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Originally Posted by SithCeNtZ

I'm definitely not a conspiracy guy and don't actually think this was rigged, but if it was, Cleveland and Cincy make a ton of sense if you correctly understand what the draft was implemented for. Cincy was awful the year before, got better, and got rewarded with the second pick. This is a dream scenario for MLB, because it shows that there is no reason to tank multiple years in a row. In fact, you might get rewarded by being better.

As for Cleveland, they are a logical pick as a harmless team that won't bring out the conspiracy crowd like the Yankees or Red Sox would, but accomplishes the real goal and why the draft was put in place: to punish bad teams. It's not about funneling players to certain teams, which is why people saying "why Cleveland that's dumb" are wrong in that assesment. They don't really care where the #1 pick goes. They just care that the top 3 teams don't pick #1, and dropping the As and Royals is great for them. I'd bet anything I own that Manfred would want this to be the outcome of the draft every single year, and so would the players union. Don't reward teams who tank, reward teams who spend money and drive up salaries. Again, I don't think this actually happened and it's unfortunate royals had the same odds to pick sixth as they did to pick first basically, but saying "they would never do this for Cleveland and Cincy" isn't any sort of proof that it wasn't rigged.

What? Why would Manfred want salaries of players high? Cincy was just a bit ahead of the Royals in spending and Cleveland was the 3rd lowest in spending. You make 0 sense.