You invited a reply, here's mine:

"If you are in a very competitive league, and you have a team with a crummy record, you should receive a higher pick. This is done in MLB for obvious reasons. When you are struggling through a re-building effort, you should not be further handicapped by a poor random pick."

You can't compare this to MLB. MLB doesn't have a FA draft at all. They have a FA system that allows everyone equal access to free agents, so do we. What MLB does have is an amateur draft which corresponds to our rookie draft as the way young players enter the system. Theirs is based on record, so is ours.

"Case in point: One of my teams the SF Solons in 98RT3 finished 2002 at 64-96, the 4th worst record in the league. I ended up with the 13 FA pick in a 24 team league, so the flip after the first round was a wash. Needing starters just to fill innings who did I get?

Jeff Austin."

You don't want me to dissect that draft and all the bad choices made. Two points: most FA draft pools contain very little and there will always be mistakes made. Austin was a mistake and you suffer the consequences. That's how it should be.

"Randomness may be fun in picking Powerball numbers, but when it comes to FA drafting order in RT it is simply unfair."

Actually randomness, where no one has any advantage over anyone else in the outcome, is the epitome of fairness. The real talent injection in PB is the rookie draft, where the worst go first, so that should help rebuilders.

You then listed the first 4 picks and discussed the results concluding with:

"Just look. Three of these teams went to the playoffs and made good strides in securing themselves for the future. MLB does not Draft this way, so why should we?"

Considering that you had teams with the 7th, 9th & 10th best records from the previous year, is it any wonder that three of them made the playoffs?
The one with the worst previous record did a great job drafting and subsequently trading Meche to help himself (or Herself). The team with the 9th best '02 record screwed up the FA draft and paid the price. THIS IS ALL GOOD ! Bad teams got better, teams that made bad decisions got worse. That sounds perfect to me.


To sum up:
1) the rookie draft and trading are where the real talent acquisition is at. Any FA talent you get is a bonus.

2) Don't equate PB & MLB wrt the FA draft because they don't have one.

3) Any system that allows bad teams to rebuild and makes teams that make bad drafting or trading decisions suffer is a system that works. PB allows rebuilding teams to improve pretty quickly. If I asked people who are reading this to respond and tell us about their favorite team rebuilding experience there would be a long list. I picked up 2 bad teams last year and, while they probably won't make he playoffs this year, I love where they're headed.