Business of Baseball – Knuckleballs

Minor League Pay – Some Progress At Last?

Posted on 17 March, 2019 by Jim Crikket

When the Cedar Rapids Kernels host the Lansing Lugnuts in a three-game series beginning July 13 of this summer, Lugnuts players will have one significant advantage over their counterparts in the home team dugout.

They’ll be getting paid more than 50% more than the Kernels players.

It doesn’t mean the Jays’ farm hands necessarily win every contest against the Kernels on the field, nor will they be swimming in riches on their paydays, certainly, but it’s a baby step in the right direction and players in every organization can only hope it’s a trend that spreads across affiliated minor league baseball.

According to a story by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Emily Waldon, Blue Jays executives told The Athletic that they are finalizing a plan to raise their minor leaguers’ pay by more than 50 percent across all levels from the Dominican Summer League through Triple A.

(The Athletic site has a paywall, but if there’s a single site that deserves your consideration for subscribing, it’s the Athletic, in my opinion.)

According to that article, Class A minimum salaries are rising from $1,100 to $1,160 per month this season, so players for Lansing, the Blue Jays’ Midwest League affiliate, will be north of $1,740, about $600 a month more than the Minnesota Twins are obligated to pay players assigned to Cedar Rapids.

Toronto vice president of baseball operations Ben Cherrington told The Athletic, “We hope that it allows our players to have the freedom and comfort to make some good choices, whether it’s where to live, where to eat, etc. We just feel like it’s consistent with our values of trying to be a player-centered organization and give them every resource possible to be at their best.”

We could debate whether $1,740 a month is enough money to provide much “freedom and comfort” but there’s no doubt it’s provides more of those things than $1,160 does.

Minor leaguers are not paid while attending spring training and extended spring training (MLB claims these are merely extended “try-outs”), receiving their meager pay only once assigned to an active minor league team’s roster.

A raise similar to what Toronto is offering would certainly benefit the Twins’ players in Cedar Rapids where players already benefit from a healthy and generous host-family program, which allows players to re-allocate money that would otherwise go toward rent.

Toronto’s move coincidentally (perhaps) came about roughly the same time that Waldon authored another article for which she interviewed over 30 people, many of them minor league players, concerning the plight of players trying to subsist on minor league pay.

The big question, now, is whether Toronto’s unilateral first volley on minor league pay will be answered by other MLB teams.

Certainly, there are 25 guys getting ready to fly to Cedar Rapids in April that hope so.

Will Players Be Willing to Stand Up For Themselves?

Posted on 18 January, 2019 by Jim Crikket

So much is being written and debated concerning MLB ownership’s unwillingness to spend on free agency, whether the big ticket guys like Machado and Harper, or more middle of the pack veterans.

The players’ union obviously got completely dominated in the last couple of rounds of negotiations over the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Limits on amatuer player signing bonuses, limits on international player bonuses and a completely ineffective policy on artificially restricting service time are all evidence of just how impotent the MLBPA has been.

Now, everyone talks about how baseball is broken, because clubs “tank” and justify it with fans as an effective way to “rebuild.”

But can anyone really expect things to change? Given the history of players failing to agree to act in a unified manner, can we really expect to see much change in the next round of CBA negotiations? In fact, it may already be too late for players to get their acts together by the time the current agreement expires following the 2021 season. Players can’t just wait until parties are sitting at the negotiating table. If they do, they’ve already lost.

There’s a terrific article by Michael Baumann over at The Ringer that describes just how difficult it will be for the players to make any progress in the next CBA and why a work stoppage might be their only recourse. He argues that players need to immediately start publicly calling out their ownerships for non-competititve practices. Putting their case in front of the fans, however, is just the start.

“But it’s not enough for players to win over the fans—they have to present a united front within the union as well. Whether deliberately or through extremely fortuitous coincidence, MLB teams have put financial solidarity above the desire to compete. But players are routinely encouraged to go above and beyond the strict call of duty in order to gain an edge over their competitors. Being the self-motivated, hypercompetitive folks that they are, athletes usually oblige, by accepting team-friendly contracts, putting in extra hours training, or agreeing to wear biometric monitors and trading privacy for a perceived competitive edge.”

Similarly, ESPN’s Buster Olney published a New Years Eve article (behind ESPN paywall) that disclosed content of a memo that Buster Posey’s agent, Jeff Berry, has been distributing that outlines some actions that players should consider taking to bring attention to the players’ issues and prepare themselves (and fans) for the upcoming labor battle.

