Major League Baseball has determined the orders of Competitive Balance Rounds A and B for the 2021 amateur draft, Mike Rosenbaum of MLB.com reports. Comp Round A takes place after the first round of the draft, while Comp Round B goes down at the conclusion of the second round. The selections are comprised of picks awarded to teams that are considered in the bottom 10 in terms of winning percentage, market size and/or revenue.
Here’s the 2021 order as of now:
Round A
30) Marlins
31) Tigers
32) Brewers
33) Rays
34) Reds
35) Twins
Round B
65) Pirates
66) Orioles
67) Royals
68) Diamondbacks
69) Rockies
70) Indians
71) Cardinals
72) Padres
These draft choices can be traded, which means the order listed above isn’t necessarily set. However, these picks can only change hands during the regular season, and they can do so just once. Furthermore, qualifying offer decisions from this offseason will shake up the draft order to some extent. The Reds (Trevor Bauer), Phillies (J.T. Realmuto), Astros (George Springer) and Yankees (DJ LeMahieu) each handed out a QO at the beginning of the offseason, but they were rejected. The Reds and Phillies stand to earn the highest compensatory picks if their players walk away, Rosenbaum notes.
What a crock of $hit. 7 of those teams made the playoffs and every year get an extra pick or 2.
Except these picks are not awarded by win-loss.
From MLB.com
The 10 lowest-revenue clubs and the clubs from the 10 smallest markets are eligible to receive a Competitive Balance pick (fewer than 20 clubs are in the mix each year, as some clubs qualify under both criteria). All eligible teams are assigned a pick, either in Competitive Balance Round A or Round B. Round A falls between the first and second rounds of the Rule 4 draft, while Round B comes between the second and third.
Under the 2017-21 CBA, six clubs will be awarded picks in Round A based on a formula that considers winning percentage and revenue. Those six teams will pick in Round A in 2017, 2019 and 2021. The remaining teams — estimated to be between six and eight — will pick in Round B in those years. The groups of teams, which will not change for the duration of the 2017-21 CBA, will switch picking in Round A and B in alternating years based on their initial assignment of round in 2017.
So the teams were picked in 2017 and will not be repicked until the 2022 draft, if there are still competitive balance picks in the next CBA
I think he understood they weren’t based off of w/l. It is terrible that a team like the Cardinals get an extra pick every year
I am fine with competitive balance picks for everyone but the cardinals. What a crock. Their revenues are absurd and their market consist of 4 entire states.
yeh if ur a Cubs fan
But MLB doesnt count the 4 state media market. It only counts for the exact city. So that’s why the Cardinals were on the list. It’s a combination of media market and population.
Exactly. It’s a loophole to an undeserving team. They have 180 million dollar payroll and a franchise worth 2.2 billion dollars.
I’m a Mets fan and I think it’s a crock.
Yeah, the Cardinals dont belong on that list whatsoever!!
That’s absurd..That’s the equivalent of the Braves getting a draft pick
So the Cardinals should be punished for being a small market that does very well in spite of the market size? Should we only reward incompetently run small market teams? or teams that just pocket the money and don’t try to improve?
They shouldn’t be compensated for it either.
as a die hard cards fan i don’t believe we should get a comp pick unless it fall under the fa rules. i get sick of the whole we’re small market when we draw like the big markets.
as a cards fan i agree we’re not “small market” we only qualify because we don’t count the sub cities that make up the stl metro area. even that aside cards are in an area that is in top 15 to 20 of metro areas in the us and draws fans as well as teams like lad or nyy. so this crap that were small market is bs
Yeh?
St. Louis is a slightly smaller market size than Pittsburgh. But I assume you’re from St. Louis? Therefore you follow the NHL? Would it be fair for the blues or penguins to receive competitive balance picks? Absolutely not, because they’re outliers in that sport, just as the cards are in MLB. You have the 2nd most World Series victories, stop being a victim. I, as a penguin fan with close to 20 consecutive playoff appearances should not be allowed to complain
Cardinals should not have an extra pick
TOTALLY AGREE
@Red Wings
It his pure Horse Schiff
Or, we could just not implement any quasi-Utopianism methodologies and let baseball just be baseball, and the draft be the draft every year without “Competitive Balance.”
Start the complaints in 3..2..1..
Complaints are valid. What other sport gives away free picks for the heck of it. Other sports would laugh at this idea.
