A year ago, as a student at the University of Minnesota and avid Golden Gopher hockey fan, I watched with disappointment as the season ended with a first round lost in the national tournament to rival Minnesota-Duluth (Minnesota, where one of your biggest rivals in hockey is another branch of the same university system). Shortly afterwards, I watched a mass exodus of upper-classmen ready to pursue the next stage of their hockey careers. I watched many key parts of Gopher’s run to the 2014 National Championship game depart and sign with the teams that had drafted them years ago. Captain Kyle Rau signed with the Florida Panthers who had drafted him in 2011. Star goaltender Adam Wilcox, also drafted in 2011, joined his drafting team in the Tampa Bay Lightning. Travis Boyd, another solid member of the Gophers, signed with the Capitals three years after being taken in that same 2011 draft. Mike Reilly, one of many in a long line of great defensemen to play for Minnesota, was also taken in 2011, but did not sign with the team that took him 98th overall, the Columbus Blue Jackets. Reilly waited out a four year signing period and became a free agent, ultimately signing with the Minnesota Wild.

As a major baseball fan, I was struck by how different of a system the two leagues had for drafting players, most notably how a team retained rates to players drafted for more than the roughly one month long signing period Major League Baseball currently has. Would Major League Baseball benefit from switching to a similar system? I think the answer is yes. Imagine the following rules for a new style of MLB draft:

• Only graduating high school seniors and undrafted college freshman and sophomores are eligible to be drafted
• A team keeps the rights to every player drafted until November 1 of the year a player is scheduled to graduate from college (four years after being drafted for high school seniors, three for college freshman, and two for college sophomores)
• All unsigned players and undrafted players would become free agents on November 1, and the signing of these players would be bounded by max rookie contracts, but not by a spending pool. (College juniors who had never been drafted would be allowed to leave and become free agents after their junior or senior years)
• Rights to draftees can be traded similar to any other prospect
• Slot values and draft signing bonus pools are eliminated

Would this be a better system for the draft? There is one major change this system would allow for. Willingness of high school players to sign is no longer an issue. Teams can comfortably draft players with strong commitments to colleges. Teams can also draft players with injuries, and both player and team can wait for recovery before making a signing decision. Before strict penalties for overspending existed, there was an advantage for teams with deep pockets. If a top talent began to slide due to rumors of his sign-ability, he could continue to slide until a team willing to overspend for such a talent had the opportunity to draft him. Teams with enough money could offer him whatever he wanted in order to sign him. Imposing the harsh penalties that currently exist has solved part of this problem. Teams are no longer willing to overspend and be penalized, but this means that if a player begins to slide, he will just keep sliding. Removing spending limits while allowing teams to retain the rights to players would change this. Teams would be able to take the most talented player available, regardless of how long it may be until he is willing to sign with the team. If a team knows a player will demand a large signing bonus in return for taking back his college commitment, the team can simply allow him to attend school and wait for him to finish. After all, the point of the draft should be to take the most talented player available, not the best player the team thinks they can sign.

Draft signing bonus pools would need to be eliminated. A high school player who opts to go to college and continues his to develop will come back to his drafting team as a better player. This would mean he would ask for a larger signing bonus that what he could have demanded as a high schooler. If teams are still limited by bonus pools, then the amount of money the team can offer him would never change. Still, something would need to be put in place to keep spending from getting out of hand. Some form of max rookie contract that other leagues have in place would need to be adopted. (The idea of enormous signing bonuses for draft picks on top of the comparatively microscopic minor league salaries could be dumped altogether. Minor leaguers could trade the signing bonuses for starting salaries that are measured by the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, which would also be a good way of helping out the players taken late in the draft who do not receive signing bonuses, but still need to get by on the minuscule minor league salaries).

This would also be a good time to make the draft international. Any player that would have become eligible to be signed as part of the July 2 international free agents would be eligible for the draft of that same year. For international players, I would suggest an exception to the four years of signing rights. Instead, I would suggest that the deadline for signing these players would be the day before the draft two years after their first draft year. If they remain unsigned, the players (now 18) enter the draft for a second and final time. Now they have another two years later to sign or become free agents on November 1. For players over the age of 23 that are currently not limited to signing bonus pools, a similar exception would be made. They would not be limited to max rookie contracts and could be signed to a major league contract of any amount upon being drafted. For Japanese and Korean ballplayers being posted, a concession can be made to their teams as well. Instead of a posting fee, a drafting fee can be implemented. The current maximum is $20 million which is what the fee will be set at for drafting a posted player first overall. After the first pick, the fee will slowly depreciate until it reaches $1 million at the beginning of the tenth round where it will remain for the rest of the draft. Similar to the current posting system, if a player is not signed by the time the team loses the signing rights, he is returned to his Japanese or Korean team and the posting fee is not paid. Alternatively, Japanese and Korean players could be treated the same as college ballplayers. The major league club could retain the rights to the player until his contract with his current team expires. At that point, the player could depart for the major leagues and no posting fee would be due, as he was allowed to leave as a free agent. (If this route is pursued, MLB would need to determine at what point do these players become eligible for the draft)

Players that remain unsigned when their draft rights expire would become free agents on November 1. As long as a max rookie contract is put in place, there would be no need to cap spending of these free agents. This is why more players due not pursue this route in the NHL. True bidding wars due not emerge for these players because there is only so much that teams can offer in terms of money. What is offered instead is playing time at the NHL level as opposed to the AHL level. Money is not the main motive in college hockey players rejecting to sign with their drafting team. The goal is normally to sign with a system that they feel is a better fit for them and that they will be happier with. The same would most likely be true in baseball. Additionally, November 1 can be chosen as a deterrent to pursuing this route (originally, I chose July 2 as the date to correspond with international free agency before I thought making the draft international as well). By forcing a player to wait until November 1, the player gives up the entire playing season. This may not serve as a giant deterrent given the presence of amateur, fall, and winter leagues, but could change the mind of someone hoping to take the field for his new organization right away.

Would this be a better system than what is currently in place? I think it could be.