Among the suggestions are what are known as “work to rule” actions, including:

Players refusing to report earlier for Spring Training than the contractually mandated day of February 23.
Players refusing to participate in non-contractually mandated team events such as fan fests.
Players and agents not attending MLB’s Winter Meetings.
Players boycotting MLB-owned media outlets, such as MLB.com and the MLB Network.

Berry’s memo also proposes that players take a page out of the front offices’ playbook, by funding, “a comprehensive study that analytically supports recommended guidelines for player usage for the stated purpose of maximizing health and performance, maintaining/improving tools and athleticism, and mitigating age- and usage-related decline. Basically, a reverse-engineering of the aging curves and usage rates that teams are currently weaponizing against the players.”

In other words, stop letting teams get all the benefit of statistical analysis, especially when the result includes practices detrimental to the players, such as the service time maninpulation that the Minnesota Twins did with Byron Buxton in September when they decided not to promote him, thereby assuring they would benefit from an extra year of his services before he becomes a free agent.

Berry argued that, “Front offices are praised as ‘smart’ when working within the rules to extract maximum performance value for minimal monetary cost. Shouldn’t players also be ‘smart’ and likewise make calculated decisions within the rules to maintain and extend their maximum performance levels at maximum monetary values?”

Obviously Berry and the authors of these articles are right. The only way the owners and front offices will discontinue the offending practices will be if they are forced to. And they won’t be forced to by the players politely asking for change at the negotiating table in 2021.

The question is, will players unify enough between now and then to take actions such as those being suggested?

Would players ever follow one agent’s suggest to avoid events like off-season fan fests and caravans? (Photo by Steve Buhr)

Can you imagine your favorite Twins players staying away from Twins Fest? The established players already no longer participate in the Twins Caravan, but what happens to the caravans if NO players agree to participate?

Would minor league players also agree to stand with their MLB counterparts and not participate in Twins Fest and the Caravans… even though the union they’d be asked to support has done absolutely nothing to improve the plight of minor leaguers (in fact, often giving away concessions on minor league pay and bonuses in order to get more favorable terms for big league players)?

In the past, it has been almost impossible to get superstars making $20 million a year, veterans trying to get a couple extra million dollars and young players still under club control to agree on any unified strategy. They fight amonst themselves and, even when they can agree, they’ve failed miserably at getting the fans behind them. (Hard to imagine boycotting fan fests would help in that area unless, as Berry suggests, they get together to hold similar player-organized events.)

If players can’t – or won’t – do what’s necessary between now and 2021 to lay the groundwork for a more balanced negotiation with owners, it’s difficult to imagine the next CBA being anything significantly more competition-encouraging than the current version.

But if the players won’t do what’s obviously necessary to improve their situations, it will be hard to feel too sorry for them when they end up stuck with another half-decade or more of similarly one-sided business practices by owners.

The players have themselves to blame for the ownership practices they find offensive because they allowed their union to be steamrolled. If they allow it again, it will just reinforce how individually selfish and short-sighted they are and they’ll deserve exactly what they get.

Happy Birthday, Moneyball (and Damn You!)

Posted on 18 June, 2018 by Jim Crikket

Happy birthday, Moneyball!

Yes, as Yahoo’s Jeff Passan alerted us via Twitter over breakfast this morning, Michael Lewis’ seminal baseball book, Moneyball, was released 15 years ago today.

I have to admit, I was picturing the entire SABR community simultaneously Skyping and toasting Lewis and his book, each member raising a glass of their favorite obscure local craft beer. It made me chuckle.

Moneyball’s birthday seems like a good day to discuss the state of baseball, today, given that Passan argues that the book, “set into motion the most significant changes in baseball since Jackie Robinson integrated the game in 1947.”

Wow, right?

So, let’s talk about the changes (and potential changes) to the game of baseball that we can could credit (blame?) Moneyball for.

Before we do that, though, a few personal recollections of Moneyball, the book.

I read it not too long after it came out. I didn’t rush out to buy it the day it was released or anything, but I’m pretty sure I read it within a few months of its release.

I enjoyed it. It didn’t cause an immediate seismic shift in my feelings concerning conventional baseball strategy, but I thought the points that A’s General Manager Billy Beane made were worth considering.

Sometime later, I remember reading that the film rights to the book had been purchased and I tried to imagine how anyone would be able to make a commercial movie out of a book about the application of statistical analysis to baseball. Yes, bringing Brad Pitt on to star as Beane would get a few fannies in the seats, but still.

