The Kumar Rocker fallout has mostly washed past now, with the cosmos bestowing upon the Mets a swift descent from first place and Major League Baseball bestowing upon the Mets the eleventh overall pick in next year’s draft (in addition to their conventional first round pick).
It’s a terrible situation for Rocker, who not only does not now get the roughly five million dollars (possibly more) he would have received as a signing bonus, but also must now wait a year and most likely pitch in independent ball until next season’s draft, a time in which he won’t receive the medical care or the developmental opportunities MLB organizations afford prospects. (For those wondering: Minor league salaries are so low, even for top prospects, that the gap between them and Rocker’s pennies of an independent league salary pales in comparison to the absence or at best delay of that bonus.)
It’s not that bad for the Mets.
It is, of course, bad. The Mets were set to get a prospect FanGraphs rates as a 50 Future Value pitcher, which their system equates to roughly $21M in value. They were set to get this prospect for only about $5M (again, possibly more, but not $16M more). Their farm system would be ranked eleventh or twelfth. It’s now 18th. This looks like a big sacrifice to make, implying a lot of concern over Rocker’s health (the stated reason for no contract being offered).
But that compensatory pick…
With the eleventh pick next summer, a reasonable expectation is that the Mets will be able to acquire a 45 or 45+ FV player for close to slot value, and while there’s uncertainty over what slot value will be (there’s especially high uncertainty this year because of the pending CBA renegotiation), you can generally write this up as a $4M bonus and a $6M-ish prospect value.
This is a far cry short of the $21M in value they’d have received from Rocker, but at the same time, there’s a big drop off as you climb those FV ratings. A 45 FV pitcher is worth $4M. A 45+ FV pitcher is worth $6M. A 50 FV pitcher is worth $21M. A 55 FV pitcher is worth $34M. Grayson Rodriguez, the only 60 FV pitcher currently in the minor leagues, is worth $60M to his employer, the Baltimore Orioles. It’s a steep curve, and even a small drop brings along with it a massive decline in value, meaning the Mets might just have questions about Rocker’s arm, and not exceptionally serious concerns. In their eyes, if he’s even just one step down from FanGraphs’s evaluation, and thus a 45+ FV prospect, they were making a $5M-for-$6M-this-year vs. $4M-for-$6M-next-year decision, one in which immediacy of value fruition was evidently outweighed by that extra million (or more) and the value of holding that money for an additional year.
This doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with Kumar Rocker. It means the Mets think there’s something wrong with Kumar Rocker. Wrong enough to drop him down a notch in prospect ratings. Maybe more. Probably not less.
The Mets could be right. The Mets could be wrong. We’ll likely find out, depending where Rocker’s career takes him, first of all over this year ahead of us. But what happened here, the thing that went wrong, the thing that put Kumar Rocker in a tough position, is that the draft system limited Rocker’s leverage and the Mets evidently discovered he wasn’t the asset, specifically in terms of physical health, for which they thought they were about to make an investment.
How do you stop this? It’s hard. It’s really hard. Because the CBA, the thing that dictates these rules, is negotiated by team owners, who have incentives to pay less money to draftees, and active major league baseball players, who have incentives for team owners to pay less money to draftees. Two parties, a limited sum of money, each gets more if they limit how much draft picks can receive. Eventually, yes, draft picks become major league players, but more don’t than do, and by the time they do, their incentives have changed.
I don’t know how to stop a system like that. The best way for it to work, in terms of draftees receiving payments corresponding to their value, would be to either do away with the draft entirely or to allow players to enter free agency if they don’t sign with the team that drafts them. Neither of these solutions seems realistic, though, because again: Nobody at the negotiation table has an incentive to change this. “Competitive balance” is the phrase owners will use to discourage either, but this isn’t just about the poor little Pirates getting to spend less money. It’s about the big fat Mets getting to spend less money, and the other 28 teams getting to spend less money, and active major league players receiving more money because the supply is greater than it otherwise would be (even if owners are pocketing a lot of cash either way).
Ultimately, I guess, all there is to do is to at least include mention of the MLBPA in criticisms of the owners (who will not open their books and give us clear pictures of their financials despite crying poor in an era in which the sums for which franchises sell are skyrocketing) for outcomes like that of Rocker. And to point out, with regard to Marcelo Mayer and Henry Davis and Kahlil Watson and Jordan Lawlar and Colton Cowser, the five FanGraphs 50 FV position players drafted (even more valuable than 50 FV pitchers), that each is worth at least four times the bonus they brought in, based on FanGraphs’s analysis of rankings and eventual production over the years.
