I Did Not Know That

We're in the middle of the Major League Baseball draft, which is by far the least exciting draft of the three major sports, mainly because with only a few exceptions the 'studs' being drafted don't show up for a few years, and the stars in the league are as likely to be 27th round picks as they are first rounders.

That being said, I did not know this -- teams are NOT allowed to trade draft picks. This story on Yahoo Sports shows some famous examples from other sports - the Herschel Walker trade in the NFL, John Elway being drafted by the Colts, Kobe Bryant by the Charlotte Hornets (something I'd forgotten - though I did remember that Scottie Pippen was drafted by the Sonics, not the Bulls).

In baseball, you not only can't trade the pick, you can't trade a drafted player for a year after they were picked.

Why? Nobody seems to know. And it's this quote from Richard Thaler (economist from my MBA alma mater, the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business) that really makes you go, "Hmmm..."

“I cannot think of any good reason why MLB would have such a rule, unless it is worried that the teams with the highest picks are not capable of making good decisions...It has to help the teams with the top picks to have the option of trading them for additional picks.”

 Yeah, that sort of has the ring of truth to it, doesn't it?

I see this as problematic; what about you?