It turned out my skepticism was well founded as Hollywood had some trouble coming up with a usable script. Then Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing,” “SportsNight,” “A Few Good Men,” et al) was reported to be taking on the task of doing re-writing the teleplay. At that point, I knew I would have to see the movie, not because I’m much of a Pitt fan, but because I’m a huge Sorkin fan.

Sorkin managed to fictionalize the underlying story enough to make it be entertaining without losing the underlying point of the book, in my opinion, but I know some feel otherwise. Regardless, by the time the movie came out to critical acclaim in 2011, most MLB teams were already subscribing to most of Beane’s philosophies, anyway.

Anyway, let’s get back to talking about changes to baseball that may be directly or indirectly traced to Moneyball and also a bit about what some see as inevitable future changes that we might as well blame Moneyball for, as well, while we’re at it.

Passan traces the current focus on “three true outcomes” to Moneyball, as well as defensive shifts, current bullpen usage and the significant spike in pitching velocity.

I’ll let you decide for yourselves whether Lewis’ book about Beane’s Oakland A’s is responsible for those and other changes. In truth the Moneyball reference is just something I’m using as a hook to get your attention (how’s that for honesty?). I just want to talk about the changes themselves, whether they’re good or bad for the game and what, if anything, should be done about them.

I also want to bring in topics that Jayson Stark brought up in his piece at The Athletic last week, specifically, expansion and resulting realignment.

Look, I’m kind of old school. I’m one of those “fat old white men” that are responsible for everything wrong with baseball (and the country in general, I suppose) according to… well… seemingly everyone who ISN’T a fat old white man.

I’d have probably been perfectly happy if Major League Baseball still had the ten teams in each league that existed during my childhood in the 1960s. But I was fine with putting a team in Kansas City and thought their stadium was really cool the first time my family went to a game there. I still think so.

I was OK with the designated hitter rule. Maybe that was because it meant I got to see one of my boyhood heroes, Tony Oliva, extend his career a bit longer than his knees would have allowed had the Twins been required to find a defensive spot for him.

Divisional play and pre-World Series postseason games? Sure, no problem. After all, my Twins won the first couple of AL West titles in seasons that they would have otherwise had virtually no chance to prevent Baltimore from winning the pennant without a playoff system. Of course, they couldn’t prevent that outcome, anyway, as it turned out, but the Twins won SOMETHING anyway in 1969 and 1970,

I’d have probably appreciated that even more had I known it would be another 17 years before they’d do it again.

All of this is by way of pointing out that I have not been universally opposed to changes to the MLB game.

In fact, changes for the sake of making the game more competitive and to improve/broaden fan interest (aka “make more money”) is about as woven into the fabric of the game as any of the rules governing the game, so let’s just stop using “tradition” as an excuse for rejecting any and all suggestions concerning potential changes.

MLB has tried best-of-9 World Series. They’ve tried having two All-Star Games. Some changes worked better than others. Some changes took far too long to make (desegregation, for example).

So, let’s go down the list of changes Passan and Stark have written about and this one fat old white man will tell you what I think of each.

Defensive shifts: I’m pro shift. If you’ve got data, it would be stupid not to use it to prevent runs. I’m against adopting a rule requiring two infielders on each side of second base, but if baseball decides that’s what’s needed to bring more offense back into the game, I wouldn’t whine too loud about it.

I’d like to think, though, that hitters could and would make adjustments to beat the shifts, causing teams to shift less and, thus, correcting the trend over time.

That said, I’ve had people inside baseball that I respect tell me that making such an adjustment isn’t quite that simple. Maybe Wee Willie Keeler could, “keep my eyes clear and hit ‘em where they ain’t,” but it’s unlikely Keeler saw too many 95-100 mph fastballs in the 1890s.

I think if most fans had to step into the batters box to face a 95+ mph fastball, they’d wet themselves.

Hell, I wouldn’t want to try to CATCH a ball thrown at me that fast. Which is why I don’t often criticize a catcher who occasionally doesn’t get in position to block one of those throws that a pitcher doesn’t deliver on a straight line to the catcher’s mitt.

Pitching: Just a few years ago, I was talking to a couple of Twins pitching prospects who had spent time with the Cedar Rapids Kernels and I mentioned something about the scoreboard pitch speed indicator not working. One of them chuckled a little at the reference to what he somewhat derisively termed the “talent meter.”

That conversation took place at a time when pitch “velo” was starting to generate a lot of discussion.

Now, as Passan cites, the average fastball velocity in the big leagues has risen from 88.9 mph in 2003, when Moneyball was released, to 92.2 mph today.

