As a baseball player, Jered Weaver is pretty good. As a restless pawn in a long-playing skirmish between the owners and the players' union, not so good.
The Angels selected Weaver in the first round of the 2004 draft. And then he sat around and did nothing, for months upon months, while adults with various motivations debated his price tag.
"That," Weaver said, "was the toughest time of my life."
He wanted to be a baseball player, not a poster child for greed, not an aggrieved victim of the system. He got advice from his mother and father. He got advice from his big brother, Dodgers pitcher Jeff Weaver, and from his agent, Scott Boras.
"There were four different people telling me 45 different things," Weaver said.
No player should have to endure what Weaver did. On the eve of the 2009 draft, with Boras hinting at the mother of all bonus battles on behalf of San Diego State phenom Stephen Strasburg, the owners and players' union ought to commit to draft reform that pays players fairly and promptly and enables the worst teams to select the best players rather than pass on them for fear of not signing them.
Weaver was widely regarded as the top pitcher available in the 2004 draft, but he was the ninth pitcher selected, falling to the Angels after Boras floated $10 million as a signing bonus. The Angels eventually signed him for $4 million; no player in the draft signed for more.
The San Diego Padres had the No. 1 pick in that draft. They had neither the dollars nor the stomach for Boras, so they chose a shortstop named Matt Bush, signed him for $3.15 million and watched in horror as he deteriorated into one of the all-time busts in draft history.
It comes as little surprise, then, that owners covet a bonus scale, with each draft pick receiving a specified amount.
The NBA has one. The first pick in the June 25 NBA draft gets a contract for $4.15 million next season, the second pick gets $3.72 million, and so on, with a bonus of up to 20%.
"You have some cost certainty, but, frankly, that is not the biggest benefit," said Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president for labor relations.
"The biggest benefit is restoring the integrity of the draft. If you know Round 1, Slot 1, is going to cost you X dollars, you have no motivation to do anything other than take the best player."
The owners proposed slot payments for draft picks in the last two rounds of collective bargaining; the union rejected the proposal each time.
