As we're seeing, Steve Cohen's complete disregard for the meaning of money is creating an interesting stress test for the "soft" guardrails that exist to prevent teams from spending wildly. Unfortunately for the other 29 owners, many of those guardrails assume that owners give a shit about accruing significant financial penalties as the price of spending freely. Steve does not. Regarding the CBT, the owners have found out that they didn't account for Steve's noteworthy lack of fucks to give about money when they built the "Cohen tax". They figured that a dollar-for-dollar tax on top of a draft pick penalty moving our first round pick back 10 spots would deter him (and any other owner) from blowing past the $275 million mark. Instead, it had the opposite effect as intended on a "no fucks to give" owner, as once you've hit the draft pick penalty you might as well "get your money's worth" and keep going. The only difference between $276 million and $400 million is a bigger tax. You've already taken the hit on future talent, so why not keep spending if you've got an 11 figure net worth and you're content with the size of your yacht collection?

So, on to the Rule 4 draft. What does this crazy person /u/BillW87 mean by "buy the draft"? Like the CBT, the rule 4 draft pool money ALSO functions as a soft cap rather than a hard cap. Here's how it works:

"A team that outspends its pool by 0-5 percent pays a 75 percent tax on the overage. At higher thresholds, clubs lose future picks: a first-rounder and a 75 percent tax for surpassing their pool by more than 5 and up to 10 percent; a first- and a second-rounder and a 100 percent tax for more than 10 and up to 15 percent; and two first-rounders and a 100 percent tax for more than 15 percent."

As you can see, there's a mix of draft and financial penalties - just like the CBT. Like the CBT, the draft penalties stop at a certain point and the additional penalty is strictly financial.

BAH GOD, IS THAT STEVE COHEN'S MUSIC?

With 7 picks in the first 5 rounds this year, the Mets have a unique opportunity to walk away with an absurd amount of talent if they decide to buy the draft.

Losing first round picks hurts, right? Well...maybe not so much. Because the Mets are hypothetically going to be a good team for the next few years, their first round pick would normally fall near the end of the draft - hopefully around 25-30 if we're really doing well. However, as a team beyond the "Cohen Tax" threshold, that first pick gets dropped by another 10 slots, meaning our first round picks in 2024 and 2025 are going to fall somewhere in the 30's - effectively second round picks. Forfeiting a second round pick isn't trivial, but it's a LOT less of a penalty than the original structure of the Rule 4 draft penalties were intended to be in order to keep owners honest.

So, what if Steve says "fuck it" to the allocated pool money and whips out his di-... checkbook at the draft? Essentially, he could over-slot each of the 7 picks that the Mets have in the first 5 rounds of the draft this year to his heart's content. In a money-is-no-object world, he could just pay whatever price it takes to get a bunch of first round talent to hard-commit to the Mets and fall to whatever round we decide to take them in. Yeah, Steve would have to pay a 100% tax on all of that money...exactly what he's already doing on tens of millions in MLB payroll this year. We'd lose effectively two picks around 30-40 overall, one each in the 2024 and 2025 drafts, but in net land an organization-shaping amount of talent this year in order to offset it.

tl;dr The Rule 4 draft penalties for going over-pool assume that owners care about money and that their first overall picks are valuable enough to keep teams coloring inside the lines. Steve doesn't give a shit about spending money if it means he gets a good return, and our first overall pick values are already significantly reduced so we might as well punt them and go apeshit.

Thank you for attending my TED talk.