sign Type A's anyway?  I would suspect, not many.

I think allowing teams to trade draft picks is ok, if certain "safety measures" are added.  In the opening here, agents manipulating the system is mentioned.  There is a lot of that going on every year, with JD Drew probably being the biggest example of the problem.  To solve this, I'd go with salary slotting for each pick.  If the contract amount for each slot in the draft is already decided, agents can't work their kids through with outrageous demands to maneuver them to a team they choose.  If a team at the end of the first round wants a player going in the top 5, they're going to have to not only pay the player, but they have to give up value to move up to select that player.  

What this might do, is limit the number of "bonus baby" high school kids who threaten to go to college if they don't get X amount of dollars to sign.  With the money already determined, they make the decision whether they really want to go to college or not.  In addition to this, I'd allow players to be eligible for the draft after any college season.  That way, if a kid decided to go to college only to find out he'd rather take a little less money than he originally hoped for, he could enter the draft after his freshman year with minimal time lost.

This should help to eliminate teams selecting lesser players to signability issues, and at least allow them to trade their pick for some value if they don't want to pay the slot amount for their pick.  

With that said, I'm not sure how much actual trading would take place, as many teams wouldn't give up valuable prospects to gamble on a draft pick.  I don't think there would be serious issues if picks were tradeable, but allowing them to be traded would open another avenue for teams to add talent.

In all other sports, a player can be drafted one year and be starting the next.  The higher picks in many cases are expected to have an immediate impact.  That's VERY rare in baseball so I think it's kind of hard to hold them up next to each other and make many fair arguements.

I think they should be allowed to trade the picks, but it should be tightly regulated.  I also think the current draft compensation was not changed enough in the new labor agreement.  It's better, but not much.

don't draft in order of what they can take in the draft (i.e. the top rated players who drop because of financial concerns), so you might as well give those teams the opportunity to get SOME value out of having the high pick to begin with.  

Curt Flood would turn over in his grave. Wait... is he even dead? Well, you know what I mean.