MLB Draft Lottery Questions

[Manwiththeplan]

I guess I'm just a bit confused at how it works...

This is from MLB
"Teams that receive revenue-sharing payouts can't receive a lottery pick for more than two years in a row and those that don't can't get a top-six choice in consecutive Drafts. Furthermore, a club that's ineligible for the lottery can't select higher than 10th overall."

I guess what confuses me, are the rules regarding revenue sharing pay outs...because this reads to me like you just can't pick top 6 two years in a row.

Unless there's something I'm over looking

And if so, having potentially worse record in baseball and having some lottery unluck and picking 6th and having the worse record again and picking 7th would be a pretty bad break for a team

 

[Hoofbite]

I have no clue, but it looks like they are trying to prevent perpetual tanking by getting multiple consecutive lottery picks for teams that maintain a the lowest of salaries.

Also looks like they don't want the highest spending team to ever get back-to-back top 6 picks.

Lastly, in both instances, once you become ineligible the highest pick you can have is 11th regardless of in-season spending.

Seems like a fair trade off. Suckier teams can't just profit off the big spenders until they've acquired enough high-pick talent to compete. Big spenders can't luck their way into multiple high picks in a row.

Like I said, I dunno. The MLB is so fricking convoluted with their lottery and rules.

 

[Manwiththeplan]

I have no clue, but it looks like they are trying to prevent perpetual tanking by getting multiple consecutive lottery picks for teams that maintain a the lowest of salaries.

Also looks like they don't want the highest spending team to ever get back-to-back top 6 picks.

Lastly, in both instances, once you become ineligible the highest pick you can have is 11th regardless of in-season spending.

Seems like a fair trade off. Suckier teams can't just profit off the big spenders until they've acquired enough high-pick talent to compete. Big spenders can't luck their way into multiple high picks in a row.

Like I said, I dunno. The MLB is so fricking convoluted with their lottery and rules.

yea the lottery going 6 deep is enough disincentive to tank imo

 

[Hardline]

I'm not sure how the MLB draft works. I thought it was strage that the Rangers drafted Kumar Rocker with their first round draft pick. Kumar was drafted by the Mets in the 2021 draft and didn't sign and went back into the 2022 draft.

 

[Manwiththeplan]

I'm not sure how the MLB draft works. I thought it was strage that the Rangers drafted Kumar Rocker with their first round draft pick. Kumar was drafted by the Mets in the 2021 draft and didn't sign and went back into the 2022 draft.

This I can explain a bit

MLB has an incredibly tight window to sign drafted players...something close to 30 days. If you can't agree to terms, two things happen. First, the players becomes eligible for the *next year's* draft/return to college/play pro ball outside the MLB. Second, the team that did not sign the player gets compensated with a first round pick one slot after the pick used on the unsigned player.

Now there are a couple of protections in place to stop teams from abusing of this. For starters, *if* a player makes their medical reports available pre-draft the team has to offer a certain percentage of the bonus slotted for that pick. If the team fails to do so, they don't get the compensation pick. Fwiw, Kumar Rocker, did not make his medical records available before the 2021 or 2022 draft which is common for Scott Boras clients. Mets saw something in his medical records (MRI on shoulder) that they didn't like *after* the draft and did not offer a bonus. Thus he was added back to the 2022 draft.

At that point he had a few options. He could have played in an overseas league like Carter Stewart did in 2018 and fwiw, Stewart received $7 million over 6 years which was more in career earnings for the player taken directly in front of him. In addition, Carter Stewart would be an MLB free agent in 2024 about the same time as the players in his draft class hit arbitration. He also could have returned to Vanderbilt, but instead he opted to play pro ball in the US. Obviously didn't get paid much, but was able to show he was healthy and capable of pitching the same as before surgery.

So going into the 2022 draft, he was still by far the best pitching prospect. He was considered just as good and by some better than Rangers 2021 first round pick Jack Leiter who also pitched at Vanderbilt. So imo, it was a no brainer for the Rangers to take Rocker.