Craig,

Really, that is all that bother’s you? Almost everything besides “trading draft picks” bothers me about this article. It is monumentally insane, honestly I don’t know where to begin…

How about the notion that you should be paid for “what you have done”? Well theoretically, you already got paid for that. Unless players like Griffey, Hoffman, and Abreu were playing for free? You get a contract/signing bonus based on what the team feels your value to the organization WILL be. Not what it has been. If the reverse were true Jayson Stark should be up in arms about the Giants not offering Barry Bonds 1 trillion dollars next year.

Also, why are we devoting a column to an “unofficial, early-line, insane price tag Scott Boras has theoretically” made? Let us wait and see what happens, no?

Perhaps Mr. Stark could also explain why, since Ryan Howard suffered (can anyone suffer with 26 million in earnings in 7 years?), Stephen Strasburg has to as well? AND while he is at it, maybe he should make a fair comparison. Howard was a fifth round draft pick, meaning 30 teams thought somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 players were better that year than Howard. Not really the case with Strasburg. Howard has proven himself in the big leagues, and will be getting a big pay day soon. Awesome. Strasburg, while not at the MLB level, has proven himself to have other-worldly talent. Why can’t he get paid for that too?

I could go one for hours, but I will stop there.

Why do people support salary controls in sports, but any other industry would be derided as commie bullshit?

what if Harvard MBAs went to Wall St. and said, yeah, sorry, we’ll hire you, but you have to work here for 6 years, and we basically set your wage.  You have no input.  But after 6 years, then you can leave and get paid.  Laughable.

Strasburg should get as much money as he can possibly get.  If Washington doesn’t want to pay him, don’t.  It’s that simple. 

Stark has to know that if Strasburg was a free agent right now, he’d absolutely get signed for $50 million.

Slotting isn’t perfect.  Weren’t there some complaints in the NFL draft this year that Matt Stafford wasn’t really worth #1 pick money?  But someone was going to get it anyway.

Go Craig! My eyes were watering from laughter at the “three score and nine comely lasses.”

Strasburg probably deserves a record bonus. That said, Boras is the same guy who tried to set a signing-bonus record with A-Rod (and failed) and J.D. Drew (and failed). Both times there was just as much outrage.

It really only hurts the player to have to miss out on playing time out of his agent’s spite - Drew would probably be $10-12 million richer today if he hadn’t refused the Phils’ offer and sat out 1997.

Of all the bad things you can say about A-Rod, he has never stood solidly behind Boras in any of his three non-free-agent contract negotiations, choosing his relationship with his team over his relationship with Boras. Hopefully Strasburg can learn from that.

Travis, “where I come from” is following all three major drafts fairly closely, and it’s convention to refer to first-round picks as “number ones, while the first pick is “number one overall.”  I get why you might be confused by it, but it’s a fairly common usage.  Jayson didn’t screw up that fact (perhaps the only one he got right, even).

I wish I had the time and energy to pick apart Stark’s article one paragraph at a time, but that could take a while.

@Travis - One of the reasons Strasburg will get whatever record bonus he gets is precisely because he won’t require five years of development time.  It’s possible he’ll be in the majors to stay before the summer is over.

Won’t the Nats get a theoretical #2 overall if he doesn’t sign? And wouldn’t that give them pretty good leverage to come to an agreement or threaten Boras by making it public knowledge that if you sign with Boras you aren’t getting drafted by the Nats?

themarksmith - players don’t become union members until the first time they are added to a 25-man or 40-man (I forget which) major league roster.  Prospects that sign major-league contracts straight out of the draft are members of the union (which, I believe, is why Boras was so intent on getting Alvarez a major league contract last year.)

KevinS.

Actually, I have to agree with Travis on this one.  I rarely, if ever, hear anyone refer to a first rounder as “a #1 pick”.  I mean, really, I can’t recall a single time I’ve heard or read that before and I can’t imagine a circumstance in which I wouldn’t find it both jarring to my ears and and as erroneous as a simple matter of correct and precise writing.

Simply put, this is really about the draft. Either you have a draft to help balance the competition, or you don’t. If the Nationals cannot afford Strasburg and the Yankees can, how does that balance the competition? The Nationals are supposed to get the #1 pick. If team #30 (not the Yankees this year) signs the real #1 pick because the 29 other teams can’t match his asking price, then the draft idea is bull. If there are no controls on draft bonuses (and I’m not saying there should be) then get rid of the draft and let each team go after the prospects it wants, like it was before the draft.