Over the past few months, within the estimable pages of this very site, Nathaniel Grow and I have both discussed at some length the consequences of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association’s exclusion of minor leaguers. The most obvious, of course, is minor leaguers’ pay. But there’s another less obvious consequence of the MLBPA’s current membership approach, stemming from the reality that minor leaguers become major leaguers. Not all of them, of course, but there are very few players who jump straight to the bigs without having ever graced a minor-league field. And that means that the vast majority of major leaguers will spend at least some period of time without union representation, during which they will do things, and say things, which eventually will reflect on the union and its membership as a whole.

Now, unions serve a lot of purposes — more than just negotiating for higher wages. They improve workplace safety, secure healthcare and other benefits, and can provide a counterbalance against the structural mismatch of a large employer. But they do all of this by representing their members, and helping those members put their best foot forward, whether by training or otherwise.

What unions can’t (or don’t) do, however, is provide these services for non-members. This makes sense: a union won’t want to make non-members better able to compete with people whose interests it’s protecting. So while it’s somewhat understandable that the current members of the MLBPA don’t want to expand their protections to include non-members, the problem is that minor leaguers and major leaguers don’t really compete for the same job in the sense that a union electrician and non-union electrician compete for the same job. When a minor leaguer gets called up, he becomes a union member. Two 40-man roster players competing for a spot are both already union members. So excluding minor leaguers doesn’t limit competition; it just makes future members worse off.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It didn’t get nearly as much press coverage as fake news tweets about CIA nanites, but back in June, injured Indians hurler Trevor Bauer filed a lawsuit against a company called Top Velocity, LLC, alleging that Top Velocity and its owner, Brett Pourciau, illegally used his license in violation of federal, Texas, and Louisiana law. You can read his Complaint here.

There’s a lot to unpack. Remember that this is, as always, a simplified overview: don’t go practicing law or filing lawsuits based on what you see here.

Let’s start with the crux of what Bauer is saying.

This might seem kind of funny (Bauer is alleging he is World Famous!), but it’ll be important later. Now to what Bauer is saying Top Velocity and Pourciau did wrong:

Bauer also alleges that his attorney made repeated requests that Pourciau and Top Velocity remove Bauer’s name and likeness from their website. According to Bauer, after some back-and-forth, they agreed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Cody Allen throws a lot of curveballs. As a matter of fact, the Cleveland closer has thrown the second-highest percentage (38.9%) of curveballs among qualified relievers since the start of the 2014 season. It’s hard to argue with success. Allen’s signature pitch has helped him amass 147 saves, the most in Indians history.

His grip, while not uncommon, isn’t entirely traditional, either. The 29-year-old right-hander throws a spiked curveball, which he learned and developed through the insistence of someone whose advice he’s always taken to heart. It was career-altering advice. Were it not for the pitch, Allen’s day-to-day experiences with rotation would be markedly different than they are on a mound.

———

Cody Allen: “My freshman year of college, I was pretty much just a fastball-slider guy. My slider was OK. I have a twin brother, Chad, who pitched at the University of West Florida, and he had a really good breaking ball. He spiked his. He would always tell me, ‘Hey, man, try spiking it.’ I did, but I had no feel for it. It had good spin and was doing the things I wanted it to, but I felt there was no way I could throw it for a strike.

“When I was coming back from Tommy John surgery the next year, I had an extended throwing program. That gave me a window to see if I could maybe iron this pitch out. So the fall of 2009, and the spring of 2010, is when I really stuck with it. I kept throwing it, and it got better and better.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the All-Star break, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred addressed the Oakland A’s, their quest for a new ballpark, and their remarkably low payroll. With regard to the last of those items, Manfred exhibited little concern, suggesting there was almost no correlation between a club’s capacity to spend money and its ability to win games. John Shea reproduced and retransmitted the following comments, care of Manfred, at the San Francisco Chronicle.

“I categorically reject the notion that payroll should be the measure of whether somebody is trying to win in our game today. I reject that not because I prefer low payrolls to high payrolls. I reject that because I know that the correlation between payroll and winning in baseball is extraordinarily weak.

“You do not guarantee yourself wins by having a high payroll, and as the Oakland A’s have showed, you can win with a low payroll. So I really reject the premise of that question. Those are the economic facts.

“Falling into this notion that payroll is a measure of whether an owner is trying to win is literally sophistry.”

