Craig
Brown asked -
Hi Mack, baseball is,
by far, my favorite sport, however the MLB draft is my least favorite to watch
of the major sports. What would you do
to make the draft more watchable and less ridiculous?
Renan
Varghese -
I don't know that there
is a way to necessarily make the MLB draft more watchable and/or entertaining.
A lot of this is just the nature of the beast. College, and especially high
school, ball players don't get nearly the exposure that their counterparts in
basketball and football do. Except for the odd scouting fiend, it's unlikely
that anyone who follows major league baseball will have ever seen so much as a
single game any of the first rounders play. Add to that the fact that unlike
the NBA and NFL, players drafted in baseball likely won't see the big leagues
for anywhere from 2-5 years and it's hard to imagine the casual fan getting
excited about who a team does or does not draft. There are definitely changes
that could be made at the margin, like having the first round televised on ESPN
(although I'm pretty sure that experiment was tried and failed pretty spectacularly),
spotlighting potential draft picks on the Extra Innings pre/post game shows,
etc., it just doesn't seem realistic for the MLB draft to ever become the
event-type programming of other sports.
David Rubin -
I would do two major things. First, I'd allow teams to trade draft picks, but like they do in the NBA, there need to be limits to prevent smaller revenue teams from trading top picks in consecutive years. Second, I'd immediately change the rules so that teams have way more financial leeway to sign all of their picks, including the ability to go over slot if necessary, with less harsh penalties (go over in 2013 by $1,000,000 and your 2014 pool goes down by $500,000, for example. On a smaller scale, I would also have retired players, representing each team, call the names at the podium for at least the first round, instead of Bud Selig, making it more interesting for the television audience AND I'd have a few specials a week or two prior to the draft wherein experts would discuss each team's needs AND different experts would preview the best players at each position, making them more accessible to the audience as well.
Mack –
Well, first of all they
need a Mel Kyper who could talk 30
seconds about each one of these kids while tape is run from the highlights of
their game. You know, a draft expert. Someone like… me… email:
macksmets@gmail.com (I don’t need no stinking agent…)
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