The dust has cleared on the Stephen Strasburg signing and thankfully so, because the only thing worse than Scott Boras waxing self-righteous about the injustice of the baseball draft is Scott Boras justifiably waxing self-righteous about the baseball draft.
Baseball's amateur draft (like its football, basketball and hockey counterparts) is collusion among legal monopolists focused on reducing labor costs. I can't blame any agent for trying to bust up a system that deprives his clients of millions of dollars.
When foreign players make their services available, MLB teams bid the ranch for them, so we know what valuable properties like Strasburg are worth to them. The draft is a mechanism for limiting risk and preventing the Strasburgs from commanding those fees.
But you won't find me bemoaning the fate of prospects who can't rake in the millions before they've even made a Double-A lineup. Players who demonstrate that they are worth the money eventually get it. It's hard to cry "indentured servitude" about employees whose apprenticeships only return a half-million dollars per annum.
Principle is not the reason that Strasburg "settled" for $15.1 million. He pushed his negotiations as far as he could and cashed in at the moment his leverage was about to crater. Had he not signed in '09, there's no guarantee that anyone would give him what he wanted in '10...or ever. In that time, his arm could go limp or some Venezuelan in an independent league could clang a fastball back off his cranium and -- poof! -- there goes Mr. Payday, out the door with Ms. Health Insurance.
Principle may be Scott Boras's bag, knowing that a talent like Strasburg could command double in a real free market. Boras has future clients and a long time horizon to consider, but Stephen Strasburg does not. That's why the Nationals brass are correctly considering the fattest contract for a drafted player to have been a victory for them: they got their man and didn't have to break up the cartel.
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