In his first international match after the one-year ban for ball tampering, David Warner carved out an unbeaten 89 off 114 balls to give Australia a seven-wicket win in their World Cup 2019 opener. The bowlers had bowled Afghanistan out for 207, and Australia chased that down in just 34.5 overs.

Warner, who was declared the Man of the Match, was tentative at the start of his innings before growing more assured. He admitted that his long absence from the 50-over format had played a part in his slow start.

"I think it was just nerves getting back into the camp, and getting back into the full intensity of training," Warner said at the post-match presentation. "I was a little bit more relaxed when Finchy (Aaron Finch) started going. But look, to come out here and bowl the way that we did, probably set the tone from Ball 1 for us with the bat… there is a great energy and a great buzz about this team at the moment.

"The way that I started out there - playing Twenty20 cricket over the last sort of 12 to 14 months - I hadn't really moved my feet at all. So to get back into rhythm out there, start moving in the right direction, getting my head over the ball - that was just great to get out there and do that. As a positive, for us, it's about getting past this first victory and move on to the West Indies."

Warner put on 96 in 16.2 overs for the opening wicket, with Finch smashing 66 off 49. But Warner ground his way through a patchy first half to ensure he was there at the end, earning praise from his captain and opening partner.

"I think he was struggling for the first half of his innings there," Finch said. "He struggled to time the ball and his feet weren't really going, so the fact that he kept hanging in there and hanging in there… you always have to remember that it's going to be harder for a new batter to come in. So that was great for him, to just keep on and do that job really well for us and be not out at the end."

Warner acknowledged the importance of the top order getting runs, with the trend so far in this World Cup being of the quicker bowlers scything through teams. "Us batters like to see that," Warner said. "We know the bowlers always say that one-day cricket is always a batsman's game. But two new balls over here, there's a bit of swing for the fast bowlers, but you saw out and out quicks going through the top order. For us as batters, we've just got to hold our nerve a little bit, play normal cricket shots and get into our innings."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

PARIS -- This was one deficit too big to overcome for Naomi Osaka, whose Grand Slam winning streak is over.

The No. 1-ranked Osaka couldn't muster a comeback after falling way behind yet again at the French Open, losing 6-4, 6-2 in the third round to No. 42 Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic on Saturday.

"I just feel like there has been a weight on me, kind of," said Osaka, who was seeded No. 1 at a major tournament for the first time.

She had won her past 16 matches at majors, allowing her to lift the trophies at the US Open last September and Australian Open in January. That run also included two victories at Roland Garros after trailing by a set and a break each time.

"I could see," Siniakova said, "that she's not so confident like she was."

But Osaka said Saturday that she felt tired and was dealing with a headache.

Her mounting mistakes just kept accumulating against Siniakova, who had never reached the fourth round in singles in 18 previous Slam appearances. She is better known for her doubles success, winning championships at the French Open and Wimbledon last year and topping the rankings.

She is the first woman ranked No. 1 in doubles to defeat the singles No. 1 in more than 30 years, according to the WTA: The last occasion was when Martina Navratilova beat Steffi Graf at the 1987 US Open.

"I mean, it's incredible. It's amazing. It's the thing I couldn't believe," said Siniakova, who will face 2017 US Open runner-up Madison Keys next. "It was my best tennis."

It decidedly was not Osaka's, who quickly gathered her things and headed to the Court Suzanne Lenglen locker room when the lopsided match was finished.

She wound up with a hard-to-believe 38 unforced errors; Siniakova made only 13.

And Osaka, so good lately at the biggest moments on her sport's biggest stages, wasn't able to come up with the goods on the hottest day of the tournament so far, with the temperature topping 80 degrees (approaching 30 Celsius).

One key statistic: Osaka compiled seven break points in the first set but failed to convert a single one. She was 0 for 4 on break chances when Siniakova served out that set, then never managed to earn one in the second.

Clay has never been Osaka's best surface. Her power game is served better by the speed of hard courts, in particular. That's why she still has not made it to the round of 16 at the French Open.

The first tennis player from Japan to be ranked No. 1 thought she was better suited to contend this time and spoke about eyeing a third consecutive major title -- and moving halfway to a true Grand Slam.

"It's weird, but I think me losing is probably the best thing that could have happened. I think I was overthinking this calendar Slam. For me, this is something that I have wanted to do forever," Osaka said. "But I think I have to think about it like: If it was that easy, everyone would have done it. I just have to keep training hard and put myself in a position again to do it, hopefully."