Other sports have Salary Caps, to prevent the NY, LA, Chi, and Philly teams from loading up and signing all the top Free Agents. Baseball has no Salary Cap. The Comp picks are a way to throw a bone at the Small market teams, whom best players get raided and overpaid by teams like the Mets.
Ahhh, poor small market teams, I got there bone right here. There’s too many teams to begin with, you can’t cut it, to bad, tough $hit, Next!
NYstate, would you prefer a salary cap instead? Or how about destroying the game by having a Yankmes, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, Angels, Giants league of big-market teams with the others being shamed out of existence?
You’re missing the point. Those clubs that you listed, for the most part, generate the income for the sport. There should be a salary cap floor, but the tax is ludicrous, you would want players making the most money.
Do you want those clubs on TV because that’s what’s playing Kansas City’s salary
there doesn’t need to be a cap or compensation. all of these teams make plenty of money to compete and most of the cheaper teams find success without spending stupid money. lux tax is all you need if even that.
If there was no Salary Cap in football, the NY Jets and NY Giants would be able to buy their way out of poor Draft picks and Free Agent decisions. How about we make them responsible for their decision making? Not every team has access to the same Revenue streams and can simply throw money to cover up their bad decisions.
There were only 16 teams as late as 1960, 30 teams are way too many. If you buy a MLB team & cant afford to run it without hand outs & welfare see my previous comment, too bad, tough $hit, Next!
Your treating this like multiple retail companies competing for the same market and if one goes out of business it is not likely to impact the other. The league grew larger so teams could be in more markets, so those markets (although possibly smaller) would become new and repeat consumers and contribute to the overall revenues for the league. The product is Major League Baseball. I do believe there should be more accountability for teams that are mismanaged but that is at all revenue levels as a poorly run Met team probably has a bigger impact on overall MLB revenue than my Pirates not generating revenue.
“More accountability”? There’s NONE! Thanks for the knowledge bomb comrade Buc, now let me drop one on you. They are MLB franchises not Burger Kings, there’s a reason you don’t see Rolex dealers on every corner. Think about it.
The fact that you named the Mets invalidates your argument.
Awwww they don’t have access to the same revenue streams. They all have access to billionaires for owners.
The Lakers signed LeBron James in free agency and the Clippers signed Kawhi Leonard in free agency, so the NBA salary cap doesn’t prevent the Los Angeles teams from signing the best free agents.
So, you’re forcing players to take less money by permitting teams with less money to draft them first and then capping the bigger teams from outspending them? Imagine if the US were run this way, we’d…… uh, we, kinda… well, NY, NJ, CA, OR, MI, MA,….. well it worked… no, no, hold on now (carry the 3, add the 1). NOPE, it fails, every time!
Ah yes, those poor ‘small market’ teams that lined their pockets with revenue sharing cash year after year instead of reinvesting it into their on-field product. I feel so bad for them. *eye roll*
Yes but being in the bigger market has better marketing opportunities for star players. Further hurting small market teams. Even if a small market team decides to match what the big dogs are willing to pay for a player, the player can still easily be swayed to the big market club where he is more marketable.
The large market teams make MORE money by paying out revenue sharing to the small market teams than they would make if all those smaller teams just went away. Those smaller teams are what help engage more than 75% of the country, bringing in those precious ad dollars.
I guess it depends on how do you define, the heck of it. NFL has compensatory picks. Basketball does a lotto draft for 14 teams that didn’t make the playoffs (but the odds are different for all but 3…)
Based on free agents they lost. That would be the qualified offer equivalent, not this.
Pathetic annual chairtiy. Padres signed a below average 1B for 140 million. Signed Machado and STILL considered pursuing Harper. Gave Pomeranz 34 million after 2 good months. But yeah they need a free pick… and you can do this for a number of team. End MLB draft pick welfare.
Padres should be a big market team, but their payroll shows they high average.
They may have a “few” high priced players but most of their team takes advantage of extra picks.
The Rats, err I mean the Rays get the 33rd pick after losing the World Series, really? Really! That’s one hell of a system MLB has there.
You think getting a pick in the 30s is better compensation than letting the Yankees spend as much as they want? It is sad when Yankees fan complain that their 200M+ team can’t compete with the Rays spending 50-65M because they get one extra R1 pick. Lol.
You guys ever reflect on why everyone outside your little NY bubble hates your team and organization?
