Late Friday, news broke that San Francisco Giants Chief Executive Officer Larry Baer had engaged in a physical altercation with his wife, Pam, during a public argument, which was caught on video.

Giants CEO Larry Baer pulled his wife out of a chair and caused her to fall to the ground in a San Francisco plaza on Friday morning, an incident captured on video by a witness and under investigation by city police.

The video shows Baer stepping over his wife, Pam, as she sits in a chair in the plaza in Hayes Valley before noon. She screams, “Oh, my God, no, help!” as Baer appears to try to grab a phone out of her right hand.

You can see that video here; we’re not going to embed it due to its disturbing nature. Not long after the incident was initially reported, Baer released a statement purporting to clarify the events shown on video.

Larry Baer told The Chronicle in an interview, “My wife and I had an unfortunate public argument related to a family member and she had an injured foot and she fell off her chair in the course of the argument. The matter is resolved. It was a squabble over a cell phone. Obviously, it’s embarrassing.”

Later Friday, the pair issued a joint statement through the Giants: “Regrettably, today we had a heated argument in public over a family matter. We are deeply embarrassed by the situation and have resolved the issue.”

After a public backlash, however, Baer issued an additional statement apologizing for his conduct.

Pam Baer issued a statement of her own.

It is worth noting that Pam’s description of events does not fully match those depicted in the video; she does not, for instance, mention yelling for help.

Today, the Giants’ Board of Directors released a statement noting that Baer has asked to take away from the team.

Ordinarily, these events, unfortunate though they are, wouldn’t be the province of FanGraphs. However, Baer’s status as Chief Executive Officer of the Giants means that there could be real repercussions for him and the team as a result of his conduct. Baer was appointed by the team’s owners to oversee its operations; he actually helped to constitute the team’s current ownership group, and owns a small stake himself. He is also the Giants’ designated “control person,” and attends league ownership meetings on their behalf. The control person is the face of the franchise to Major League Baseball; they’re “accountable to MLB for the operation of the team and for its compliance with the rules of baseball.” In other words, they’re the member of the ownership group the team designates as the person in charge of its operations.

As a result, Baer is subject to a policy substantially similar to the Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Child Abuse policy found in the Major League Baseball Collective Bargaining Agreement, which requires parallel prohibitions under a separate policy for non-player employees.. Article X of the Joint Policy (you can find it on page 325) says this (emphasis mine):

The Parties agree that Major League Baseball, its affiliated businesses, every Club and the Players Association shall institute Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policies that are comparable both in terms of scope and discipline for their respective employees, managers, executives, and owners. The cost of implementing and administering these comparable policies will be the responsibility of the individual organization.

In other words, we can reasonably expect that Baer is covered by a policy that contains approximately the same prohibitions, and approximately the same discipline, as the Joint Policy. And we can also expect that this policy is administered at least in part by Major League Baseball, which has already begun an investigation. Indeed, Baer appears to have the ignominious distinction of being the first non-player investigated under the league’s domestic violence policy.

So what can we expect in terms of discipline for Baer? Craig Calcaterra took a look at this, but his analysis was performed in the context of discipline for owners. The problem is that while Baer does own a small stake in the team, he also works for the team in an employee capacity as a representative of the owners. So the relevant question is what power Commissioner Rob Manfred has to discipline Baer and the Giants for this sort of conduct, not just as an owner, but as an employee as well.

As far as disciplining team employees goes, things are actually fairly straightforward. The Major League Rules leave little ambiguity that teams, and those they employ, are subject to the Commissioner’s disciplinary power. Rule 22, for instance, states:

All Clubs and players shall submit themselves to the discipline of the Commissioner as provided in the Major League Constitution and accept the Commissioner’s decisions rendered in accordance with the Major League Constitution and these Rules.

And Rule 24 goes one step farther:

Both the Commissioner and a Club are entitled to discipline any manager, trainer, coach, scout, or other personnel who is not a player, in case of a violation of contract, the Major League Constitution, the Major League Rules, the Commissioner’s regulations, or other rules, policies and guidelines. Such discipline may include fining, dismissing, releasing, suspending or expelling the offender. Any Club dismissing, releasing, suspending or expelling any such person shall at once notify the Commissioner’s Office in writing stating the cause of such action. . . . Unless prior approval of the Commissioner is granted, no person who has been suspended or otherwise declared ineligible shall perform any function for any Club or any other entity related to the Clubs during the duration of the suspension or period of ineligibility.

So what does the Major League Baseball Constitution say about the commissioner’s disciplinary power?