After going just 9-11 on clay over her career until this season, she was 9-1 in 2019 until Saturday's setback.

Osaka's exit, a day after No. 2 Karolina Pliskova lost, leaves defending champion Simona Halep, at No. 3, as the highest-seeded woman remaining. Halep needed only 55 minutes to get to the fourth round with a 6-2, 6-1 victory over No. 27 Lesia Tsurenko.

Keys, a semifinalist in Paris a year ago, advanced by beating qualifier Anna Blinkova 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-4.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

PARIS -- Serena Williams' quest for a 24th Grand Slam title ended with her earliest loss at a major tournament in five years.

Williams was outplayed in the third round of the French Open by 20-year-old American Sofia Kenin, who used clean, deep groundstrokes to put together the 6-2, 7-5 upset Saturday.

"She played really well," Williams said. "I feel like she, in that first set in particular, hit pretty much inches from the line. I hadn't played anyone like that in a long time. ... She just played, literally, unbelievable. She really went out there today and did great."

The last time Williams was eliminated this quickly at a major came in 2014, when she lost in the second round at Roland Garros to Garbine Muguruza and in the third round at Wimbledon to Alize Cornet.

Since those early-for-her defeats, Williams had won six of the 14 majors she entered to surpass Steffi Graf's professional-era record of 22 Grand Slam singles championships. With 23, Williams stands one away from Margaret Court's mark for the most in tennis history; Court played in both the professional and amateur eras.

Williams, who is 37, sat out four Slams in 2017-18 while she was off the tour to have a baby. Her first major tournament back was last year's French Open, where she withdrew before a fourth-round match because of a chest muscle injury. She went on to reach the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open before wasting match points during a quarterfinal loss at the Australian Open.

Williams came to Paris having played only four matches since then; she withdrew from two tournaments because of an injured left knee and from another because of illness.

"I am glad I came," Williams said. "I love the city. I love the tournament. I really wanted to be here. I'm glad I came. But it's just been a really grueling season for me."

Williams struggled through her opening match at the French Open, which she has won three times, and again against the 35th-ranked Kenin, who never before had made it to the round of 16 at a major.

But Kenin played quite well, never showing a trace of nerves. It was Williams whose strokes were off-target: Her 34 unforced errors were twice as many as Kenin's total. And Kenin broke Williams four times, while only ceding one of her own service games despite Williams having six break point opportunities.

It was only the third tour-level loss by Williams to an American player younger than her in 42 career matches at any tournament. Kenin joined Sloane Stephens (2013) and Madison Brengle (2017) in that club.

It was the second significant surprise in a matter of hours: Earlier in the day, No. 1 seed Naomi Osaka was eliminated 6-4, 6-2 by 42nd-ranked Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic to end Osaka's 16-match Grand Slam winning streak.

ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Murray State guard Ja Morant -- the projected No. 2 pick in this month's NBA draft -- will undergo a minor arthroscopic procedure on his right knee Monday, league sources told ESPN.

Morant is expected to be fully recovered in three to four weeks, sources said.

The scope is designed to remove a loose body in his knee, sources said.

Morant, 19, is the Memphis Grizzlies' target with the second pick in June's draft, sources said. Morant's agent, Jim Tanner of Tandem Sports, informed teams at the top of the draft -- including New Orleans, Memphis and New York -- of the impending procedure on Saturday, sources said.

Along with Duke forwards Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett, Morant is one of the dynamic talents on the cusp of entering the league. Morant averaged 24.5 points and an NCAA-leading 10 assists in his sophomore season.

The Toronto Raptors did exactly what they needed to do in their Game 1 win to open the NBA Finals. They played smart, physical basketball on both ends of the court and outperformed the Golden State Warriors in virtually every key phase.

What about Game 1 is significant moving forward, and what adjustments are needed?

Here are two key questions heading into Game 2 (Sunday, 8 p.m. ET on ABC).

Where are the Warriors going to get their points?

Let's start with the fact that Golden State didn't get enough buckets.

The Dubs made just 34 field goals, their lowest total of this postseason. They lost the 3-point battle and the 2-point battle. They lost the transition battle. They lost the turnover battle. Toronto introduced a physicality that muddied up the game, crowded the perimeter, induced 17 turnovers and frustrated the Warriors ball handlers and jump shooters.

