The fact that so many teams have been willing to blow past their pools and forfeit their ability to sign any player for more than $300k for a year or two makes you wonder. Is the amateur draft so different? If the Astros decided, say, that they wanted to drop $35m in the 2015 Draft (I assume their pool will be, what, $18-20m?), they could theoretically have handshake deals in place with 4 or 5 of the top 10 or so players. Those players could then tell other interested teams that they're looking for a butt-ton of money, or else, and scare off everyone but the Astros, who could pick them all by the 2nd or 3rd round maybe.
Yes, they'd lose their 1st-round pick in 2016 (and '17?) but they will have added 4 or 5 premium talents that will be a year ahead of similar 2016 players in their development, and basically all it would cost them is an extra $15m or so in penalty tax. Players in the Draft are safer bets than 16-year-old International kids, so there's some logic there, if they could avoid being popped for tampering or whatever pre-draft deals are called. And like with the International signings, if you're going to go over your pool by more than the 5% or whatever allowed, you may as well go waaaayyyyy over, because MLB stupidly didn't think to make penalties increase the more a club goes over, beyond the tax money.
Jeezuz I'm sick of the offseason already. I just spent several minutes typing that.
