Around Baseball 2019

[devo]

Sounds like its a done deal at 8/260 with an opt-out

[Ray]

Rox offered 7Y/245M to Arenado

 

Looks like they have a deal for 8 years $260M. That was fast.

 

Full NTC and opt out after 3 seasons.

[Orgfiller]

[Terminator]

Seems like a pretty good deal for both sides. He didn't really give them too much of a discount compared to what Machado got but paying a guy through his age 35 season isn't so bad.

[L54]

Nice to see the Rockies lock Arenado up. Maybe they'll stop handing out ridiculous contracts to mediocre relievers now

[BTS]

I like seeing teams lock up their stars. Good for Colorado.

[Bobthe4th]

Seems like a pretty good deal for both sides. He didn't really give them too much of a discount compared to what Machado got but paying a guy through his age 35 season isn't so bad.

 

Yeah I think this is a great deal for both sides. Not many people would expect the Rockies to retain Arenado if he hit free agency, and he becomes one of the highest paid players in baseball with full control over his future.

[Ray]

Another extension: Miles Mikolas gets $68M over 4 years by the Cardinals.

[Boxcar]

Seems like a pretty good deal for both sides. He didn't really give them too much of a discount compared to what Machado got but paying a guy through his age 35 season isn't so bad.

 

Would you give the Rockies a discount?

[Boxcar]

Another extension: Miles Mikolas gets $68M over 4 years by the Cardinals.

 

Seems like a great deal for the Cards

[G-Snarls]

[glory]

Man I wish the Jays had good players to lock up. Now is the time. Players fearing a lockout and wanting to get a guarantee.

 

Grichuk might be the only realistic extension candidate.

[Terminator]

Would you give the Rockies a discount?

 

No and I'm from the area and live here.

[Spanky__99]

This 1B competition for the Yanks will be fun to track, both Voit and Bird are mashing out of the gate.

[Spanky__99]

Good to see they've began negotiations early, they really don't need a strike/lockout.

 

 

Baseball appears headed to early labor negotiations

 

Feb 27, 2019 , By RONALD BLUM

 

NEW YORK (AP) Baseball players and management appear headed to early labor negotiations that could lead to significant economic changes in the collective bargaining agreement and possibly a new deal past the current expiration of December 2021.

 

Management backed off its desire for a pitch clock this year in a proposal to the players' association on Tuesday, putting off most on-field changes to 2020 at the earliest. The union quickly made a counteroffer Wednesday, and the biggest alterations still being discussed for this year are a single trade deadline, most likely on July 31, and lowering the number of mound visits without a pitching change from six to five.

 

While players have proposed major initiatives that impact economics, such as expanding the designated hitter to the National League and adding provisions that make rebuilding rosters with young players less attractive, management has been focused on on-field issues thus far. Management told the union it would be willing to discuss larger economic issues as part of talks that could lead to a longer labor contract.

 

Details were disclosed to The Associated Press by people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because talks were ongoing. Many aspects of management's latest proposal were first reported by ESPN.

 

Among the items put off until 2020 at the earliest are several where an agreement could be reached soon:

 

- a three-batter minimum for pitchers.

 

- increasing active rosters from 25 to 26, including a maximum of 13 pitchers, and dropping them from 40 to 28, including a maximum 14 pitchers, from Sept. 1 through the end of the regular season.

 

- increasing the minimum regular injured list and option recall period for pitchers from 10 days to 15.

 

- a new rule that position players could pitch only from the ninth inning on, or from the sixth inning on when their team trails by seven runs or more.

 

The sides remain in discussion over starting extra innings of the All-Star Game and of spring training games with a runner on second base and ending spring training games after 10 innings. They also are discussing experimenting with shorter between-inning breaks combined with televising the start of innings on split-screens alongside commercials.

 

A single trade deadline would replace the current rules, which have a July 31 deadline for trades without waivers and an Aug. 31 deadline to acquire players who would be eligible for that team's postseason rosters.

 

While unilaterally making the decision to experiment with a 20-second pitch clock during spring training this year, management has offered not to pursue a pitch clock in the regular season through 2021. Management has the right to implement a clock in games that count, but baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he is reluctant to take that step without players' agreement.