The Raps held Steph Curry -- who averaged 24 field goal attempts per game in the Western Conference finals -- to just 18 field goal attempts. Nobody did a better job than Fred VanVleet, who matched up against Curry 29 times and held him to just two points in those instances, per Second Spectrum tracking. With Kevin Durant still sidelined, Curry needs to thrive, but Toronto made sure that didn't happen with a smart and aggressive pick-and-roll defense that suffocated Steph all night long.

Golden State entered the Finals as the postseason's best pick-and-roll offense, averaging 1.13 points per play. But Toronto entered as the best pick-and-roll defense, yielding a minuscule 0.74 points per chance.

Well, Toronto held the Warriors to 0.81 points per pick-and-roll chance in Game 1. That's fantastic.

Curry torched the Blazers in the screen game in the West finals, running over 31 picks per contest while yielding a ridiculous 1.23 points per chance, per Second Spectrum tracking. But Toronto isn't Portland, folks. In the closeout game of the West finals, the Warriors scored 50 points directly off of Curry pick actions (meaning the play led to either a shot or assist opportunity). In Game 1 of this series, they scored 14.

The Raptors were strong at the point of attack, with bigs such as Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka playing high and aggressive on Curry, forcing him to either take very hard contested jumpers or give up the ball to players such as Jordan Bell. The results speak for themselves: Warriors' ball-handlers, including Curry, combined to score zero points on six shots off pick actions in Game 1. For comparison, they scored 37 points on 21 shots in Game 4 against the Blazers.

Like the Dixie Chicks, the Splash Brothers love wide open spaces, but the Raptors clogged up the point of attack in the pick-and-roll and largely took away the transition game, in essence challenging Golden State to find alternative pathways to buckets. That never happened.

Top 5 Stephen Curry Defenders This Season

Curry Points Per 100 By Defender
1. Fred VanVleet .......... 10.8
2. Eric Bledsoe ............ 16.7
3. Chris Paul ................ 17.2
4. Mike Conley ............ 18.0
5. K. Caldwell-Pope .... 18.5

(Min. 50 Matchups) pic.twitter.com/GhpUc9wB3o

— Kirk Goldsberry (@kirkgoldsberry) June 1, 2019

Toronto forced Golden State to make a disproportionate number of half-court and contested shots in Game 1. It was the exact type of physical, half-court game the Warriors would normally lean on Durant to win. (KD has made 50 percent of his half-court shots and 49 percent of his contested looks this postseason.) But sans Durant, the Warriors made just 40 percent of their half-court shots -- their worst such mark this postseason -- and just 23 percent of their contested looks, their worst playoff mark in the Steve Kerr era.

One of this dynasty's trademarks is its ability to destroy teams on fast breaks. But the Raptors continued their defensive discipline from the East finals by getting back on defense, holding the Warriors to zero 3-pointers in transition.

If there are three numbers Golden State must improve going forward, these stand out:

• The 3-point differential (Toronto was plus-3)

• The transition differential (Toronto was plus-7)

• Total points off Curry pick-and-roll action (only 14)

If the Warriors expect to regain control of this series, those key markers must improve.

What's sustainable about the Raptors' success?

The Warriors also must figure out what to do with Pascal Siakam, who went out and had one of the best Finals debuts we've ever seen. Siakam shot 14-of-17 and racked up 32 points, including an eye-popping 16 points directly against Draymond Green, the defensive spirit animal of the defending champs.

Shout out to any voters who didn't name Siakam Most Improved Player on their ballots.

But while it's fair to say that Siakam won't do that again this series, it's also fair to assume that Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry won't combine to shoot just 7-of-23 again -- especially if Andre Iguodala isn't 100 percent going forward. Iguodala is likely for Game 2 following an MRI, but the Warriors are going to be cautious since the injury is in the Achilles tendon area, according to a report by ESPN's Nick Friedell.

The Warriors did a great job on Leonard by holding him to only five made field goals, but much of that solid work was done by Iguodala.

Most matchups vs. Kawhi Leonard in Game 1

• Andre Iguodala: 35

• Klay Thompson: 19

• Kevon Looney: 10

Like Leonard, Iguodala earned a Finals MVP thanks largely to incredible individual defense, and like Leonard, Iggy's defense is among his team's most vital assets. If he can't play or operate at full strength, Leonard will likely shoot and score a lot more in this series going forward. (Side note: The Warriors also need to button up their transition defense. The Raptors made 12 of their 15 transition shots, including five from Siakam.)

