MLB Loan system - Great idea

[Smitty]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/trading-places-mlb-needs-a-player-loan-system/

I love this idea. Teams could loan or take on one player a year. So you don't have to give up the whole farm system to compete in the current year.

White Sox could loan out Jose Abreu for the cost of a good prospect and get Abreu back the next season with a good prospect now in the organization.

[Todd4State]

MLB will never agree to something like that. Hell, they have a hard enough time letting players play in the WBC much less for another team.

[Quaoarsking]

Is this currently against MLB rules, or is the author saying it should become common?

I think this is a neat idea in some kind of objective sense, but I also really hate how often players change teams in pro sports, and this would ramp that up even more.

[Smitty]

Is this currently against MLB rules, or is the author saying it should become common?

I think this is a neat idea in some kind of objective sense, but I also really hate how often players change teams in pro sports, and this would ramp that up even more.

The author's rebuttal to that is that teams can only do this once a year, and players have full loan veto power.

[Smitty]

MLB will never agree to something like that. Hell, they have a hard enough time letting players play in the WBC much less for another team.

The WBC doesn't bring back prospects for the use of the players.

[BoomBoom]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/trading-places-mlb-needs-a-player-loan-system/

I love this idea. Teams could loan or take on one player a year. So you don't have to give up the whole farm system to compete in the current year.

White Sox could loan out Jose Abreu for the cost of a good prospect and get Abreu back the next season with a good prospect now in the organization.

can't they do that now, by verbal agreement?

I'd be fine with it i guess, though i don't really see the need, as long as it was off-season-initiated only, aka full season loan only, and FAs can block the practice in their contracts. i'd also prefer some kind of restriction on loaning the same player multiple times.

if the desire is trade-deadline deals, like the article seems to want, then no thanks. maybe if the loaning team has to put some skin in the game, like lose a year of team control or owe a sizeable bonus to the player loaned. that ups the price the receiving team has to pay, and thus keeps it from being abused.

[msstate7]

I'd be careful loaning out stud pitchers. If one nl team got another nl team's stud pitcher, the borrower may run your stud into the ground esp considering you'd have to face the pitcher next season

[Smitty]

I'd be careful loaning out stud pitchers. If one nl team got another nl team's stud pitcher, the borrower may run your stud into the ground

Read article. First, you get to choose who you loan to obviously. Second part of the agreement could be innings/pitch limits.

[dawgs]

It's definitely an interesting idea. Problem I can see arising is that the bottom half of the league because even more drained of talent down the stretch. Would make the imbalance even greater. As of now there's usually only a couple of teams that are absolutely terrible, but if you take the best player or 2 off every team out of contention and add them to the best teams, suddenly the imbalance is so great, then schedule becomes more of the determining factor than who is the better team.

Since they use the white sox, imagine if the tigers barely faced the white sox early in the season, while the royals faced them 15 times with sale and/or abreu on the team. Now in the 2nd half the schedule flips. The tigers get to face a vastly more depleted white sox than they would under the current trading system, while the royals might now have to face sale and/or abreu on the twins more times.

I know to an extent that happens with trades, but it would be far more drastic if teams could loan out players for a prospect.

[Todd4State]

The WBC doesn't bring back prospects for the use of the players.

That's not the point. The point is MLB teams don't want "their" players getting hurt playing for someone else or doing something else. And yes, I read the article about restricting innings and etc. It doesn't matter because teams aren't going to want to risk players getting hurt- restrictions or not.

Soccer is obviously different, but that's the culture in MLB.

[Todd4State]

can't they do that now, by verbal agreement?

I'd be fine with it i guess, though i don't really see the need, as long as it was off-season-initiated only, aka full season loan only, and FAs can block the practice in their contracts. i'd also prefer some kind of restriction on loaning the same player multiple times.

if the desire is trade-deadline deals, like the article seems to want, then no thanks. maybe if the loaning team has to put some skin in the game, like lose a year of team control or owe a sizeable bonus to the player loaned. that ups the price the receiving team has to pay, and thus keeps it from being abused.

I don't think it happens a lot, but it's possible that a player could be traded to a contender and then sign back with his old team via free agency in the offseason. And there might be an under the table kind of deal.

When my uncle was traded from the Royals to the Cardinals, Whitey Herzog told him that he made the trade because he was going to be in St. Louis in a couple of years and he wanted some of his guys on the team. That was in 1977. So, occasionally there are some things behind the scenes that happen like that. It was a pretty interesting story- especially since the Cardinals hired Ken Boyer in the meantime after Vern Rapp.

[shoeless joe]

Terrible idea IMO. And that's just personal preference. This can already kinda happen if a player signs back with the original team if traded but no need to have players jumping around from team to team every year like a mad house. Injuries have become such a big deal these days that I just don't see it being overly realistic anyway...of course I'm a bit of a traditionalists that still believes in visual evaluations and the impact of immeasurables.