NYY fans are hardly the only fans opposing the competitive balance picks for successful teams like the Cards and Rays. In fact, I believe NYstateofmind2 is the only one. So stop singling us out for a complaint that many, many, many fans are making. Love you guys who like to pretend that NYY fans are the ONLY ones who do X, Y or Z. It’s never true. Whatever it is, fans from ALL fan bases do it. Look around and adopt some objectivity. Then maybe you’ll see how inaccurate, biased, and misplaced your childish hatred is.
You guys ever reflect on why there’s more Yankee fans than rat fans in that joke of a stadium you call the trop? I’ll give you 27 guesses. Btw, the clock strikes midnight this year on your flaky little team.
That flaky little team has beaten the Yanks while spending a percentage of the amount of money…
I certainly would consider talking crap about almost any other team..EXCEPT the Ray’s, which is one of the best ran organizations, and often leading the pack in new trends..
Then why don’t I talk $hit about the Braves, how many championships do you guys have? 3 and if you exclude Boston & Milwaukee 1! Trends fade pretty quickly, just like the rats will this year, back to the cellar where they belong.
You’re the textbook example of why people hate New York sports and the people in general, just gross
WTH do you know about NY, or sports for that matter, what are you 12? “Just gross”
You can just hate @NYstateofmind2 with hating hating everyone from NY. I think most people would be OK with that.
Okay, for baseball, comparing the Rays to the Yankees payrolls is disingenuous because it provides the illusion that it’s apples to apples. Now, I must say the Rays org is very well run, but without the Yankees and teams like them, the Rays don’t exist. Without CBPs, the Rays, no matter how incredibly well run they are, don’t hold a candle to 10 other teams in the league.
So let’s not pretend like they with their 65 million payroll alone made to to the WS. They’ve been stocked with talent from getting advantages like these in addition, which makes a big difference. The Yankees, who are competitive every year, must pay FA because there is no tanking in NY.
I think most people would be ok calling you a crazy, old bag lady while they bounced nickels off your forehead just to watch you chase them down the street for another cheap bottle of wine.
MLB’s competitive balance draft picks are basically (part of) their alternative to a salary cap as the other major sports have. Everyone can have their opinion on it, but it was collectively bargained. We’ll see what happens after the next CBA.
Competitive Balance needs to be re-worked. These “small market” teams seem to do quite well in the regular season, perhaps due to the additional high pick. The big market teams buy their way into the playoffs with big playoffs. The teams in the middle get neither advantage.
Solution? Maybe move the CB picks to later rounds so there is less distinction between small-market and mid-market or give the mid-market teams an extra pick after the 4th or 5th round?
Ya’all want to eliminate the competitive balance lottery selections.. share the local TV revenues… The Dodgers receive $ 340,000,000/year for the local rights.. The Indians receive $ 40,000,000.. Only 8 times difference.. How is that fair?..
Make the competition fair.. and the Comp Lottery picks could and should go away..
produce a better product and maybe you can get a better TV deal. or better yet, except that the lux tax can easily be met by every team in the league with each still making boatloads of money to spare. no crying poor because you’re bottom 1/3 in revenue, that’s still crazy money.
It’s not about product. It’s about population. The LA area has around 19 million people while the Cleveland area has about 2 million.
Justifying a compensatory pick for the Cardinals by only using the population of St. Louis and not including a huge fanbase attendance that covers a 4-5 state area is ridiculous.
No amount of winning in Cleveland is going to result in them getting a television deal valued in excess of $300 million/season. It just isn’t going to happen. There aren’t enough captive eyeballs to make it make sense financially. That’s why it is based on market size and not W/L record.
The competitive balance picks are less about teams crying poor than they are about giving teams without the resources to eat numerous bad deals the necessary extra chances to stay competitive.
The Rays are a successfully run franchise. They have ZERO CHANCE of being the strong organization they are without the luxury tax and the extra picks weighing in to help tip the scales in their favour.
You think the Dolans didn’t know that when they bought the franchise? Maybe you guys can get some torches & pitch forks & have a long reasonable talk with the owners. Short of that maybe the Indians should go the way of chief wahoo.
Go screw an electrical outlet.
You would be left with 12-14 teams and a sport on the verge of complete collapse. MLB can no longer exist as a viable entity without teams in most media markets.
Every team in baseball, including the financial behemoths, make more money by spreading the wealth to make it possible for the smaller teams to keep up than they would make by simply eliminating all those teams..