Let's not forget Marc Gasol, who logged his most consequential performance as a Raptor. It's hard to overstate both the direct and indirect contributions he made in Game 1. Not only did he disrupt Curry's pick-and-rolls on defense -- he added 20 huge points on just 10 shots on offense. But that's not all. As a stretch-5, Gasol effectively thinned out Golden State's interior defense, opening up the lane for Siakam's rim attacks.

When Gasol is hanging out at the top of the arc, so is his large defender. In turn, Toronto's drivers have a lot less to worry about in the paint, and Siakam showed that he's going to be a problem if there's no help defense to contest his close-range buckets. Of Siakam's 32 points, 18 came in the paint. No other player in the game had more than six paint points. While Siakam's 82 percent shooting is not sustainable, his abilities to cause trouble in the dunker spot and to maneuver past a single defender to get clean looks in the interior certainly are.

Toronto's defense and the stellar play of Siakam and Gasol stood out in Game 1. But Toronto still has a ton of work left to do. Is Game 2 a must-win for Golden State? Heck no. Just ask the Raptors, who lost their first two games in Milwaukee in ugly fashion before rattling off four straight wins. If Toronto taught us anything in the East finals, it's not to overreact to who wins the first game.

The Boston Red Sox have placed first baseman Steve Pearce on the injured list with a low back strain, the team announced Saturday.

Pearce was removed from Friday's 4-1 loss to the New York Yankees after fouling out against J.A. Happ in the second inning.

Pearce, the World Series MVP last year, is batting only .182 with one home run and nine RBIs this season.

To fill his spot on the roster, the Red Sox recalled first baseman/outfielder Sam Travis from Triple-A Pawtucket.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Milwaukee Brewers are placing starting left-hander Gio Gonzalez on the 10-day injured list with arm fatigue.

Manager Craig Counsell told reporters Saturday that Gonzalez isn't feeling pain but rather is dealing with a dead arm feeling.

Gonzalez has made six starts for the Brewers since signing with the team in late April and making his season debut on April 28. He is 2-1 with a 3.19 ERA in 31 innings.

The Brewers are activating catcher Manny Pina from the 10-day injured list in a corresponding move. He hasn't played since May 15 due to a hamstring injury.

The Philadelphia Phillies are in talks with the Seattle Mariners about a trade for veteran Jay Bruce, a source told ESPN's Jeff Passan on Saturday.

Bruce is hitting .212 with 14 home runs and 28 RBIs this season. He also has played for the Mets, Indians and Reds during his 12-year career, hitting 300 home runs with 903 RBIs.

He hit home run No. 300 on Friday night while playing first base in a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Angels.

"You know, a personal beer shower, that's probably my first one," Bruce said after the game. "It's good. Cold -- it's very cold. If you had told me I was going to hit my 300th home run playing first base for the Seattle Mariners, I probably would have called you crazy."

An outfielder for much of his career, Bruce, 32, became the eighth active player with 300 home runs and 300 doubles (he's got 301), achieved in 1,557 games. That list includes Mariners teammate Edwin Encarnacion and the Angels' Albert Pujols.

Bruce, who joined the Mariners as part of a seven-player trade with the Mets in December, is under contract through the 2020 season, making $14 million both this season and next.

The Mariners, after getting off to a 13-2 start this season, have fallen to 25-35 and are fifth in the AL West standings entering Saturday's game. The Phillies, meanwhile, lead the NL East with a 33-24 mark.

According to ESPN Stats & Information, Bruce has a career .294 batting average at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park, which ranks only behind Houston's Minute Maid Park (.309) as his favorite place to hit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

It would have to be the right team.

That's where the idea starts. The team would need to be successful -- really good, preferably, enough so that in Major League Baseball's June draft, it picks toward the end of the first round. And that success needs to be sustainable, too, because the idea doesn't make much sense otherwise.

So the idea. It's more a plan, actually. It's a little anarchy, a little ingenuity, a little game theory and a lot to gain. It would anger plenty of people, might prompt an investigation but is, as far as anyone can tell, completely legal. It would, at least for a handful or two of players, change the habitual underpayment of domestic amateur talent. And for a team with the combination of cunning, foresight and luck, it would reap incredible and instantaneous dividends.

