Commissioner Rob Manfred has said since he first took office that creating some sort of worldwide or international draft was a priority for him in the current CBA negotiations. While there are rumors that is now being dropped, there is nevertheless a better way for the industry to go about creating a new process without unduly sticking it to the players, one that can simultaneously assuage the union’s concerns about payouts to international amateurs and address some of the real structural flaws in the current system.

The primary function of a draft for any sports league is to artificially restrict player earnings. If unsigned amateur players were free agents, they’d earn more money -- by negotiating with multiple teams -- than they can in a draft, where they can only negotiate with a single team, and where the cost of failure to reach an agreement is asymmetrical: It’s worse for the player, who gets no money and still has to go through a draft the following year, than for the team, which can reallocate the unspent money and gets a replacement draft pick the next year. Yes, a draft can help redistribute talent to the worst teams, assuming those clubs get the highest draft picks or, in the current Rule 4 draft system, the most money to spend, but its main purpose is to hold down payouts to players.

The current system for signing international free agents has accomplished none of its goals, stated or unstated, and if anything has left the industry in a worse position than it was in the previous regime, which was totally unregulated. The new system hasn’t clamped down on bonuses, it hasn’t stopped high-revenue teams from going bananas in signing players and it hasn’t redistributed talent to the weaker teams to maintain competitive balance.