If the young pitching coming through Cedar Rapids is any indication, that trend is not going to be reversing any time soon. It seems very rare to see any pitcher – starter or bullpen arm – who isn’t hitting at least 92 mph on that “talent meter.”

I was a pitcher (well, as long as my high school coach isn’t likely to read this, I’m going to continue claiming that, anyway), so I’ve tended to side with pitchers in just about any pitcher vs. hitter debate. But we are soon going to be watching games where the average fastball is going to be nearing 95 mph.

You can’t tell me that pitch velocity alone isn’t largely responsible for less hitting and, thus, the proliferation of the three true outcomes – a strikeout, a walk or a home run (if you DO get your bat on one of those things squarely, it’s likely to travel some distance).

That gets us to…

Pace of Play: The “three true outcomes” thing is what’s slowing the game down. Not much you can say will change my opinion of that. Two of those three outcomes take a long time to accomplish and can get pretty tedious. That is not good for baseball.

Changing the rules to require just three balls for a walk and two strikes for a strikeout would speed things up, but would just get to those two potential boring outcomes faster. Likewise, changing the rules to make the strike zone bigger or smaller would also just get to one of those outcomes sooner. No thanks.

No, the increase in velocity has shifted the advantage to the pitcher too far. We need something to bring more doubles and triples into the game.

Here’s what I think: Let’s move the rubber back a foot. Maybe it would only take six inches. I dunno. Someone smarter than me could figure out the right distance. But give the hitters just a little more time for their brains to send the communication to their bodies concerning whether or not to swing.

Right now, hitters are just guessing. I was taught by my coach-father to read the spin on the ball, identify the pitch, then make the decision concerning whether to swing or not.

There is no way a human can take the time to do that on a 95 mph fastball. They have no choice but to guess.

But 60 ‘ 6” is what the distance has always been! We can’t change that!

Of course we can. Baseball lowered the mound in the 60s. Why? Because the then-current-height gave pitchers too much of an advantage and hardly anyone was able to hit .300. Sound familiar?

Personally, I think it’s the one rule change that could get more action back into the game while minimizing all other aspects of the game. Just do it, already.

Umpiring: Implement the technology to call balls and strikes electronically. I’ve had it with strike zones that change from umpire to umpire, from pitcher to pitcher and even based on count. (Take a look at the differences between what’s called a strike on 0-2 counts vs. 3-0 counts. It’s absurd and there is NO justifiable reason for it.)

We’ve given the umpires and their union long enough to get it right. Maybe it comes back to the velocity thing, again. It’s tough to accurately judge where today’s fastballs are crossing the plate. Fine, but that’s an argument for using technology, not for defending an outmoded system.

When the game was invented, the best technology available to determine a strike from a ball might have been to put a guy behind the catcher to make that call. That is no longer the case. Make every pitcher and every hitter use the same strike zone.

Expansion and realignment: It’s hard to believe that, in less than two decades, we’ve gone from Bud Selig pushing contraction to Rob Manfred strongly considering expansion.

I’m not really convinced there are two more communities in North America that would successfully support a MLB franchise. I’ve looked at Stark’s list of potential cities and I’m not optimistic about any of them. They are:

Portland
Charlotte
Nashville
Montreal
San Antonio/Austin
Las Vegas
Mexico City

Frankly, I find more reasons why teams might NOT succeed in each of those locations than why they would, but if baseball becomes convinced, I would say, “go for it.”

32 teams are better than 30. It just is. The scheduling issue alone makes this true.

I kind of liked intrer-league scheduling when it was first introduced. Now, not so much. There’s just no way to make scheduling a handful of inter-league games fair for everyone. It screws up competitive balance and that’s not a good thing.

Stark writes that eventually we’ll see an alignment based on geography. Well, maybe most of us fat old white men will be dead by then, but our kids will see it.

I’m good with that. Adopt the designated hitter across the board and give us eight four-team divisions (four divisions in each league).

Stark throws out a couple of possible scenarios for realignment. There are problems with both, but they’re starting points.

One has the Twins with the Cubs, White Sox and Brewers. The other, which tries to largely keep the current AL and NL intact, lumps Minnesota with the Tigers, White Sox and Indians. Not ideal, perhaps, but I understand they can’t build a system with, “what is best for Twins fans?” as it’s starting point, so I wouldn’t get bent out of shape with either alignment.

In the end, here’s where I come down:

I would love for some of my grandkids and their kids to love baseball as much as I do. Whatever it takes to make that happen, I’ll try to be open to.

If some of the changes are hard to swallow, I’ll simply do what I always do – blame someone else.

Damn you, Moneyball. (See how easy that is?)