If all of this sounds interesting, it's because it is. The plan to blow up the MLB Draft -- to use the power of cold, hard cash and land the most talent-rich class in draft history, with a half-dozen or more players with first-round grades going to the same team -- has been discussed in multiple front offices around baseball, bandied about for years over beers and on cocktail napkins. During these discussions, there are nods of agreement and promises to tease out the details of it more, because the details, actually, provide the answer to the only question that really matters.

Would it actually work?

***

MLB's annual draft starts Monday. Teams will select 1,219 players over 40 rounds. By the July signing deadline, teams will have spent upward of $300 million on domestic amateurs. That will be a fraction of the marginal value they reap from them. The heart of this plan is the willingness of a single team to exploit this -- to, in an environment where finding true value gets more difficult by the year, wring every last droplet of it from the draft.

Before unveiling the plan, an important primer on how the draft works. Every pick in the first 10 rounds is assigned a dollar value. The sum of these values constitutes each team's bonus pool. Teams can exceed these pools up to 5% without serious penalty. Between 5% and 10%, they lose the next year's first-round pick, all of which come with at least $2 million in pool money. If they're 10% to 15% over, they lose a first- and second-round pick. And anything above 15% means forfeiture of their next two first-round picks.

Which sounds pretty bad. It's meant to. The disincentive is strong. Just not stronger than the plan.

Here's how it works. Teams must be willing to spend significant amounts of cash, be able to engender trust from players and agents, and be able to keep secrets. Because in order to land five (or even 10) of the best talents in any draft, it's going to take all of those things and more.

The plan starts a year in advance. It's got to, according to a majority of the general managers, scouting directors, area scouts and agents who spoke about it with ESPN, because something so outside the norm would take meticulous planning and widespread buy-in. Team officials would start telling agents that the team wants to spend big on high school players in the draft the following year. Nothing specific. Just planting a seed.

Targeting high schoolers is a vital part of the plan, because executing it will take enormous amounts of leverage played properly. College baseball players have next to no leverage; they are typically not draft-eligible until their junior years, and if their only threat is to return to school for their senior year, teams will laugh, knowing senior baseball players receive paltry signing bonuses compared to their junior counterparts.

High school players, on the other hand, can tell teams they don't want to sign. That they want to go to college unless teams pay them exorbitant amounts of money -- $5 million or $6 million or $10 million. That barring a stunning cash outlay, drafting them would be a waste of a pick.

And that is where the plan begins to take shape. A group of extremely talented high school players and a team willing to nuke the strictures of the system to get them.

The upshot would be mutually beneficial. Only the first five slots in this year's draft are for more than $6 million. The team's plan could be to offer that much to high school players seen more in the picks 10 to 20 range while being willing to spend upward of $10 million -- well over the $8.4 million Baltimore gets for the No. 1 overall pick this year -- on top-tier talent. So the best player says he's not signing for anything under $10 million ... and the team chooses him with its first-round pick. Another says he won't take a penny less than $9 million ... and he goes with the second-round pick. A third players says he'll go to college unless he gets $7 million ... and he goes to the team in the third round. And so on, for as many players as a team can get to agree to this.

It behooves the player, who gets paid far more than he would by teams adhering to slot. And the team can instantaneously build up its farm system and offer itself options: keep the players, develop them and reap the benefits of young, controllable talent, or dangle the players in trades, taking advantage of a far deeper farm system to target instead major league assets.

This is particularly tempting for the most successful teams, not just because the first-round picks they would give up carry significantly less slot value but because for teams in win-now mode, the ability to trade top prospects is a luxury few have. This would afford them that, and the only cost would be cash.

And it would be a lot. Let's not sugarcoat that. The perfect team this season would be the Boston Red Sox, who have a bad farm system, a great core and lots of money. Their bonus pool is an MLB-low $4,788,100. Say they convinced seven players to execute the plan and guaranteed them $50 million total. Their total outlay on those players alone would be closer to $96 million because of penalties.

It's still totally worth it. Seriously. Every executive surveyed said that the value of young players compared to what they get guaranteed in the draft is the single biggest bargain in baseball. If one of the seven players turns into a star, he is worth more than $96 million. If two of them grow into above-average major leaguers, they are worth more than $96 million. And that's to say nothing of their trade value.

