MLB News & Notes (other than Cubs or Sox)

[VanSlawAndCottoCheese]

That Deadspin piece reminds me: any of you Athletic subscribers wanna dish on the Rosenthal article talking about a possible work stoppage?

[rok]

Rosenthal: Inside the Frayed Relations that Could Have MLB Owners and Players Walking Off a Cliff Together


Baseballs labor agreement does not expire for nearly three years. Yet such is the tension between the players and owners, the threat of the sports first work stoppage since 1994-95 is palpable.


Consider:


*Before each round of collective bargaining, the players empower their union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, to withhold a portion of the annual money they receive from licensing, putting it aside for a possible strike fund. The amounts generally rise as the end of a labor agreement draws near, but the players already have taken the unusual step of authorizing the union to withhold their entire checks, reflecting their increased urgency.


*Earlier this month, at baseballs Rookie Career Development Program in Miami, union chief Tony Clark spoke to approximately 100 prospects at greater length than in previous years, explaining that recent difficulties in labor relations bear some similarity to past problems that led to stoppages. A number of the young players demonstrated a heightened awareness by raising specific concerns about service-time manipulation keeping a top prospect in the minors to assure an extra year of control.


*Star players such as the Giants Evan Longoria, Cardinals Paul Goldschmidt and Rockies Charlie Blackmon are voicing concerns about the state of free agency almost daily, while officials from a number of clubs spent time at their recent fan conventions answering questions about their teams lack of spending.


With spring training approximately two weeks away, the sport should be buzzing with talk about pitchers and catchers reporting and debating which teams are contenders. Instead, the talk is about the more than 130 free agents who remain on the open market including the two biggest, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado and of the frayed relations between players and owners that might disrupt a $10 billion industry and cause a work stoppage in 21.


Seth Levinson an agent who adapted to a changing free-agent landscape this offseason and negotiated early deals worth a combined $186.5 million for right-hander Nathan Eovaldi, infielder Daniel Murphy and relievers Jeurys Familia, Joe Kelly and Justin Wilson nonetheless fears the sport is in a dangerous place.


Denial of the truth will lead to us locking arms and walking off the cliff together, Levinson said. I am concerned that the lessons of the past have been wiped away with time.


Both sides need to recognize that the present system may result in intense acrimony which can never serve the best interests of the game. The CBA has been opened in the past to address compelling issues. Much sooner than later, the parties will need to find solutions to a system that is broken and create one that will allow for greater harmony.


We all need to be smart and extremely careful not to damage the very thing that we all love. That would be inexcusable and shameful.


The players and owners, though, are only a little more than two years into a five-year labor agreement. They have adjusted previous CBAs at midstream, perhaps most notably in their adoption and evolution of a Joint Drug Program, but never for economic changes. Major League Baseball is highly unlikely to negotiate a new economic system before the current deal expires, and the union understands a dramatic overhaul is out of reach until the next round of collective bargaining.


One potential compromise would be for baseball to agree to largely non-economic incentives that would spur greater competition in exchange for the union yielding on pace-of-play initiatives. But baseball officials say they have experienced repeated frustration trying to engage the union in conversation. They have yet to receive a response to a series of rules changes they proposed on Jan. 14.


I am not sure why we are talking about walking off the cliff together when we are three years away from the expiration of our collective bargaining agreement and there has been no effort by the MLBPA to engage in discussions on these issues, said Dan Halem, MLBs chief legal officer and deputy commissioner for baseball administration.


Countered Clark, We are scheduled to meet this week to discuss a wide range of issues currently facing the game both on and off the field. These are not the first such meetings of this off-season.


Any suggestion the players or the PA have been unwilling to engage in substantive discussions with the league is neither accurate nor productive to the parties ongoing dialogue.


The players would be rightly alarmed if they were receiving a diminished percentage of industry revenue a perception that exists in some quarters, but according to baseball is incorrect.


Since 2007, players have received between 53 and 57 percent of revenue annually, including 54.8 percent in 2018. Those figures, which include amateur signing bonuses and minor-league salaries, are audited and given to the union. They are not in dispute.


The picture, however, is different when considering only major-league salaries.


The owners, according to the Associated Press, reported a slight increase in the average salary last season, to $4,007,985. But the union, using different accounting methods, said the average dropped for the first time since 2004, dipping to $4,095,686, down $1,436 from the previous season. Going by the union figures, salaries barely rose over the most recent three-year period, increasing 3.6 percent from 2016 to 18 after rising 23 percent from 12 to 15.


The difference, Levinson said, is largely attributable to changes in free agency, which drove the player market for more than 40 years and helped make the union the wealthiest in professional sports, and one of the most powerful in history.