 

Baseball has had 12 collective bargaining agreements starting with the first in 1968 and has never held mid-agreement talks that led to an extension or new deal. The only mid-agreement extension was reached in the settlement of the 1981 midseason streak, in which management gave players credit for major league service during the 50-day walkout in exchange for extending the deal by one year through December 1984.

 

The NFL and NBA have reached new deals in mid-agreement, motivated by uncapped final years in the football contract and opt-out provisions in the basketball contract.

 

After experiencing eight work stoppages from 1972-95, baseball has enjoyed a quarter-century of labor peace. But players have become angry because of two straight slow free-agent markets that has seen many deals reached on the eve of spring training or with workouts already underway. St. Louis pitcher Adam Wainwright has talked about the possibility of a strike.

 

Union head Tony Clark and players have accused rebuilding teams of tanking, a charge management denies. Manfred maintains clubs have the right to rebuild with youth as they please.

 

The 2012-16 labor contract imposed limits on bonuses for amateurs residing in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, and the 2017-21 deal capped spending on international amateurs. In addition, the current deal raised the top luxury tax rate for repeat offenders from 50 percent to 95 percent, which has impacted behavior among the highest-spending teams.

 

Because of management's success under the current deal, some team owners may be reluctant for mid-agreement negotiations. However, overall attendance has dropped in three straight seasons, the average last year fell below 30,000 for the first time since 2003 and six ballparks set record lows for a season. MLB attributed the drop largely to bad weather last spring.

 

---

 

More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports

[Boxcar]

- a new rule that position players could pitch only from the ninth inning on, or from the sixth inning on when their team trails by seven runs or more.

 

How is this something that needs to be addressed? My god. A) exactly zero people are complaining that position players pitch sometimes and what if you wanted to do funky stuff like playing Ohtani and another pitcher on the same day to effectively get an advantageous platoon the whole game?

 

In a nutshell it isn't a big deal but it kinda makes you feel like there's really something wrong with the commissioner's office when these "issues" are even tabled.

 

He's just throwing up far too many needless rule changes far too quickly.

[Spanky__99]

A Modest Proposal to End Service Time Manipulation

 

by Craig Edwards

February 27, 2019

 

Major league baseball is at its best when the game’s most talented players are able to showcase their skills at the sport’s highest level. Anything that serves to limit these displays is to baseball’s detriment. Of course, sometimes, fate intervenes. The game’s best players are susceptible to injury, and though major league organizations and the players themselves take great care to try to stay on the field, seasons are lost to tweaked knees and torn elbow ligaments. Some obstacles are impossible to avoid fully. But other absences are the result of careful, intentional planning. Take the example of service time manipulation.

 

Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. is generally considered to be the best prospect in baseball. He probably earned a callup last season when he was destroying minor league pitching. Right now, Steamer projects the younger Guerrero to put up 4.6 WAR in 545 plate appearances. That’s the 13th-best projection among position players, right behind Nolan Arenado and just ahead of Jose Altuve. He’s not a player who needs to spend more time in the minors, and yet yesterday, Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins said that, “I just don’t see him as a major league player. He’s 19.” To start with, Guerrero is older than Juan Soto was when the latter debuted last year, and will turn 20 before Opening Day. Atkins assertion that Guerrero isn’t ready is belied by his minor league performance and industry consensus, and it is hard to interpret the GM’s comments as anything other than an attempt to provide some public, baseball-related justification for keeping Guerrero in the minors so that he can stay under team control through 2025 instead of hitting free agency after the 2024 campaign. That’s service time manipulation.

 

The practice isn’t unique to Toronto. Kris Bryant was famously held down at the beginning of 2015; he won’t be a free agent until after the 2021 season instead of in 2020. Last season, Ronald Acuña didn’t start the season with the Braves. The White Sox’s Eloy Jimenez is likely to spend time cooling his heels in Charlotte despite being much better than the players ahead of him on the depth chart. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. is ready now, and the Blue Jays will be worse for every game that Guerrero spends in Buffalo, but that is exactly where he figures to begin this season.

