Why is there a Baseball draft?

I'm not sure why this trade is even relevant to the discussion. In addition, the Flyers gave up two first round picks and $15 million.
There was no "trade" because the cards were all in the Nordiques' hand

 

More earning power for individual players is not necessarily the best thing for the sport.

Sure, the Yankees only have nine players on the field at any given time. Of course, that doesn't take into account all of the starting pitchers, so it's a bit of a manipulation of the facts.

But we're not talking about guys who are going straight to the majors, for the most part. We're talking about guys who are a few years away from the majors, but looking for that first big contract. Not to mention the fact that the Yankees aren't the only team in MLB with a financial advantage on a large percentage of the competition.

For the most part, abolishing the draft would leave the teams with the biggest payrolls picking and choosing among the elite prospects, leaving the scraps for the teams without the deep pockets.

 

There is at least one huge assumption underpinning this assertion. And I'm not trying to be snippy about it, because it was an elephant-in-the-room thing for me when I came up on it.

This assertion assumes that there are elite prospects, i.e., those whose relative likelihood of making it to the bigs is known (or can be estimated with some workable degree of accuracy) and is substantially higher than the rest. It could be that all (or the vast majority of) the draftable prospects are largely undifferentiated (in terms of big-league potential). The degree to which that's the case -- and, seriously, some heavy-duty work has been done along those lines to suggest it's not out of the question -- would strongly influence whether the scenario you lay out is likely.

 

There is risk in all player acquisition, including the pursuit of veterans. Being able to buy the most likely players to succeed is still an advantage, even if the bet isn't quite as safe as it is with guys who have already proven themselves.

 

That's a perfectly valid assertion, and it certainly reflects widely held views regarding the acquisition of baseball talent absent a draft. But it doesn't quite touch on what I was getting at. Perhaps I am being foolish in continuing this, but what the heck, it beats working. Anyway, here goes.

For simplicity's sake, let's assume that every player signed in a given year has some potential as a major-leaguer. We'll call that potential P.

Let's further assume that there aren't any sure things. Each player's potential (P) is clouded by substantial uncertainty (U). Each team evaluates each player (let's assume) and comes up with a valuation (V) of that player. Highly valued players are selected by the big budget teams and are paid more. Each player's valuation reflects his underlying potential (P) net of the uncertainty (U). In some cases, U drags V down (so V is actually less than P). In others, it goes the other way, resulting in a V that is larger than P.

Now, I'd like to consider two scenarios. In the first, there's NO variation in potential. That is, all however the hell many prospects there are in a given year are EXACTLY equal in potential. So variation in player values in this scenario is simply noise; the top-shelfers are simply lucky in having their value inflated by uncertainty. Over time, if this scenario is truly the case, then big-budget teams won't wind up with superior talent, they'll simply wind up with heftier payrolls.

In the second scenario, there is variation in potential. The question then becomes how much variation there is relative to how much uncertainty there is. If talent differences are small (relative to the uncertainty), then only over the very long term would big budget teams wind up having signed more than their fair share of top-shelf players. And it could easily be the case that that long term is so long that it has no practical effect on competition; just because you’ve signed five more “true” top-shelfers than your competitors over the last 30 years doesn’t mean they ever were on the same roster.
This was the idea I was getting at: So long as the signal to noise ratio is relatively small, there’s no competitive advantage that necessarily accompanies having a big budget. This doesn’t address signing veterans, of course.

 

Mizzou used Lindros as an example of a bust. he admitted that was wrong. i was just saying Mizzou probably could've said Lindros fell short of expectations. He was considered far and away the best in the draft. Now that both careers are over there is no way he was way better than Forsberg.

 

Scouting may be an inexact science, but it isn't useless. Either of your scenarios basically dismiss it as useless.

 

I agree with you that scouting is both an inexact science, but neither of the scenarios dismiss it as useless. Rather, they assume that scouting ability is equally distributed across all teams. That is, no team is systematically better than others at scouting. I would argue this is a more realistic assumption than the one in which all the players are equally talented. In myriad real-world settings, competitors all conduct a basic task at which they are equally proficient even though there might be a substantial payoff to being better than others at it. This results from technological diffusion patterns in which gains in proficiency quickly spread to/are imitated by all interested parties.

And thanks for seriously considering my post.

 

I agree 100 percent. Well put.

 

I would argue that neither assumption is correct, though obviously the idea that all prospects are equal is farther from the truth. That said, there are definitely teams that scout better than others.

That said, if teams actually did have the same ability to scout, or at least a difference so small as to be insignificant, that wouldn't hurt my argument one bit. If everybody has the same knowledge, then it comes down to signability with the top prospects and that favors the big markets.