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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
CBA: draft lottery
Fascinating, if not downright confusing. I applaud the creativity here at least. And you can see what it is they are trying to do. But it feels more like a patchwork, the kind of thing you’d expect from changes to the tax code. I’d expect the next CBA, or maybe the one after that, will have to streamline this whole process. Anyway, I like it. I just don’t love it.
So, there’s a lottery for six teams from a group of 10-20 predetermined teams, and they get to pick just before the 2nd round. And then another lottery of six more teams from the remaining group (plus more teams based on other criteria), and they pick right after the 2nd round. Lottery picks can be traded, but not the regular picks. (Obviously, a transitional-trial thing that will eventually lead to full trading.)
Finally, the interesting one. We already know about paying above your pool allocation. If Strasburg signed what he did, the Nationals would have not only paid around a 10MM$ fine, they’d also have to forfeit their first round picks in the next two seasons. Forfeiture of those picks ALSO goes into a lottery. I don’t know why they’d have to do that, instead of just moving everyone up 1.
And the whole lottery thing is all weighted based on some combination of winning percentage and market size, depending on which lottery we are talking about.
Like I said: love the creativity, like-not-love the implementation.