 

The incentives for teams are obvious, but they are deliberately choosing not to field their best roster, depriving the sport of its best possible product, and delaying deserving players from fulfilling life-long dreams and obtaining market contracts. The easiest solution would be for teams to simply call up players when they are capable of meaningfully contributing, but given that teams could easily do that right now and don’t, another solution is likely necessary. Others have offered solutions to this issue in the past. In 2015 in response to the Cubs’ treatment of Bryant, FanGraphs alum Mike Petriello proposed changing the a full year of service to time to 100 days on the major league roster. Erstwhile Baseball Prospectus scribe Russell Carleton proposed an age-based free agency model as a means of curtailing the practice. Sheryl Ring proposed that a player accrue a year of service if he spends the majority of the league year on the major league roster. And while a solution might not even be possible until the players and owners negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2021, I’d like to put forth my own proposal to eliminate service time manipulation. The problem is fairly straightforward, but as most potential solutions have unintended consequences, this one is a multi-parter.

 

First, a player’s first year of service time will be reached with 90 days of MLB service. This is a fairly direct solution, but unfortunately, it could also incentivize teams to keep players down even longer than they do now. While it might make clubs’ decisions more difficult if they are potential contenders, organizations might still opt to keep players in the minors, and non-contending teams might be more likely to do so than those with playoff aspirations; in a year where the Blue Jays are only projected for 77 wins, they might decide that Vlad Jr.’s defense at third needs yet more time, bad PR and a potential grievance be damned.

 

As a result, it will be necessary to give players half-service time for their days on the 40-man roster. If a player spends the entire season on the 40-man roster in the minors, he will reach 90 days of service time at the end of the season. To prevent shenanigans for those with MLB experience, players can earn one year of MLB service time in the minors at any point in their careers, but can only accrue one year this way. This will get some players closer to free agency without actually playing in the big leagues, and incentivizes putting a team’s best players on the active roster. After all, if a player’s free agency clock is going to start anyway, why not have him lend his talents to the big league club if he’s ready? Unfortunately, teams don’t put players on the 40-man roster until they have to, and many top prospects won’t be on the 40-man roster as a result.

 

To combat the phenomena described in the previous paragraph, it will be necessary to put more teeth behind the Rule 5 draft by making players draft-eligible a year earlier than they are under the current system. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger would now be eligible after four years of minor league service instead of five, while those who did so at age 19 or older would be eligible after three years instead of the current four. This would make many more good prospects eligible for the Rule 5 draft and in order to protect them, teams would then put them on the 40-man roster.

 

Unfortunately, making so many more players eligible for the Rule 5 draft would create a massive roster crunch, and could result in teams being unable to get the prospects they develop to the majors. To prevent this situation, and to keep the Rule 5 draft roughly as it is, the 40-man roster would become a 50-man roster. Teams would then have no difficulty protecting eligible players, but would still be encouraged to promote their prospects as those prospects would end up with a year of service time. While teams would move more players to the majors earlier, those players accruing service time in the minors are a limited set of players: those who are close to the majors or have star potential after multiple years in the minors, hence creating the need to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. For players, it would also have the added benefit of welcoming hundreds more players into the union with better minor league wages as players who have been named to the 40-man, now 50-man, roster are paid at a higher rate thanks to union protections. As a benefit to teams, an additional option year could be added.

 

So to review:

 

Players receive their first, and only first, year of service time after 90 days

 

Players receive half-service time for days spent on 50-man roster, but not in the majors

 

Rule 5 Eligibility moved up one year

 

40-man roster increased to 50 players

 

Teams receive an extra option year

 

This proposal is admittedly complicated. The irony of this idea is that Kris Bryant, the poster-boy for service time manipulation, actually wouldn’t have been spared due to his rapid ascent to the majors, though the Cubs would have had to hold Bryant out until the All-Star Break in 2015 to get an extra year of his services. While this deal favors the interests of the players at the expense of teams and team owners, it is a much more reasonable proposal from ownerships’ perspective than cutting the service time necessary for free agency to less than six years. A union proposal that cuts free agency down to five years and deals with service time manipulation in some other way would mean less team control for those young, ready stars that this proposal is designed to protect, and might make it a non-starter come 2021. Negotiating this solution is likely to be difficult and part of a much larger deal. Teams are going to be highly resistant to any change that deprives them of cost controlled years of their best players. But the union focusing some of their attention on getting players like Vlad Jr. to the majors, as well as getting better benefits to the minor leaguers left behind, can only be to the game’s benefit. Many of baseball’s stars of tomorrow are ready today. Let’s watch them play, shall we?

