I Still Want to Abolish the Draft

On Monday, the Los Angeles Dodgers used their first round selection on Zach Lee, a right-handed high school pitcher. For an organization that has drafted and developed Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsley, this wouldn’t appear to be an odd decision, but Lee comes with a pretty big asterisk – the perception of the strong commitment to college of any player in the draft.

Lee, a two-sport star, is signed on to attend Louisiana State University to play quarterback, and he’s one of Les Miles’ top football recruits. After the selection, Miles saw fit to release a statement to dissuade fear among his team’s fans, saying:

“Zach wants to come to LSU, get a degree and play football and baseball for the Tigers. I met with Zach and his parents today and I think that they are looking at LSU as a great opportunity both academically and athletically. Zach is an outstanding student and he’s excited about the college experience.”

Before the draft, rumors were swirling that Lee had put his price tag to sign at over $6 million, a figure generally reserved for the top two or three prospects in a draft. While Lee is seen as a good pitching prospect, no one thought of him as a potential top-three pick, and no one was lining up to pay the kid six million dollars.

The Dodgers can deny it all they want, and they can even prove us wrong if they get him under contract before the mid-August deadline, but everyone strongly suspects that the Dodgers took Lee knowing that they wouldn’t be able to sign him. If Lee goes to LSU, the Dodgers will simply get the 29th pick in the 2011 draft as compensation, one widely seen as much better and deeper than the pool of players they were selecting from on Monday.

In essence, the Dodgers traded their first round pick this year – a year in which they’re under significant financial constraints given their ownership situation – for an equivalent or better selection in a year from now. Because trading picks in baseball is not allowed, they simply used Lee as the pawn to get around the rules, much like the Reds did with Jeremy Sowers back in 2001.

For some, this situation will support a rule change to allow the trading of draft picks, where teams like the Dodgers could trade down or out of drafts if they so chose. For me, though, this simply represents another reason to abolish the draft entirely. Marc suggests that we move to two drafts – I counter that we shouldn’t have any at all.

There are better ways to disperse talent among teams. I laid out my thoughts for such a plan last year, and won’t rehash all the details, but I think the Zach Lee situation gives us yet another reason to doubt the ability of the draft to accomplish the goal of why it was instituted in the first place.

Rather than forcing teams to make sham picks to get around strange rules, or allowing talented players to end up with teams that have the resources to go over slot recommendations in later rounds, let’s just get rid of the whole system and start over. There’s a better way.