MLB June Draft 2008 Coverage - Retooling the Ancient Draft for TV

 

MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - This is the second year that the MLB June MLB Draft has been televised on ESPN-2. That's right. America's Pastime doesn't rank ESPN, like the other drafts. MLB gets wedged between Sumo Goldfish Eating and 1957 Olympic Luge Remembered. It has every reason for being there. In fact, if MLB doesn't do something to modernize its player recruitment into relevancy, the whole thing should just go back to the telephones.

Venerable Tradition or Antiquated Format? 

The draft is an old tradition of the game, but has only been on television now for two years.  If you are watching to see the stars of tomorrow, like the other drafts for the NBA, NFL, or even NHL, you are in for a rude awakening. The MLB is not your modern major league draft system.

In nearly seven hours of coverage on both ESPN-2 and MLB.com, no one, not one of the supposed experts, could explain how the draft works. So here, dear fans who may continue to scratch their heads, is the deal. The June drafts are really a minor league restocking system. The first rounds that MLB is pushing, in their current configuration, mean next to nothing. Here is why:

Made in China 

The June Draft was, once upon a time, the primary means of bringing baseball future hall-of-famers. That was in a white America where there was a league for blacks and Hispanics, and professional baseball scouts would call you a  whack-job if you suggested that Sadaharu Oh, the Japanese Babe Ruth, could ever play professional baseball in the United States.

Today, just like everything from our bottled water that comes from Fiji, to your everything else stamped "Made in China," America is a huge importer of baseball talent. 

We get it from the Dominican Republic. We get it from Venezuela, even with that nut-case Hugo Chavez creating a negative atmosphere for America's scouting of Venezuelan talent.  We get it from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and now, even a frew from China.  Hell, put a baseball cap on a dingo and we  get recruits from Australia. As we just showcased in the story of 7-1 Loek Van Mil ("The Long and The Short of It," SZ, 05.01.08), there are even a handful of imports from the Netherlands.  

99% of these players are signed as free agents. Yet, in terms of fast track to the majors, a larger number of these players either become major leaguers straight away, or become top minor league talents.  From  Japan's Dice-K, who was shown the Boston locker room door, to Chin Lung Hu, who whizzed through the minors in the Dodgers farm system,  it is not just Toyota beating up on General Motors. Top international players make up a lot of the excitement factor in the game, and they are not represented in the snooze-fest of the June Draft.

 If You Bend It, More Will Come

Hey wait, Brian, I can hear you say: The June Draft covers none of that. It is, as many in the baseball cognoscenti will tell you, an "amateur" draft. To which I have two words:

Luke Hochevar.

Even MLB dropped the "amateur" reference after 2006, because they now finagle the system for sports-agents-in-need.

Super-agent Scott Boras has parked a client or three in independent baseball when he doesn't like the deal, and his client can't hide in the college ranks for another season. Hochevar was the No. 1 pick in 2006. He also played for the Fort Worth Cats, a professional baseball team in 2005, when Boras couldn't get the right numbers out of the Dodgers, who had drafted him lower. That would seem, to my mind at least, to be a loss of amateur standing.  If MLB can bend the rules for Hochevar, why can't they restructure the whole draft better to meet the global footprint of the modern game?

Retooling the Draft for TV

 If Bud Light and the Baseball Kremlin want to make the Draft a TV showcase, then they need to reformat it. Like the Oscars, which have a technical night, and the big event, MLB needs to split up the draft, and tweak it into the real world to take advantage of the excitement world-wide that drafting an Ichiro or Dice-K might generate.  It would not be altogether different than the current system, save a bit of relabeling, and the admission of the interational players to the draft.

MiLB Draft: There should be an MiLB draft of 45+ rounds that does what the current draft is really intended to do: Stock the farm system with talent.  Some of these guys will defy the experts clipboards, and rise to the major leagues in spite of what the radar gun, or the bad-chili-inspired commentary from scout with the heartburn that day might have overlooked.  The majority are great players who will fill up the ballparks watched by the millions of you who go to minor league games from the Triple-A down to the Dominican Summer League.  Do this on MLB.com. Stick with the telephones, and hold the Mayo.

MLB Draft:  If Bud and the boys in the smoke-free backrooms of big-B Baseball can bend the rules for Boras, why not just change the system to incorporate the exciting players who sell the shirts and hats too?  The MLB Draft would be a made-for-TV three rounds, to include high school players, college players, and eligible international players.  To be eligible for international, a player should come from a high school, college, a national team, or the pros in another country. Of course, if scouts find a Sid Finch in Tibet winging wolves with stones at 160 mph, they can form a Tibetan National Team and import him. The flowing red robes will add such spectacle to the World Baseball Classic's revival in 2009.

Un-Suck the Telecast 

The Draft telecast, either on the 2 or at MLB.com for the remainder of the first eight rounds, was a terrible show. 

For guys who are supposed to be baseball "experts" on the ESPN and the MLB broadcasts, scouts and former scouts as well as former players, it was shameful that none of them could explain the real mechanics of the Draft, or why, even though the TV spectacle only covers two rounds, the whole shebang is 52 rounds, with compensation rounds tossed in, covering plus-or-minus 1500 players. 