It’s all about timimg as some of these teams are locked into lengthy and relatively cheap TV contracts. Evolve, die, or sell.
sure. lets just get rid of half the teams that aren’t on a coast. lets shrink baseball until there are no more fans. . We can watch the yankees play the dodgers every year . No need for playoffs. Thatll be exciting huh?
Have you ever taken any business courses, because if you have I’d ask for your money back. We’re already subsidizing your piss poor run teams, for your incompetent & greedy owners, what else do you “if it’s free it’s for me” guys want from us? Maybe next year we can give out participation trophies to everyone so nobody’s feelings get hurt. Geeez, what a world!
I dont know if you understand that MLB is a closed system. I cant start a team in New York to get in a good market and compete with the yankees.
Otherwise, there would be no teams in TB or Miami etc. For the Yankees to be great they need to own the biggest market in the country and artificially keep out competition.
Conner, the picks can’t be traded this year, much like International slots.
abolish competitive balance!
Wait, so now Competitive Balance picks can ONLY be traded during the season? Is this a new thing now? It wasn’t a rule last year
That’s where I’m confused as well.
People are reacting like this is the NFL and you expect / hope late 1st or late 2nd round picks to start for your team for 4 – 8 years or it is considered a bad pick. Quickly scan picks 30 – 35 and 65- 72 in past drafts. Of course there are some hits, but there are a lot who don’t even make the majors or just get a cup of coffee. That has always been the nature of MLB because most drafted players are years of development away from being ready to be a major leaguer. Should it be revisited and spread more fairly… sure, but it is truly just a small bone thrown to teams that will never compete financially even if they annually put a winner on the field.
The impact of the extra picks is not just the specific players that are drafted in those slots, but maybe just as much is the increased draft signing budget that the teams gain for the slot value of those assigned compensatory picks, which gives them more flexibility across their whole draft class.
Fair point, but I would expand my point some. Look at all rounds of the draft (even those paid overslot) and see how many do not make it. It absolutely adds to your pipeline, but it is still easier (IMO) to sign known quantities as free agents for mid to large contracts to your major league roster as a part of your normal operating plans than count on the 3-5 year development process all coming together annually to stay competitive. I don’t consider this an equal negotiating trade, but I would be shocked if any high revenue team would prefer to share more of their revenues so they could eliminate the extra pick at the end of the first or second round for the lower revenue teams.
The extra picks are completely fair. I hate going on this site and reading a bunch of dodger yankee and Cubs fan complain about this pick. The rays literally have to trade away snell because of how little pay room they have.
Move the team.
If the Rays don’t have enough money to pay an elite pitcher on an extreme surplus value contract, then they don’t have the adequate finances to run major league team. Owner should sell immediately if that is true.
I agree. Most teams get a pick around 70 and 6 teams get a real good pick 3x in 6 years. That’s not much to fork out in total scheme of things yet can be quite a gain. Reds took trammell with their first pick and rolled that into Bauer and a comp pick
the Rays most certainly do NOT have to trade their best player, what you really meant to say is they are too cheap to pay their undervalued ace so they are going to cry to the league for more draft picks because they refuse to spend money. The Tampa Bay Rats should be abolished.
The Rays’ owner is worth 800 million dollars! He doesn’t have to trade anyone. But why pay him when he can keep getting talent that the Yankees and Dodgers pay for?!
When did the rule change restricting the trading of CB picks to the regular season?
Yet something else that should be eliminated.
Free Agents do not want to sign with bad teams even if they pay more, because it hurts there stats….fewer base runners to drive in or bad bullpens giving up inherited base runners hurting their era and future earning potential. Post season payoffs that never happened…. If I were a player I would not want to sign with teams like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Seattle….not to mention the frustration of constantly loosing….
I love the competitive balance picks. Every year the Cardinals get one and every year you get people caterwauling about it.
I know right?
sure. lets just get rid of half the teams that aren’t on a coast. lets shrink baseball until there are no more fans. . We can watch the yankees play the dodgers every year . No need for playoffs. Thatll be exciting huh?
Okay, my compromise: we do away with these programs and every fifth year, we rotate through these same teams and award them the “Bottom 1/3 World Series” championship. Then, they will have more titles then ever before, they still have their entitlement-style programs, and we simply skip the ingenious plans masquerading as an equitable doctrine for all.
This draft is bull crap!!! Let’s reward and feel sorry for teams who refuse to invest properly in themselves. A Democrat must have come up with this one.