In the case of conduct by Major League Clubs, owners, officers, employees or players that is deemed by the Commissioner not to be in the best interests of Baseball, punitive action by the Commissioner for each offense may include any one or more of the following:

(a) a reprimand; (b) deprivation of a Major League Club of representation in Major League Meetings; (c) suspension or removal of any owner, officer or employee of a Major League Club; (d) temporary or permanent ineligibility of a player; (e) a fine, not to exceed $2,000,000 in the case of a Major League Club, not to exceed $500,000 in the case of an owner, officer or employee, and in an amount consistent with the then-current Basic Agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association, in the case of a player; (f) loss of the benefit of any or all of the Major League Rules, including but not limited to the denial or transfer of player selection rights provided by Major League Rules 4 and 5; and (g) such other actions as the Commissioner may deem appropriate.

In other words, the Commissioner can exercise a tremendous amount of discretion when it comes to determining punishments in cases like this. This kind of blanket authority is known as plenary power: “Power that is wide-ranging, broadly construed, and often limitless for all practical purposes.” If the Commissioner decides that you’ve behaved in a manner which violates a Rule, he has complete authority to punish you for doing so. We saw this when Major League Baseball suspended Padres General Manager A.J. Preller for 30 days for failing to disclose that southpaw Drew Pomeranz was injured prior to trading him to the Boston Red Sox. Preller agreed to accept that discipline under Rule 22 with no recourse even before it was issued: that’s how plenary authority works. Similarly, then-Commissioner Fay Vincent suspended late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for life back in 1990; he was later reinstated. So Manfred could strip Baer of his role as CEO, but allow him to keep his ownership stake – or both, or vice versa.

Now, you might ask why the Commissioner’s authority is greater here than it is concerning players. That’s because the players have collectively bargained for greater protections, such as appeal rights. In fact, as you can see above, the MLB Constitution defers to the CBA as to player discipline – but contains very different limits as to non-players. Front office personnel, who aren’t unionized, are essentially subject to the Commissioner’s plenary authority. And the “such other actions” catchall essentially means that the Commissioner can do what he wants. The Commissioner is limited by the expressly included fine restrictions, but a person fined $500,000 would, in theory, have no appeal rights to anyone other than the Commissioner himself.

You might also wonder why the Commissioner has more power to discipline an executive under the Joint Policy than he does a player. That’s because of that “scope” and “discipline” language we mentioned before – the appeal rights (i.e., the players’ safeguards) don’t apply here. In other words, the employees of a team are subject to a policy that is required to cover the same conduct, but doesn’t need to follow the same procedures for meting out discipline.

So what can Manfred do to punish Baer? He can reprimand him. He can fine him up to $500,000 with no appeal. He can suspend him for any period of time, ranging from one day to forever, barring any involvement with the Giants during that period. He can order him replaced as the Giants’ control person. He can bar him from owners’ meetings for any period of time. Baer’s role as an owner makes the situation more complicated — Manfred could strip Baer of his role as CEO, but allow him to keep his ownership stake – or both, or vice versa, though given the circumstances under which owners have been removed historically, Baer being forced out seems unlikely here. And it’s worth noting that the Giants as an organization have the authority to punish Baer, though it’s unclear whether that option is even on the table beyond the personal leave the Giants indicate he voluntarily requested; also unclear is who will assume the position of control person in his absence.

The problem is that, as we mentioned before, no front office employee or executive has ever been investigated or disciplined under the domestic violence policy before, so there’s no real precedent here. Further, Pam Baer’s statement downplaying the incident means that she may be unwilling to cooperate with MLB investigators, making any discipline more complicated. As a result, we really have no idea how Manfred will respond to this. If he uses player suspensions as precedent, we may be looking at a lengthy one. But it’s also worth noting that Manfred may be unwilling or unable to harshly discipline a team’s control person, given that the 30 control agents are, in essence, Manfred’s bosses. On the other hand, the Players’ Association would justifiably be irked if Baer went undisciplined, with the message being sent that front office executives aren’t subject to the same standards of conduct that players are.

Whatever Manfred decides is going to set a pretty significant precedent moving forward. It remains to be seen what message he and Major League Baseball want to send – and who they want the recipients of that message to be.

We’ve talked a couple of times over the last few months about the current stalemate between the former California Angels and the city of Anaheim. Even after a recent short-term lease extension, the Angels have to vacate Angels Stadium at the end of the 2020 season. Given the Angels’ desire for a new, publicly-funded stadium – one which Anaheim has no desire for, given the current fractured relationship between the parties – the team has been casting about somewhat publicly for a new home. An obvious local alternative site has yet to materialize, however, leading to speculation that the team may consider Las Vegas or the new ballpark being built in Portland as a potential new home.

Recent developments, however, have taken this saga in an unexpected direction. Earlier this week, the City of Long Beach confirmed that it had reached out to the Angels to discuss the possibility of the team moving to a planned waterfront ballpark. The site in question is the former home of the Ringling Brothers circus, and is known as the “elephant lot.”

Now, the Long Beach municipal government, for its part, downplayed the extent of the talks.