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-modest-proposal-to-end-service-time-manipulation/

[Spanky__99]

What kind of year do you guys think Hamilton will have with the Royals? I think his projection for fWAR is quite low, I can see him doubling 1.5 in that park and division.

[Orgfiller]

What kind of year do you guys think Hamilton will have with the Royals? I think his projection for fWAR is quite low, I can see him doubling 1.5 in that park and division.

 

Billy Hamilton can't hit at all. His projection is reasonable, there's only so much value that can be added through baserunning and defense when it's negated by being one of the worst professional hitters in the MLB. He already projects for an optimistic 75 wRC+ by Steamer, maybe he'll eclipse 2 WAR if everything goes right.

[Spanky__99]

Billy Hamilton can't hit at all. His projection is reasonable, there's only so much value that can be added through baserunning and defense when it's negated by being one of the worst professional hitters in the MLB. He already projects for an optimistic 75 wRC+ by Steamer, maybe he'll eclipse 2 WAR if everything goes right.

 

I legit think he gets a win above that, that parks huge, he'll duck snort 10 extra bases alone in BABIP and anything in the gap or down the lines he gets triples for days, plus he'll be running all season, and his defense is immaculate. Just a gut feeling here, especially if he's used more proactively late in games etc, when he has days off. It'll be interesting now that he's out of the NL Central.

[Brownie19]

I legit think he gets a win above that, that parks huge, he'll duck snort 10 extra bases alone in BABIP and anything in the gap or down the lines he gets triples for days, plus he'll be running all season, and his defense is immaculate. Just a gut feeling here, especially if he's used more proactively late in games etc, when he has days off. It'll be interesting now that he's out of the NL Central.

 

I wonder what his bunt % is and whether there are advanced metrics that suggest he should double it. It would be awesome to see him bunt so often that teams go into sacrifice bunt formation when he's up.

[Spanky__99]

I wonder what his bunt % is and whether there are advanced metrics that suggest he should double it. It would be awesome to see him bunt so often that teams go into sacrifice bunt formation when he's up.

 

If I'm not mistaken he's a country mile above everyone else, lol. Hard to quantify a guy like him, is my point. I guess...

[Ray]

The Braves made $450M in revenue last year with nearly $100M in profit, and yet their payroll right now is lower than it was in 2018. I'd be really pissed if I was a Braves fan right now.

[Spanky__99]

The Braves made $450M in revenue last year with nearly $100M in profit, and yet their payroll right now is lower than it was in 2018. I'd be really pissed if I was a Braves fan right now.

 

Why?

[Horses Fart]

Harper is finalizing his deal with the Phillies.

[Ray]

Why?

 

They can easily sustain a much higher payroll. For reference, the Cubs made similar revenue, operating income, and actually had more debt in 2017. They had a opening day payroll of $215M. Not saying the Braves should spend that much, but they're not even remotely close to them. They're currently at a $118M payroll, in a division where the Phillies, Mets, and Nats got better.

 

They have a young cheap core for the next 3-4 seasons. If you don't spend now, when do you? Instead they're going to plop Markakis out there in RF even though he reverted back to a pumpkin in the 2nd half of the season.

[glory]

Harper about to sign with the Phillies.

 

It's about damn time.

[Spanky__99]

Harper signs with Phillie's 10- 330... Boom!

[Brownie19]

The Braves made $450M in revenue last year with nearly $100M in profit, and yet their payroll right now is lower than it was in 2018. I'd be really pissed if I was a Braves fan right now.

 

Wouldn't you need to know what their profit was over say - the last 10 to 15 years to make that claim? I mean if some team is pocketing $100M in profit year after year after year and refusing to invest a little more in the team, then sure, but if they lost $400M over the past 10 years combined and then finally made some cash in 2018, you could understand why they aren't opening up the pocket book this year.

 

Even at that - businesses aren't required to break even. They're allowed to make money. If you don't like their product, you don't go or support them.

[glory]

Wow, Passan saying it is 13/330.

 

13 years. Yikes.