by Michael Rosenberg

Stephen Strasburg is expected to be the top pick in Tuesday's amateur draft, and he will come with an inflated price tag. (Donald Miralle / Getty Images)

The incomprehensibly awful Washington Nationals hold the top pick in the draft. (The Nationals figure D.C. waited 35 years for Major League Baseball to come back, so what's a few more years?) They should just take Strasburg and listen to their fans cheer.

Instead, they are faced with two uncomfortable choices: commit too much money to an amateur prospect, or draft somebody cheaper and double-lock the front-office doors.

The draft is not really about Stephen Strasburg. It is about his agent, Scott Boras, the super-agent who uses other general managers' arteries to floss.

Boras has floated a $50 million signing-bonus demand for Strasburg to the media. The number is absurd, of course, and Boras knows it, but he doesn't care. By leaking the $50-million figure, Boras has created an artificially high starting point for negotiations — and keeps the Nationals from claiming they did not know Strasburg would be so expensive. Boras has already built public pressure on the Nationals to pay Stephen Strasburg a ton of money.

Boras knows exactly what he is doing.

But does baseball?

Major League Baseball needs a true slotting system — not just a ridiculous, unenforceable commissioner's recommendation. It needs a system like the NBA, where the top pick is locked into a certain figure and the contract values diminish with each subsequent pick. The only way to get one is to negotiate it into the next collective bargaining agreement.

That would give the owners cost certainty. It would keep signing bonuses reasonable. And it would allow teams to draft the best available talent, instead of the most signable player.

The union would fight a slotting, of course — especially because agents are powerful in the union, and agents are essentially cut out of a slotting system, because they can't negotiate. The owners would have to make concessions.

But having a slotting system should mean more to the owners than not having one means to the players. We're talking about competitive balance and the fate of a dozen or so small-market teams. How much will the major leaguers fight so that unproven amateurs can get big money?

You might realize the lack of a slotting system is a problem, but do you realize how big the problem is? It goes beyond the draft.

The draft is just the first domino. Consider: in recent years, the Detroit Tigers paid above the commissioner's recommendation for draftees Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller and Rick Porcello. Not long after, they sent Maybin and Miller to the Florida Marlins for a package that included Miguel Cabrera. If the Tigers had not paid above their slot, they probably would not have acquired one of the best hitters in the game.

The NFL Draft has a similar problem — signing bonuses for the top players have gotten so huge that nobody wants the top three or four picks. Those picks are supposed to be the most valuable commodity that any losing team has. Instead, they often become anchors.

The problem is worse in baseball, because at least bad NFL teams get some marketing juice out of the draft. Most baseball prospects don't play in the majors for at least two years.

This should be a rare chance to give losing teams an advantage, but it isn't. Teams routinely pass on superior talent because of signability concerns, and with the economy in the toilet, that may be worse than ever this year.

It is past time to take the draft out of Scott Boras's hands.

(As a side note: Boras, and other agents, are officially just "advisers" to players, so those players can possibly go back to college if they don't sign. This gives the players leverage. But it is also a blatant circumvention of the NCAA's amateurism rules.)

Boras was supposed to be dead last winter. He couldn't get a big deal for his prize client, Manny Ramirez. His biggest-name client, Alex Rodriguez, had publicly denounced him a year earlier. He got into a dispute with the Pittsburgh Pirates that was vicious and ugly even by his standards.

But as with most stories involving Boras, the story of his agenting death was heavy on half-truths and colored by the world's unabashed loathing of the man.

This past winter, Boras masterfully managed the Mark Teixeira negotiations, pushing the Red Sox to their maximum, making them think they could get Teixeira, then pulling out the rug and delivering him to the Yankees, for even more money. Negotiations like that are why people hire Scott Boras. Everything you hate about him is what his clients love: he'll cajole and squeeze and twist reality in order to get his guys the most money they can get.

And the draft might be Boras's favorite time of year, even ahead of free agency. It is when he is most in control, and when he tends to provide the most value (relative to his peers) to his clients.

Yes, Scott Boras loves the Major League Baseball draft. The question is why Major League Baseball lets him control it.