“As part of our efforts to create a downtown waterfront development plan, we are exploring the feasibility of a downtown sports venue on the Convention Center parking lot,” Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said in a statement.

‘We are in the early stages of our due diligence and are exploring a variety of options for this property. We have approached the Angels to express our interest and discuss the possibilities of this opportunity. This is very preliminary and discussions are ongoing.”

That said, there’s reason to believe that a move to Long Beach could be a plausible outcome for the Angels, and an attractive one for the City. First, Long Beach has been discussing the possibility of offering the Angels not only a publicly funded stadium but a publicly funded headquarters as well, and reportedly has been looking for a building to purchase for that purpose. Second, the team does have history with Long Beach, and nearly ended up there instead of Anaheim.

The Angels negotiated with Long Beach in the 1960s, but the talks ended when then-owner Gene Autry rejected Long Beach City Manager John Mansell’s demand that the team be called the Long Beach Angels.

But most interestingly, Long Beach is already going to be developing the elephant lot for the 2028 Olympics, which are slated to be held in Los Angeles.

Essentially, the Long Beach waterfront will become a waterfront sports park, hosting a variety of sports and events including BMX, water polo, sailing, marathon swimming, triathlon events, and the good ol’ nail-biter that is handball. Like the Valley Sports Park being proposed at the Sepulveda Basin Recreational Park, much of Long Beach will have temporary structures that are decorated with purple-pink-yellow spectrum of the Olympic bid’s branding.

The problem for Long Beach is that the odds of an economic boon from hosting the Olympics are low, because the costs of hosting the Games are staggeringly high. The Council on Foreign Relations, for example, reported last year that cities have actually begun withdrawing bids because of the cost of building the necessary infrastructure.

Altogether, these infrastructure costs range from $5 billion to over $50 billion. Many countries justify such expenditures in the hopes that the spending will outlive the Olympic Games. For instance, some 85 percent [PDF] of the Sochi 2014 Games’ more than $50 billion budget went to building non-sports infrastructure from scratch. More than half of the Beijing 2008 budget of $45 billion went to rail, roads, and airports, while nearly a fourth went to environmental clean-up efforts.

And those infrastructure costs are often not recouped, as structures built for the Olympics can sit unused and vacant for years on end.

Also problematic are so-called white elephants, or expensive facilities that, because of their size or specialized nature, have limited post-Olympics use. These often impose costs for years to come. Sydney’s Olympic stadium costs the city $30 million a year to maintain. Beijing’s famous “Bird’s Nest” stadium cost $460 million to build and requires $10 million a year to maintain, and sits mostly unused. Almost all of the facilities built for the 2004 Athens Olympics, whose costs contributed to the Greek debt crisis, are now derelict. Gangwon, the South Korean regional government responsible for most of the 2018 Games’ infrastructure, is expected to incur an $8.5 million annual deficit due to upkeep of unused facilities.

A comprehensive study of the 2010 Salt Lake City Games found that these costs weren’t defrayed by economic growth. In fact, the study’s authors found that “the Games had a modest short-run impact on employment and no significant
impact on total employment in the long run.” More recently, an analysis of the Sochi Games predicted that “the accounting loss will probably be one of the highest on record, as average official ticket prices are generally lower than at comparable recent events while costs may be the highest in the history of the Games (estimates have been revised multiple times since 2007, to reach around US$ 50 billion but are yet to be confirmed).” And current analysis has found that the Olympics have no long-term positive impact on economic growth.

The end result is what are called “Olympic Ruins” – abandoned structures that require millions of dollars in upkeep, yet have no real purpose. The “Bird’s Nest” stadium in Beijing is among the most famous examples of this, but it’s hardly alone.

So if you’re Long Beach, about to spend a significant amount of money constructing venues and infrastructure for the Olympic Games, it makes a lot of sense to think about what would happen to those venues after the pomp and circumstance ends. In that vein, inviting the Angels to Long Beach makes a lot of sense. A modern multi-sport venue could potentially both host the Angels and the 2028 Games, and ensure that the venue doesn’t sit vacant for months or years after the closing ceremonies. That doesn’t make publicly funding the Angels’ new ballpark a good idea – the data consistently says it isn’t – but if Long Beach really is committed to hosting the 2028 Games, having the Angels occupy the Olympic arena before and after the Games may make a certain amount of economic sense, if for no other reason than to mitigate very real economic damage by keeping some part of those facilities in use after the Olympics leave town.

And if you’re the Angels, this is – for the most part – a dream come true: a publicly funded, modern stadium, close to Los Angeles and in a large market, complete with corporate headquarters. The question is whether the Angels are willing to share the park in 2028.

None of this means a deal is done, or is even likely to get done. But a marriage between the Angels and Long Beach arguably makes more sense than continuing the existing pact between Anaheim and the team, which may be fractured beyond repair after years of animosity. If nothing else, it will be fascinating to see how this unfolds.

