But, that taken advantage of young kids also occurs in the domestic draft. Look at the small-market, charity draft picks which I have railed about for so long: the supposedly poor (looking at you Cardinals) teams get a perk of extra draft picks, along with extra $ in the international draft. These are teams who supposedly (with multi-billionaire owners) cannot afford to field a competitive 40-man roster. So, the fix from MLB is not to give them more revenue-sharing $, it's to give them the opportunity to spend more $ signing domestic and international amateurs, thus taking away from what they have available to spend on their MLB lineup. For some teams this 'advantage to make up for poverty' moves close to $2 million from what's available to spend on their MLB roster to signing amateur talent. Isn't this proof positive that this is an advantage, because the bonuses permitted by MLB vastly undervalue these amateurs? Didn't we learn this when Travis Lee and his buddies were declared FAs as amateurs and signed for bonuses far above what normal draftees received that year? Baseball is a system where the owners and veteran players, under cover of an anti-trust exemption, collude to take financial advantage of amateurs, minor leaguers, and major leaguers with less than, effectively, 7 years of service time. No secret about any of this.
Graduate teaching assistants are unionizing. Perhaps it's time for minor leaguers and MLB players with less than 7 years service time to form their own union. It's very clear the current players' union doesn't care a whit about them.