I’ve got good news and bad news for the Commissioner. The good news is that, in six out of the last seven individual seasons, the correlation between wins and payroll hasn’t been very strong, as the graph below suggests.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a listener-created tool to determine the first big leaguer to be born after and the last big leaguer to be born before any given date, the waiver-claim process, the Nationals’ trades, disastrous season, and hazy outlook, the Cubs acquiring Daniel Murphy and the Rockies opting not to, the Mariners’ second annual Women in Baseball Night, and Michael Kopech‘s turnaround, plus listener emails about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s talent and future, adjusting stats for position players pitching, the disadvantage of hitting at altitude, Chris Davis with fewer fielders, and the cost to a team of an NL manager managing like an AL manager, plus Stat Blasts about the adjustments Mike Fiers has made in Oakland and the Cubs’ historic solo-homer streak.

Audio intro: Koufax, "Younger Body"
Audio outro: Poco, "Flyin’ Solo"

Link to MLB Endcaps calculator
Link to Jeff’s Murphy/Rockies post
Link to Craig’s post about Vlad Jr. batting .400
Link to Jeff’s post about position players pitching
Link to Sam’s post about position players pitching
Link to Purple Row post about the Rockies’ home/road splits
Link to Jeff’s post about the Coors Field hangover
Link to Rob’s article about solo homers
Link to Sheryl’s post about Davis vs. Palmeiro

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The Nationals started to unload yesterday, making moves that, depending on your perspective, were either a few weeks too late, or a week and a half too early. It had been easy for a while to say the Nationals just needed time to come around, and our projections never really lost faith, but at some point a baseball team has to make up ground, and they were unable to get into a groove. There’s plenty to be written about what’s happened to the Nationals, but that might be better left for another day, or for another time when we can have a greater understanding.

The moves the Nationals made on Tuesday mean hardly anything for their future. It was more about just giving up on the present. And as far as the individual deals are concerned, you can see how Matt Adams should have a role on the Cardinals. Likewise, you can see how Daniel Murphy should have a role on the Cubs. And yet it was far easier to see how Daniel Murphy could’ve had a role on the Rockies. The Rockies being one of the teams with a higher waiver priority than the Cubs. Murphy wouldn’t have gotten to the Cubs in the first place had another team from the National League put in a claim, and while Murphy could’ve helped anyone, it sure seems like he could’ve made the biggest difference for Colorado. I don’t really know what they were thinking in allowing him to go by.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Bubba Thompson, CF, Texas Rangers
Level: Low-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 5   FV: 45
Line: 4-for-6, HR

Notes
Were Bubba Thompson wrapping up his season with poor numbers, I’d be excusing it based on context. A multi-sport high-school athlete who had focused solely on baseball for just one year, Thompson also had his reps limited, after he signed last summer, due to nagging lower-body issues. I expected him to hang back in extended spring training and then head to Spokane in June. Instead, after a month in extended, Thompson was pushed by Texas to a full-season affiliate as a 19-year-old. He’s hitting .295/.350/.460 with 28 extra-base hits in 323 PAz and 28 steals in 35 attempts. He’s projects as a center fielder with power.

Read the rest of this entry »

Trevor Bauer has been probably Cleveland’s best starting pitcher this year. In his long-awaited breakout, Bauer has racked up 5.9 WAR in just 166 innings on the back of a 51 ERA- and 57 FIP-. His peripherals fully support his performance: a 31.5% strikeout rate and 23.2-point K-BB% are nothing short of elite. His fastball, curveball, cutter, slider, and changeup, meanwhile, have all been well above-average offerings by pitch values. In other words, Bauer’s been Cleveland’s ace, and that’s no small feat on a team with Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco.

So it was a pretty significant blow last week when Bauer suffered a stress fracture in his right leg, the result of being hit with a line drive off the bat of White Sox slugger Jose Abreu.

Bauer is without a firm timetable to return. He also has a history of proposing novel and ill-advised medical procedures like sealing a cut with a soldering iron. The combination of those facts led Michael Baumann, writer for the Ringer, to tweet this.

This is a joke. Colloidal silver is the quintessential snake oil, with no efficacy for treating diseases and potentially serious side effects ranging from skin discoloration (as in, you turn blue) to organ failure. Still, it continues to be marketed as a treatment or cure for the common cold, despite that advertising likely being illegal. In short, colloidal silver is quackery, and as Baumann related later, he assumed we’d know that and get the joke.

I assumed that my joke about Bauer using blood transfusions and colloidal silver to cure his injured fibula was so ridiculous it would be impossible to mistake it for actual serious reporting.

Never underestimate the capacity of humanity to prove your assumptions wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »