Quote:
Originally Posted by BusterKing
not realistic, if they signed the contract they have an obligation to honour it
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There's not a contract in the world that says that you "have to" honor anything. That's not the way contracts are written. I don't know what the text of a draft contract is but it's likely something like "you will play for affiliates of whichever major league team owns this contract for the 6 year length spelled out in the CBA. You can't play for any other MLB team. If you refuse to play during this time, you've broken the contract and we have the right to come after you for your signing bonus."
At that, I'm not sure how MLB handles reneged bonuses like that. Do they allow the team to not include that money in that season's draft budget? Does the team actually have to recoup the money in order to make that the case? Even though teams do draft football and basketball players, you really don't hear all that much of this kind of thing going on... the closest I can think of was when Robin Yount quit baseball to play professional golf, and the Brewers did little to nothing in response (Yount changed his mind and came back to baseball - in fact, I've read where that might have been a ploy to get a better deal). Bo Jackson was more or less allowed to play for the Raiders, Danny Ainge left the Blue Jays for the Celtics I believe before his contract with them was up as well...