Ballplayers as Commodities

Posted on 30 April, 2016 by Jim Crikket

It was a minor story this week. Minnesota Twins (and former Cedar Rapids Kernels) pitcher Tyler Duffey was one of a handful of Major League ballplayers that have come to agreements with a firm by the name of Fantex to “sell” a share of their future earnings in return for an immediate sum of money.

You can read the AP story here and, for a description of how the investments in the players actually works, you can click this link to a year-old Fortune article.

The concept of exchanging an immediate known sum of money for some future undetermined, yet theoretically predictable, amounts is hardly new. Commercials for companies willing to “buy” your annuity payments are not infrequent. You can even find organizations willing to buy your life insurance policies and essentially gamble that you’ll die soon enough that they’ll make more money on the policy than they pay you for it.

Fantex also is making similar investments in a few professional golfers. That’s really nothing new, either. A lot of aspiring golf professionals get their early funding to travel around the country competing in tournaments from others who are willing to buy a share of their future winnings.

But this is a new thing for baseball. You don’t find anyone doing any direct investment in ballplayers (outside of Latin America, anyway).

Before we go further with this, let’s be clear about one thing. This kind of financial instrument is likely one of the more speculative (read: risky) you’re likely to find. Seldom would the cliché “buyer beware” be more applicable than to investing with Fantex on a venture like this. That said, it’s interesting to look at how such an initiative, should it become commonplace, could effect the financial underpinnings of the game.

Duffey and the other players involved have agreed to relinquish a percentage (generally about 10%) of their future on-field and off-field income to Fantex in return for a substantial immediate payment. (Duffey’s $2.23 million is the lowest among the ballplayers).

Duffey was a fifth round draft pick by the Twins in 2012 and reportedly received a signing bonus of about $267,000. Minor league salaries are notoriously low. For example, Duffey would have been getting something in the neighborhood of $1100 per month during his days with the Kernels in 2013.

While on the Twins’ Major League roster, he’s making $525,000 this season, which is slightly above the big league minimum salary. He won’t be eligible for salary arbitration for at least another three years, which means that, in the interim, the Twins are unlikely to offer him contracts much higher than what he’s currently making.

With the way MLB teams currently operate, if Duffey were to perform very well for the Twins in the next year or two, it is likely that their front office would offer him a multi-year contract that would cover at least much of his arbitration-eligible years and possibly extend into his free-agency era. This gives the player some insurance against injury and/or poor performance and, in turn, the team controls their salary costs for an extended period.

More often than not, these agreements are viewed as “team friendly” and not only save the club money, in the long run, but improve the players’ value on the trade market.

A lot of players in Duffey’s situation readily accept those deals (unless their agent is Scot Boras, who routinely recommends that his clients bet on themselves and go through the arbitration and free-agency process as soon as possible).

It’s easy to understand why a player would take the deal. Sure, you may cost yourself some money down the road, but you get security and you are still probably assured of seeing more money than anyone in your family has ever seen. And, after all, what other choice do you have if you do value some level of financial security?

None. Until now.

Even after his agent and the government get their share, Duffey is likely to pocket $1 million from his deal with Fantex, if it goes through (If Fantex can’t raise the $2.23 million to pay Duffey from investors, the deal is cancelled). That’s likely going to give his agent a much better negotiating posture if and when the Twins decide they want to talk about an extension. Duffey would no longer be solely reliant on the Twins for financial security.

If this concept takes hold and becomes wide-spread, the whole process by which teams deal with their middle-to-lower tier of players could be affected. Currently, teams balance their payrolls between those they have to overpay (relative to their actual performance) by millions of dollars either on the free agent market or to preclude them from leaving to test free agency and those who they can underpay because they’re still making close to the league minimum or they’re still playing under extensions they signed early in their careers.

If a concept such as Fantex gives players another option for attaining some level of financial security without having to agree to give up (or at least postpone) their big future paydays, that could have a challenging effect on clubs’ payroll management.

Officially, MLB has stated that these arrangements do not violate any MLB rules and the MLB Players Association has an agreement with Fantex that allows them to approach players. It will be interesting, however, to see if the subject finds its way onto the negotiating table this year as the two sides try to hammer out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

In the meantime, if you’re a believer in the future of Tyler Duffey as a big league pitcher, you may have a new – more substantive – way to express that confidence.

It’s too bad we couldn’t come up with a way to spread this concept into the minor leagues. I doubt we’d have to look too far to find some guys in Cedar Rapids or Fort Myers who would be happy to offer a couple percent of their future earnings in return for enough money to afford a pizza once in a while.