There are many things wrong with Major League Baseball’s amateur draft–limits on signing bonuses, the inability to trade picks, etc. Perhaps most galling is that the largely politically conservative owners, who espouse the power of free markets, cling to their anti-trust exemption and curbs on competition in their sport because it suits their wallets. I have a fantasy that a large group of college kids who are top picks will band together and sue the game the way Curt Flood did on the major-league level in 1970. Of course, there are too many incentives keeping young players from doing such a thing. 

The opening of Tim Marchman’s new Wall Street Journal piece, “Why Even Have Baseball’s Draft?“:

“All sports drafts are scams, more or less. No computer engineer right out of Carnegie Mellon has to go straight to a job at Comcast for a predetermined salary. Electronic Arts representatives aren’t lurking the halls of Northwestern with charts and craniometers. The concept is absurd on its face, and just as absurd when applied to young athletes.

What makes Major League Baseball’s draft, which takes place in two weeks, especially ridiculous is that in addition to being clearly unjust, it’s also inefficient. Drafting is no exact science in basketball or football, but at least in those sports the top amateur talents are both readily identified and actually available. Eight of the top 10 finishers in this year’s NBA Most Valuable Player voting were top-five draft picks overall, for example, and Marc Gasol and Tony Parker, who weren’t, were both special cases.

Of the 28 players who placed in the top 10 in last year’s baseball MVP voting or top five in Cy Young voting, though, a little more than half were first-round picks. Eight were originally signed as amateur free agents, meaning they weren’t subject to the draft at all. The draft isn’t a lottery, but it’s closer than it should be given that its nominal purpose is to distribute the best talent to the worst teams.

One sign of this randomness is the way expected returns flatten out through the draft. This year, the Mets, who were lousy last year, have the 11th overall pick, while the Yankees, who were very good, have the 26th. If the draft worked as it’s supposed to, you’d expect that the Mets’ pick would be substantially more valuable, based on historical data.

That isn’t even close to being true, though.”