Jim. Pirates owner Bob Nutting is one of the largest Republican donors in West Virginia and Western Pa. And you see how much he invests in the Pirates franchise development. It’s a cash cow for him. Greed has no political slant.
It’s a shame those poor KC Chiefs and Pittsburg Steelers can’t compete because they are in such small markets.
Baseball needs to get rid of this pathetic “small market” excuse and simply hold bad ownership accountable. When the Royals won the World Series, was anyone making excuses about the market?
Owners are businessmen and women. They are in business to make make money. If they “can’t” make money, they go out of business, sell their business, or hire people to make their business more successful.
If wealthy business owners want to throw their money around, let ‘em. If another owner wants to pinch his pennies, that’s HIS choice. Maybe if they drafted better, traded better, developed their minor leaguers better and put a competitive team on the field, more fans would come out or big tv deals could be developed?
Nobody dreams of playing for a loser as a kid. No foreign player comes to this country to play for a team that chooses to not be competitive.
Given the same exact contract, why would a player choose KC or PGH over LA or NY? No one is in a hurry to play for a team that won’t compete because players in any sport want a chance to be champions. So contending teams will always draw better free agents.
Watch the Rays, they are on to something the past few years. What they do with their future signings is up to them. They have a chance to build a persona that says, “We want and expect to win.” Free agents will see that and, given equal contracts, might choose the Rays over Philly or St. Louis because the Rays are putting a winner in the post season.
Football has a salary cap and a shared TV contract. A well operated franchise will win regardless of the market size, Local TV contracts are a huge separater between the big and small markets in MLB. The Dodgers take in 5 times the local TV money than the Indians do due to the larger amount of people in the market to watch their product. And the Indians do not have the smallest local TV contract.
MLB’s set up favors the large markets. In the NFL, the well operated teams win and the poorly operated teams lose. Market size has no bearing in the NFL. We know that in Cleveland with the Browns. The Browns have been poorly operated in the past and their won – loss record shows that. Finally, the Browns have a good GM and a great young coach and they are learning to win. Until MLB fixes that imbalance, small market teams have to be near perfect to compete and that still might not be enough to win it all.
Baseball needs a salary floor more than a salary cap to force owners like Pittsburgh‘s Bob Nutting out of baseball.
Those poor cities and areas are at such a disadvantage. It’s just impossible for the Buccaneers, Chiefs, Packers, Dolphins, Vikings and Steelers to compete with the big market Giants, Jets, Eagles, Cowboys and Bears.
Comments? Anyone?
Read my comment above Jim. The way NFL and MLB are operated are totally different.
Sure.
The Bucs, Chiefs, and Packers all get the same revenue sharing that the Giants and Patriots do. They share all television revenue equally across the sport. In MLB, Colorado Rockies get their media market money to compete against the media market money of the Dodgers – in Los Angeles, The Tampa Bay Rays get to compete with both Boston and New York, while only bringing in about 12% of the revenue.
That’s where the bigger teams handing out some revenue sharing dollars and nearly worthless competitive balance picks comes in. The extra pick gives those other teams one extra chance to win the lottery so that they can compete against teams that are capable of carrying more dead salary on their payrolls than some teams are paying out in total – for competitive teams.
If every team in MLB shared all league revenue mostly equally, like they do in the NFL, then the CB draft picks would not be necessary.
MLB shares national broadcast money, the major difference is in local broadcast fees -there are no local tv revenues in the NFL- where each team sells the broadcast rights to the highest bidder. Obviously a market like NY or LA is going to sell for considerably more than say Cleveland or Cincinnati but the cost of living is also much higher in the former. Listen, this is just a pathetic excuse, if you decide to open a plumbing company or a restaurant in your city & there’s already big plumbing companies & fine restaurants you either find a way to compete by working harder & smarter or you go out of business, how do think this country became the greatest society on earth. If you’re too lazy or too stupid to figure it out, too bad, tough $hit. Next!
OK. why dont you go gets some investors and start a team then? Oh, because you cant without approval from the league. They are exempt from anti trust laws. They dont have to let you start your business. get it?
Easy to say as you are a New York who has all the advantages. By the way, who is the winningest AL team since the start of 2013? It is not the Yankees with all of their advantages. It is the small market Cleveland Indians who have worked harder and smarter than the Yankees have. Small market teams have to be almost perfect to have a chance. large market teams like the Yankees can spend money to fix their mistakes like Ellsbury, Hicks, Stanton etc. It is easy to run your mouth when you have all the advantages.