Levinson did a study of the players who attained the necessary six years of major-league service to become free agents in 2017-18, eliminating those who had retired, signed international contracts or were not expected to play due to injury.


Among his findings:


*The market was the third straight in which overall free-agent values declined.


*Players were not necessarily benefiting as they reached the open market, with 71 percent of all free agents accepting a pay cut.


*Multi-year deals were shorter in length, with 67 percent of them landing at two years.


*The disappearing middle class of players was reflected by the decline in median salary, from $1.65 million in 2014-15 to $1.32 million in 17-18.


Baseball holds a different view, in part because it projects the current free-agent class to command the second-highest total of guaranteed dollars ever committed in one offseason, trailing only the 2015-16 group that received approximately $2.35 billion.


The sports projection for 2018-19 includes conservative estimates for Harper and Machado and accounts for other prominent unsigned free agents, including closer Craig Kimbrel, left-hander Dallas Keuchel and super-utility man Marwin González.


While baseball acknowledges the dip in median salary, its figures show a 29 percent increase in the average salary from $3.1 million in 2012 to $4 million in 18 a climb it attributes to a larger number of highly compensated players. In 2018, the 10 highest-paid players earned more than the 1,000 lowest-paid combined.


As for the previous three-year decline in free-agent values, baseball attributes the dropoff, at least in part, to increased production and earnings by young players.


Of the top 50 players in Fangraphs version of Wins Above Replacement last season, 80 percent were younger than 30. Players with less than six years of service received 24 percent of the total player compensation, up from 16.3 percent in 2007.


Mike Trout is a leading example of the new trend. Eligible to become a free agent after the 2017 season, Trout instead signed a six-year, $144.5 million extension with the Angels in March 2014. He is on track to finally hit the open market after the 20 season unless he signs another extension first.


Nick Markakis, on the other hand, is an example of how free agency no longer functions the way it once did.


True, Markakis is 35. True, he had a .701 OPS in the second half last season after producing an .877 OPS in the first. But he also made his first All-Star team and earned Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards. And last Tuesday, he agreed to a one-year, $6 million contract to return to the Braves, a team that paid him $11 million last season.


Markakis actual salary in 2019 will be $4 million; the other $2 million stems from a buyout on a $6 million club option for 20. A rival agent theorizes that if Markakis representative had the opportunity to tell clubs on the first day of free agency, Ive got a $4 million offer, more competitive bidding would have ensued, and the 13-year veteran would have ended up with a higher number.


But thats not the way free agency works anymore.


A growing number of agents, while frustrated with the clubs tactics, acknowledge that their previous negotiating strategies are no longer as effective, and that they need to operate differently than in the past.


Teams, drawing on analytics that assign specific dollar values to individual players, enter free agency with a pre-determined notion of what a player is worth. The teams evaluation models are similar, so often the values they assign player are similar. And with the market increasingly flooded with interchangeable parts 41 non-tendered players joined the original list of 164 free agents this offseason teams can wait to get the best possible deals. The smaller the contract, the better the chance for surplus value.


The similar offers many players receive strike some on the players side as possible collusion by teams to illegally depress free-agent salaries. The union, as it does every offseason, is encouraging agents to keep detailed notes of their conversations with clubs. Baseball does have a history of collusion the owners paid the players $280 million to settle three cases in 1990 and another $12 million to address other allegations without an admission of guilt in 2006. The players also raised concerns about collusion in 2010, but nothing specific came of those allegations.


Then again, it is one thing to suspect collusion and quite another to prove it, particularly if baseballs projections are accurate and the current free-agent class ends up the second-highest-paid in the games history.


Theyre not stupid. Theyre not going to do that (engage in collusion) again, one agent said of the clubs, speaking on the condition of anonymity. What we have are a lot of GMs and front offices that are cut from the same cloth. They are way more disciplined than theyve ever been.


The consensus among many on both sides is that agents need to adjust, identify potential ways to exploit the market, and anticipate demands for certain types of players (of late, catchers, multi-use relievers and hitters with defensive versatility) before clubs target them.


For some arbitration-eligible players, the idea of agreeing to contract extensions including free-agent years thought to be below-market might hold greater appeal than it did previously. For some free agents, the best move might be to jump at reasonable offers early in the offseason than wait out the market.


Scott Boras, the most well-known of the baseball agents, often takes the opposite approach with his free agents, holding out for the right offer. His strategy, however, showed cracks last offseason, when right-hander Jake Arrieta, designated hitter J.D. Martinez and third baseman Mike Moustakas agreed to deals after spring-training camps opened that fell below public expectations.


Boras might argue otherwise. Martinez, who only once had played more than 140 games in a season, received five years, $110 million from the Red Sox in a front-loaded deal that includes two opt-outs. Arrieta, who was coming off a down season, received three years, $75 million with an opt-out the Phillies could void if they extend his deal to five years, $115 million.