The plan, in fact, has been executed on a smaller level. Before MLB instituted a hard cap on money spent on international amateurs, teams would annually blow through their bonus pools and accept the penalty of not being able to spend more than $300,000 on a player for the next two international signing periods. During the 2016-17 signing period, the San Diego Padres went on a frenzy, spending nearly $80 million on international players. When the bidding war over Cuban amateur Yoan Moncada ended, the Red Sox paid $31.5 million to him and happily doubled it because of the penalty.

Not even 18 months later, Boston traded Moncada, top pitching prospect Michael Kopech and two other prospects for Chris Sale, one of the best pitchers in baseball. That's what prospect capital offers. All the pre-arbitration contract extensions signed this winter -- at least a few of them will teem with marginal value, and the organizations with caches of prospects will be in the running to acquire them.

This sort of flexibility offers inherent value itself. Organizations crave the ability to pivot, to be creative, to weigh options, to settle on the best. Using the draft as a conduit to offer choices when rules restrict teams otherwise is a perfectly logical endpoint.

"Theoretically," one American League general manager said, "it makes all the sense in the world."

He paused.

"Theoretically."

***

The theoretical is a wonderful place in baseball. It incubates ideas that have changed the game. It also Turing tests ones that don't pass muster as real.

For all of the good reasons a team should blow up the draft, there are significant roadblocks. Some of these are capable of being traversed. Others would take savvy, instinct and a good bit of fortune to overcome.

1) It's harder to project high school kids

Teams tend to gravitate toward college players in the draft today because they're seen as a surer thing. The near-necessity to execute the plan doesn't make it a nonstarter; it simply complicates things.

"You have to be really confident in your process," one American League GM said. "You have to scout very differently. You're going to take young guys. Going to be a lot of high school guys. They're inherently riskier. You really need to know them well if you're investing that kind of money."

2) Trust issues

This goes both ways. Are executives really inclined to trust an agent whose duty is to get the best deal for their client? Are players really inclined to trust executives who have no ties, no history and no loyalty shown to him? What can a team do to ensure a player it will stick to the plan? What can a player do to show the team it's not simply using it as leverage?

Trust is tricky. But this, too, is capable of reasonable resolution.

3) No one in baseball can keep a secret

Every spring, a few high school players inform teams that they don't want to be drafted. The most prominent this year is Jack Leiter, the right-handed pitcher and son of former major leaguer Al Leiter, who has a strong commitment to play at Vanderbilt.

If a half-dozen or more first-round talents did so in the same year, alarm bells around baseball would sound. Executives would dispatch scouts to do recon in their small circles. The culprit almost certainly would leak out before the draft.

"Amateur scouts gossip too much," one agent said. "No way you could keep it under the radar."

4) Teams will call players' bluffs

Let's say the first three potential roadblocks happen to be nonfactors -- that a GM has deep faith in his scouts and crosscheckers to choose the right players for this experiment, that the GM's reputation is beyond reproach and fosters conviction in players and agents, and that his scouts likewise respect him enough to keep the secret.

The other 29 teams, suspecting something is amiss, may not buy the threat of the player going to college and select him anyway.

"If he's good enough," one agent said, "clubs are going to say: 'Here's your $2 million. Go to college if you don't want it.' "

Particularly with prominent players, there are extra safety valves to protect teams. If a team offers a player drafted within the first three rounds at least 40% of that pick's slot value and he doesn't sign, the team receives a compensatory pick in next year's draft one pick later. The Atlanta Braves didn't sign Carter Stewart, the eighth overall pick last year. Because they offered him 40% of slot, they'll pick ninth this year.

Would it be frustrating to see a top pick go unsigned, particularly when that pick could be developing in the minor leagues? Sure. Does that protection make sliding players down later into the draft, as the plan calls for, that much more difficult? Absolutely.

And by the second round, it will be obvious what's happening. If the team trying to execute the plan chooses one of the don't-choose-me players in the first round, that's a sign. If it doubles up with another in the second round, that's proof. And the possibility of teams making a run on the players in the third, to prevent the plan from working while still protected by compensatory picks, is very real. It also shows the danger for the players, who at that point would be looking at sub-$800,000 slot values rather than multi-million-dollar bonuses for not trying to game the draft.

5) The misery of going halfway

"The worst-case scenario is you get caught in the middle ground, which is a very likely scenario," an NL GM said. "Guys don't get to your picks. You think you've got these guys lined up. They get picked. Then you're scrambling. That middle ground is a terrible outcome and it's too likely to chance."