Over and over again, through the  E-SPIN coverage they just kept coming up with STUPID spin to cover what they don't know, or cannot divulge per one of the many weird MLB phobias about acknowledging the huge minor league systems beneath MLB.

Whenever the Mets draft picks came up, the talking heads kept reiterating variations of: "Well, you know, they have to keep drafting players to fill in after the Johann Santana deal."

Larry, Moe, Curly and Pete the Elder seem to think that the Mets shipped off most of their farm for Santana.  The fellas from Flushing were flush with bodies already.  As good as Gomez  is, he was not their whole farm.  Is Peter Gammons sliding into senility? Did exposure to the Florida heat at Spring Training  turn Mayo bad?

Maybe they were so busy hob-knobbing in the press room and the major league clubhouse that they missed the huge winter camp that the Mets ran in the spring of 2008, almost double 2007's invitees. The Mets are in a big retooling mode. Their draft is not about the Santana trade. It is about cleaning house in a system that they want to have produce several more Reyes or Wrights or Gomezes.

Pete, baby, take a walk on the minor side, and take the kid with the dome with you.

First Round, Schmirst Round

In the current system, devoid of the international players, the draft system is losing its relevance.

For every Evan Longoria, who was mentioned several times during the Rays draft run, there is the slower rising B.J. Upton, or a train wreck like Delmon Young. The Rays are hoping for a Longoria in 2008's first round pick Timothy Beckham.  If you can believe the scouting reports, or the experts of Baseball America, who just loved Young by the way, then maybe he pans out. Maybe.

Young brings up a good point about the incestuous relationships between both ESPN and MLB and MLB and the Kremlin's official mouthpiece, MLB.com. When the Disney Sports boys talk up football or basketball, the gloves usually come off. They will criticize a bad pick, or remind the folks at home that guys like Young can either develop like glaciers, or crap out.

I'm  starting to suspect that ESPN's baseball broadcast team might be on steroids. They seem to suffer from shrunken stones. ESPN commentators for football, hockey, and basketball all feel free to point out failures as well as successes of players in those systems. The highly sanitized for your protection broadcast yesterday implies a certain amount of editorial pressure to stick to the high road seems to be in play with anything related to MLB coverage.

The Stick to the Wall Factor

Had the talking heads been honest with you, Joseph Fan, they would tell you that there is a whole lot of crap shoot to the process for even the most elite of players.

No clipboard can tell you what happens when a kid gets into the minor league system, and starts getting chewed up every day physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is a big change from playing a few days a week to playing every day. It is a bigger change to be living on your own, with other boy-men who are both playing next to you, and trying to crawl over you, just as you are trying to get past them.  When it goes from pastime to push time, and a lot of money for one of the elite jobs in sports beckons, a lot can happen to even the most stable and talented of prospects.

There are the Justin Uptons who excel under the pressure, and there are the B.J. Uptons and Matt Tuiasosopos, who can only deliver, at best, years down the road. There are the Joel Guzmans who never really live up to their potential.

Then there are the Coolbaughs, Custs and  Clapps, players who are good enough to be spare parts at the Triple-A level and play before sizable crowds at that notch below. These are a lot of the guys who are drafted in the three-and-down rounds.

Just once I would love to hear someone on these broadcasts actually come out and say: He has the tools to be a star Triple-A player, and probably see a few opportunities for a spot in the majors. For several hundred very talented players, that is not only what happens, but, if everyone were being a bit honest, the best that the major league club realistically expects out of a large number of their draft calls.

The Return of the Green Gap 

There is the other 400 pound gorilla in the room: The green cap. Do you really want to sign with the Yankees as a shortstop? Probably not. One of the reasons that the Yankees farm system has sucked so badly is that players know that being trade bait is their best shot to advance if they don't take the mound. You might get traded. You might also just find yourself another spare part in Scranton-Wilkes Barre or Trenton whose future is no more than Gentleman in Waiting.

Like The Rat At KFC, The 'Best Player' Myth 

One of the basic myths that I find that even the most hard-core of sports fans seems to carry around with them, along with their season tickets and their subscription to MLB's pay-per-view, is that the "best" players make it to the major leagues.

Let us just call them the good and the lucky.

How many Joe Thurstons are in Triple-A ball? Guys who, with the right confluence of circumstances, would have been major leaguers. A player retires or is dealt, and you're made. Drop the dice the wrong way, though, and career minor leaguer becomes your fate. Brandon Moss has the stuff to be a major leaguer in many organizations, but he is too valuable to the Red Sox to deal, and not valuable enough to give a starting job at Fenway.  For the Fenwayites who dispute this, remember what you used to tell me about Hanley Ramirez, as well.

You want a career in Major League Baseball? Don't read the much-touted Moneyball. Read Catch-22.

If MLB wants a television show, they should put one on with the International players top prospects PRESENT, and all of the glitz. Leave the rest of the minor league draft to us and Mini-BAM (MinorLeagueBaseball.com).

My shiny two.

- Brian ROSS 

 

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Update on Monday, June 9, 2008 at 09:42AM by Blog Admin

See the full draft, along with the unconventional departure from the usual five-tool atta-boy humdrum at SZ:

http://www.minorleaguenews.com/baseball/features/articles2008/06/draft2008/00.php