NEWSLETTER
Trades like this are exactly why ALL MLB draft picks need to be tradable! This is interesting stuff!
The Royals, who are permitted trade their Competitive Balance picks (the only tradable picks), just got together on a deal with the Braves:
The Braves clearly must have a target in mind for that 35th pick and how they want to use the pool space. And the Royals, maybe not as enamored by the back-end-of-the-first area, instead decided to just go straight for prospects. I love the idea of this trade, even if I don’t particularly care THAT much about the draft implications (neither the Royals nor the Braves pick ahead of the Cubs in the first round, so this isn’t about some surprising pre-draft arrangement with a top seven pick, which would directly affect the Cubs).
If you remember Waters’ name, it’s probably because he was for a long time mentioned in various trade rumors, since the Braves already had Christian Pache set for a future in center field … except now the Braves have traded BOTH glove-first center fielders. A lot of the shine has worn off Waters, by the way, because he hasn’t yet been able to hit at Triple-A (he’s 23, for what it’s worth). Hoffman, 22, is already a top 20 system prospect and dominating at High-A after being a 12th(!) round pick for the Braves just last year – those are the kinds of wins you NEED TO HAVE in the draft in rounds 11 through 20. And C.J. Alexander is a fringy, tool-based prospect who hasn’t hit yet at Double-A.
As for the bigger picture issue, there was some hope that the new CBA would make all draft picks tradable, but things got so contentious and delayed and absurd that no one even had time to discuss something like that. You can assume the continued resistance to making all picks tradable is probably from those who fear that big-market teams would find ways to simply start “buying up” the picks, and MLB doesn’t want to screw with parity in that way (or the cost-controlled options for small-market clubs).