The agents approach, however, is again getting tested.


Boras represents many of the top remaining free agents: Harper, Keuchel and Moustakas; Marwin González, Martín Maldonado and Gio Gonzalez. But what traditionally have been Boras greatest strengths patience, fearlessness, resolve are now strengths of the clubs as well.


An older agent, a veteran of the sports eight work stoppages, used to utter the phrase, Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, when warning of labor unrest.


The agent was predicting trouble if clubs applied too much leverage in their dealings with players, went too far to press any advantage. A younger agent makes a similar point more delicately, arguing, 80 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing nothing being the revenues baseball would generate in the event of a work stoppage.


Even some on the players side doubt a stoppage would occur in 21, saying the union cannot unite the players for a strike, and the clubs know it. Money is one reason: The minimum salary of $555,000 might rise through cost-of-living adjustments in 2020 and 21, and the average salary figures to remain above $4 million. The current players also have no history of shutting the game down. The last player active during the 1994-95 strike, Alex Rodriguez, retired in August 2016.


Union officials, however, say the players are engaged and focused to a greater extent than in the past, locked and loaded for any potential fight. One agent was even more blunt, saying he didnt think it was possible to galvanize the players, but that commissioner Rob Manfred and the clubs just might succeed.


But what exactly is the league supposed to do?


Manfred cannot force teams to spend more money. The union agreed to the current rules and has always bargained for a system that ebbs and flows according to market forces. Clubs currently hold the upper hand, but for decades the players manipulated the system to their advantage and never backed down. They were not going to stop clubs from giving them money.


Now that the balance of power has shifted, the clubs arguably are going too far with their algorithms, modeling almost everything to a fault in the words of one team official. At the same time, the clubs cannot be expected to stop trying to operate as efficiently as possible.


Then again, if the players are this upset, is the system truly working?


Consider the luxury tax, a mechanism introduced in the 1996 CBA to slow not stop the games biggest spenders (baseball remains the only major North American professional sport without a salary cap). More than two decades later, some high-revenue clubs treat the threshold as a soft cap, and shy away from setting salary precedents. The idea that a rising tide will raise all ships, a central tenet of the unions past approach, no longer carries the same weight.


One agent says Clark should flip the script and announce, Im heartened and excited by the fiscal restraint of clubs, their ability to analyze and come up with similar values for players, their ability to budget. Because of that, we no longer need salary depressors in the next CBA. Why do we need a luxury tax if hardly anyone is paying it?


Clever, but Clark first must answer MLBs challenge to engage in productive discussions, and, as suggested previously, work around the edges of the CBA to create incentives for teams to compete to the fullest for example, through adjustments to the draft. The clubs, in turn, must show good faith and a genuine willingness to address the players concerns, even if it means extending an olive branch and making a small financial sacrifice.


Sure would beat locking arms and walking off a cliff, as far off in the distance as that cliff might appear.

[funkster]

I don't know, but this has been the most fucked up offseason.

[1060Ivy]

It has, and there’s a decent chance that at least 1 of the 3 best free agents don’t sign prior to pitchers and catchers reporting.


Yes, spring training is too damn long but the idea that GMs are putting together squads not knowing if Harper, Machado, or Kimbrel are on their squad or not is nuts

[jstraw]

NO COLLUSION!

[VanSlawAndCottoCheese]

Thanks, rok. We're headed for disaster, methinks.

[biggz]

This offseason, all around, is ass. Thanks for sharing the Rosenthal piece, rok. I am frightened for the near future of the sport.

NO COLLUSION!

You cannot have Great baseball stadiums without WALLS!

[VanSlawAndCottoCheese]

Boy, did the Dodgers ever get whiter this off-season.

[rok]

I can't imagine the DH being implemented for the coming season, but some of the other rules changes would be fine by me.


https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/02/m...anges.html

[rok]

Finally.


https://twitter.com/espnstatsinfo/status...5027495936

[Kid]

Sixto Sanchez?  Is he a relative of Sixfinger Alfonseca?

[Butcher]

Sixto is going to be a stud. But still a huge pickup for the Phillies. They're going to make the East pretty interesting.

[rok]

Especially if the Phils also add one of Harper or Machado. Their rotation aside from Nola (and maybe Jake on a good day) isn't all that impressive, but they're definitely on the rise.



Also, where are the 120+ remaining free agents going to end up with a little over 2 weeks until spring training?

[1060Ivy]

Also, where are the 120+ remaining free agents going to end up with a little over 2 weeks until spring training?

Working as greeters at Wal-Mart?

[rok]

RIP DL


http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25947...jured-list