He's not wrong. It's pretty ugly. Consider what happened above. The team ends up with two players that it has promised a total of $19 million. The rest are gone before the team's third-round pick. If it honors those commitments, it will pay more than $37 million for those two players and lose two first-round picks. If it does not, and simply offers slot or slightly above to prevent future penalties, the breach of trust will hit baseball gossip circles and embarrass the team for failure to execute a plan followed by blatant lying.

This is where the theoretical really starts to scare teams.

6) MLB will investigate

Just to tease this thing out entirely, let's say that teams don't run the risk of losing picks, that the players all fall where the team hoped and that they sign for record-breaking bonuses.

MLB is going to be livid at a team for making a mockery of its system. Other teams will be apoplectic, too. The draft is great for all of them. The talent-acquisition cost is minuscule compared to the production players provide. The draft is baseball's golden goose, and whatever team would do this runs the risk of killing it.

Almost certainly the league would launch an investigation, not to mention eye significant changes to the draft to ensure no team can singlehandedly threaten whatever sanctity it may have. Pre-draft deals are technically not supposed to happen, though MLB's eye toward such things has an enormous cataract. It could suddenly remedy that and hit the offending team with severe punishments.

When the Atlanta Braves ran afoul of the rules on international signings, MLB banned their GM, John Coppolella, from the game and made all the illicitly signed players free agents. It levied future penalties, too. Even if teams are told they can talk with agents about what it might cost to sign a player to gauge whether he's worth selecting, the league could very well render judgment against a team based on intent.

Whatever a team's argument may be, the intent of this plan is, of course, to subvert the draft almost entirely. And it doesn't matter that draft systems can be more about cost control than they are talent distribution. When there is a norm and that norm is flipped on its head, the consequences are a complete unknown. And as great as the plan is theoretically, as logical as it is in a vacuum, the threat of those consequences is powerful enough to scuttle the plan for now.

***

Surely among Major League Baseball's 30 teams is one whose risk tolerance is large enough to stomach the downside of the plan, recognize its massive potential and try to execute it. It's too late this year, unless a team truly has pulled a fast one on the industry. Anyway, the 2020 draft may be an ideal one to try it.

The industry buzz about the talent in the 2020 draft dwarfs this class. Two evaluators said 2020 looks like the best MLB draft since the stacked 2011 draft, with a first round that included Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer, Anthony Rendon, Francisco Lindor, Javier Baez, George Springer and Jose Fernandez, Blake Snell and Trevor Story, plus Mookie Betts, Josh Bell, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Treinen and dozens more major leaguers in later rounds. The 2020 draft got even better this week, as Blaze Jordan, a top high school player, told Baseball America he was reclassifying to enter next year's draft as a 17-year-old.

There are worse plans than letting Jordan and the phenomenal right-hander Mick Abel and California outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and the rest of the top high schoolers understand that the draft does not necessarily have to be this way. Dissatisfied with it, Carter Stewart -- the first-round pick who did not sign with Atlanta last year -- instead skipped the draft altogether this year and agreed to a six-year deal with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in Japan.

It's another leverage point for players to use, to try to get the most they can out of the draft -- or potentially maneuver themselves around so that the plan isn't simply a futile idea buried in a corner of the Internet. There are more nefarious ways to drop in the draft -- completely shut down early in the spring and don't give scouts a single look -- but that would entail a kid abandoning his high school team, and that opens an entirely different can of character worms.

The margins are so small in baseball right now, the shutdown -- a tried-and-true tactic in Latin America -- may well come stateside sooner than later. Teams employ dozens of people to hunt for the tiniest advantages. The plan, if executed, would not provide a tiny advantage. It would be the baseball-team equivalent to a winning Mega Millions ticket.

One GM said it's such good value that it would take getting only four of the top 40 players in a draft to make it worth blowing past the bonus pool and losing two future first-rounders. And if that team did, it could take that draft budget money and put it right back into free agency, where signing a top player would not be nearly as onerous, because the team wouldn't need to give up a first-round pick. Not only does the plan enrich teams with young talent, it's like a coupon for older talent.

This is all well and good, but it's still pure theory, subject to the various levers of life, of human decision-making, of rational and irrational behavior's ceaseless squabble. The only question that matters, really, is the one asked long ago: Would it actually work? Until it's put into practice, one can only hazard a guess to the binary of yes and no. There is a third answer, though, one that may be the best we'll get when it comes to whether a team blowing up the draft would actually work.

It sure would be fun to find out.