Nats Receive “Bad” News Re: Strasburg

I Hope This Guy Has Some Really Thick Skin

A couple pieces of news regarding Nationals #1 overall pick Stephen Strasburg came out today.

First was the news that Strasburg received a couple of awards at the inaugural College Baseball Foundation Awards. Strasburg earned the player of the year AND the pitcher of the year awards solidifying that he was the unquestioned best player available in this year’s first-year player’s draft.

It was noted that Strasburg seemed to be taking it all in and looking back over his year and his career at San Diego State University.

But like a good Scott Boras client, Strasburg offered this quote despite not even being close to signing with the Nationals, "There's always another day. Anything can happen. You've just got to take every new day as a blessing and go from there. It's been a great experience but at the same time I'm sure I'm going to have a lot of fun for many years to come playing baseball."

The question is: where will he be having “a lot of fun for many years to come playing baseball."

In an article in the Washington Post this morning, Dave Sheinen (with contributions from Chico Harlan) reports that Strasburg’s agent – Scott Boras – intends to use Strasburg much in the same way he used J.D. Drew back in the late 1990’s to break apart MLB’s drafting system.

Boras makes some good points in that American and Canadian born players are forced into the draft where players are inserted into the “slotting system” that MLB has used for keeping rookie salaries in check. Meanwhile, there seems to be no checks and balances on foreign born players. Clubs are free to open an academy anywhere in the world and sign players for whatever they want. With the wealth of academies in the Dominican Republic, teams often will overpay a young, unknown player just to get him to the academy while an American or Canadian kid must enter the draft and is at the mercy of the slotting system.

There does seem to be a genuine unfair advantage for the non-American/Canadian born players. Even worse, Puerto Rico is considered an American territory, so a Puerto Rican child is subject to the same rules as the American or Canadian kids despite the severe disadvantage of under-exposure.

The big loophole here is that Cuban defectors and Japanese players are also considered free-agents despite very well-developed professional teams and leagues in both countries. This is where Boras will hang his hat.

Should the Nationals fail to sign Strasburg for the asking price of somewhere in the neighborhood of FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS (despite the fact that no player has ever received more than 10.5 million) then he will take his prized commodity to Japan and let him play there for one year before becoming a free agent for MLB.
Sounds like a great plan – except that due to recent pirating of Japanese players by teams in MLB; Strasburg, surrounded by all this hype regarding what he’s doing, is not likely to be picked up by a Japanese team knowing that he fully intends on using them.

Nippon Professional Baseball’s marketing director Iratu Kobayashi explains:

"This will do more harm than good to the NPB club. [Strasburg] will not be welcomed, neither by the teammates or the media," Kobayashi said. "It is not easy to sympathize with a guy who comes to Japan just as [part of] a negotiation process to squeeze more millions out of [an MLB] club."

"We would not do what we do not want others to do to us," Kobayashi said, "unless we really have to do so."

Combine this with the legal battle plus the anti-trust exemption for MLB and this could get messy – REALLY messy. Not signing with the Nationals could be the least of Strasburg’s worries.

Thing is, Boras tried this with J.D. Drew using the independent leagues which, since they pay their players, is considered “professional” baseball. Boras argued that since Drew was then a professional baseball player he was no longer eligible for the “amateur” draft. MLB’s response was to change the name (without consult of the union) to the “first year player’s” draft.
The union argued on behalf of Drew but ultimately was shot down since the union represents the MLB players and Drew was not a union member.

If you can recall the career of J.D. Drew, he never really turned out to be the superstar Boras was hoping for and he never really seemed to be able to handle all of the grief he received for trying to be the guy to break the system – and it’s not like we’re talking about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier here, this is just a guy who didn’t like the drafting system. J.D. Drew is a decent player, but he’s nothing special. Perhaps his legacy would’ve paved the way for Strasburg had he been a superstar player.

As it stands now, Strasburg is willing to be pawn #2 for Scott Boras. Perhaps he should talk to J.D. drew and ask him how to better handle the situation. Drew never recovered from the turmoil and baseball as a sport will suffer if Strasburg fails to live up to what everyone thinks he should be just because his renegade agent wants has a vendetta against MLB.

Better yet, maybe he should talk to J.D. Drew and find out if it’s even worth the trouble.