The MLB draft is fast approaching, and unless you've been living under a rock the last 3 or 4 months, you've probably heard that pitcher Stephen Strasburg of San Diego State is the runaway pick to be taken first this year. He throws 100 MPH, is striking out around 2 batters per inning and threw a 17 K no-hitter earlier in the year. Strasburg's adviser, Scott Boras (cue the Imperial March from Star Wars), is rumored to be looking for a record shattering bonus from the Washington Nationals, the holders of the first pick. On the Nationals side of things, they desperately need something to get fans excited about their team and the cache that Strasburg possesses is something that they can't even consider passing on.

So it's a perfect match, right? Well, not so fast, writes Tim Marchman of CNNSI.com. He makes a fairly compelling argument that it may not be in the Nationals best interest to hold on to the pick and pay Strasburg what he is demanding. After all, they aren't close to contending for anything at this point and have more extensive needs than simply getting a top of the rotation starter. Add in some real concerns about Strasburg possibly having a limited shelf life, and one can reasonably say the Nationals would be wise to consider trading the top pick. The only problem with that is that teams cannot trade draft picks. This is where Marchman makes his best point:

This would be the most basic sort of economic transaction: One party with a valuable but possibly depreciating asset trading it for assets of less immediate value more likely to appreciate with time. It could position Washington to run the table in the National League East in the near future; it could mean a pennant or two or many to a team willing to take a calculated risk. And under the rules, it can't happen.

It's a compelling argument. Even if the Nationals couldn't take the public relations hit of trading away the rights to the top pick with a fanbase that is already accusing the organization of penny pinching, they should at least have the option to use the asset of the first pick in the way it could best help them build a winning organization. As Marchman points out, they could probably land a bevy of prospects to help fill out their thin system in exchange for the pick, and that could very possibly be more valuable than simply drafting and signing Strasburg. After this, though, is where things start to go very wrong for the article.

Baseball is a moralistic sport, one that promotes free competition for talent but guards against the prospect of one team becoming too rich or too powerful with several vacuous hedges, the worst of which amount in essence to protecting teams from themselves. No matter how much it's in their self-interest to do so, a team can't sell or buy a player with more than a relatively token sum of money involved, and unlike the other major team sports it can't trade or sell draft picks. The nominal purpose of this is to ensure that the weakest teams get the best talent; in practice it's more about keeping the best teams from getting it, and thus about preventing an efficient spread of talent throughout the game.

That begins harmlessly enough, as a good case that can be made is that the only reason for the prohibition of trading draft picks is to protect teams from themselves. Where Marchman takes it too far is when he extends that argument to include buying and selling players under the heading of protecting teams from themselves. That rule exists in direct response to owners in the first half of the 20th century who used their teams as piggy banks to finance outside areas of personal interest. It was correctly decided that fans should not have to suffer the outrage of having an owner simply sell off good players to turn a buck without getting player compensation in return.

Where it really gets dicey, though, is where Marchman claims that these rules are meant to prevent "an efficient spread of talent throughout the game" because they prevent the best teams from easy access to the best players at any given time with any given means. He seems to have a real problem with the notion that there would be restrictions that prevent the powerful (read: wealthy) teams from acquiring all the talent their money can buy. It may be more "efficient" for talent to find it's way to the wealthiest teams even more quickly than it already does in a purely Economics 101 sense, but what would lowering restrictions on that flow of talent mean to the non-wealthy teams in the game? What else would following this argument that talent should be free to move to the best heeled teams ASAP bring upon the game in general? It is the restrictions on player movement (the 6 year control period for players, arbitration, the reverse order of finish draft) that allow small market teams like the Brewers to compete with the big money boys to begin with.

Finally, after Marchman pays some lip service to the notion that; "Lousy teams aren't unworthy of premier players; rich ones don't deserve them by right." he manages to pass off one final bit of wrongheaded analysis:

That Washington is prevented from following on a rational line of argument, though, and that other teams won't even have the chance to make the kinds of offers that built the Dallas Cowboys and ruined the New York Knicks, is a small disgrace. And it would be a somewhat larger one if Strasburg, at the peak of his powers, were kept from baseball's grandest stage by nothing other than a vague fear of a caste system, in a day when the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers have an easier time making the playoffs than the New York Mets.

Where do you even start with that? First off, baseball teams may not be able to make the trade for future commodity in the form of a draft pick, but there is nothing stopping them from trading prospects a year after being signed for "win now" players. That makes things a little more difficult, but doesn't stop talent from finding it's way to the best teams dead in it's tracks. Furthermore, why is it a capital crime that Stephen Strasburg should be kept off of the "grandest stage" at the "peak of his powers?" It happens in every sport, even the ones that allow draft picks to be traded, all the time!  When is the last time a #1 pick in the NBA or NFL played in their respective sport's championship in their rookie year? Even within a few years?

The coup de grace is that last bit about the Brewers and Rays supposedly having an "easier time making the playoffs" than the Mets. It's a nice little try to slip one past the goalie at the end of a period, as it were, but it's just such a clumsy shot that it looks silly. Clearly, it is not actually easier for the Brewers or Rays to consistently contend for playoff spots than the Mets. The fact that they made it last year and the Mets did not is proof that it is possible for smaller markets to overcome their limitations and beat out a big boy, not that those restrictions make it easier for them. It may seem like picking at nits, and perhaps it is, but these sorts of arguments are made all the time by fans of larger market teams to justify the large discrepancy in means between the haves and have nots. It's exactly this sort of slippery mention by Marchman that feeds that mindset and the more prevalent it becomes the more difficult it will likely become to address the revenue differences between the various teams in the game. It's a big market first mindset, barely disguised.

(H/T to Lake County for the heads up on the article)