If you watch American football, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “icing the kicker.” For the uninitiated, icing the kicker is not actually the process of freezing the kicker in Carbonite, though that would probably be more fun. Instead, icing the kicker refers to the opposing team calling a time out just before the kicker is about to attempt a field goal or extra point, with the aim of disrupting the kicker’s timing or focus, and causing the kicker to miss said attempt. We saw it happen to the Chicago Bears’ Cody Parkey in the most recent NFC Wildcard game.

Why does this matter? Because a recent rule change has raised the question of whether such a tactic would work in baseball. The twenty-second pitch clock is currently being tested in spring training.

While this has been the rule in the minors for a while, it will be an adjustment for major league veterans who came up before 2015 and aren’t as familiar with it. And that’s led to the question of whether hitters should attempt the tactic of icing the pitcher. FanGraphs alum Travis Sawchik explained the reasoning thusly, while our own Dan Szymborski highlighted the loophole that makes it possible:

In other words, the new rule says that a pitcher has 20 seconds to begin his windup and come set from the time he receives the ball, provided it isn’t the first pitch of an at-bat. However, the rule doesn’t require the hitter to stay in the batter’s box during that time. So is Travis right? Could hitters “ice the pitcher” by waiting until five seconds before the pitch clock expires, thus forcing the pitcher to rush his delivery?

The answer is actually fairly complicated. The idea behind icing the pitcher is that it will make him deliver a worse pitch. It’s a mind game. But it might not be a mind game that works all that well. The evidence from other sports is mixed as to whether such a mind game would even be effective. Older research suggested a correlation between icing the kicker and missed field goals, but more recent research is all over the map. Some studies, for example, have found that icing the kicker can be effective, but only on longer distance kicks. Other studies of the effectiveness of iced kickers have found no statistically significant difference between the success rates of iced kickers and those who were allowed to proceed with their kicks without interruption. In fact, some of the research even found that the effectiveness of iced kickers was better than kickers who weren’t iced.

Now obviously, there’s a significant difference between kicking a football and throwing a baseball. So let’s look at the other sport where “icing” is a thing: basketball, where teams sometimes ice the opposing team’s free throw shooters. There, too, there’s no real evidence that icing a free throw shooter reduces the odds of making a free throw. The odds of a successful free throw are pretty much the same, whether or not the other team decides to ice the player. Interestingly, though, there is some evidence that icing can be effective when used against specific players. Pitchers are creatures of routine, and presumably could suffer from mind games just as their compatriots in other sports might. Further study would be required to verify if the practice had any baseball-specific effects. But the results from football and basketball suggest the practice’s efficacy might be limited.

So how likely are we to see icing the pitcher when the pitch clock makes its way to the majors? It’s unclear. We don’t see much – if any – pitcher icing in the minors, where the pitch clock has been in use for years. That might be the result of minors prioritizing player development over winning, but you’d think if it was at all effective, at least a few teams would have tried it.

And remember that a rule was implemented in 2015 that required hitters to keep one foot in the batter’s box between pitches, which could preempt this strategy. That is, it could preempt the strategy if the rule were enforced, which it really isn’t. As Eduardo Encina explained:

In 2015, MLB made a rule that hitters had to keep at least one foot in the batter’s box, but enforcement of the rule varied. Hitters received warnings for being slow and repeat violators were fined, but no penalty impacted the game itself.

But even if hitters followed this rule, a hitter could still ice the pitcher just by waiting to put his second foot in the batter’s box until five seconds were left on the pitch clock. Icing the pitcher as a strategy might be reduced, but it wouldn’t be eliminated.

So what could pitchers do instead? Under the proposed rule being tested in spring training, a pitcher has a few options. He could, first of all, come set and then step off the pitching rubber, thereby icing the hitter right back. Depending on how often this is used, the pitch clock could thereby actually lengthen games if we had a lot of the tit-for-tat icing contests, though I assume at some point we’d reach a homeostasis of sorts. The pitcher, if there’s a runner on base, could simply feint a throw there. Most relief pitchers, who are likely in the game in the highest-leverage spots, pitch from the stretch anyway, meaning it takes not much time at all to go from “staring in” to “coming set.” Even Dellin Betances, who is notoriously slow to the plate, doesn’t need five seconds to do that. And it’s worth noting that the pitcher might not even have to rush his delivery, even if he did have only five seconds left. The rule says that the pitcher merely has to begin his windup, not that he has to actually deliver the ball. In other words, it really doesn’t matter how fast you are to the plate. It just matters how quickly you can come to a set position, though pitchers will likely be loath to alter their mechanics in such a manner.

It’s also possible – though perhaps unlikely – that the catcher might be impacted by icing if a hitter waited fifteen seconds to get in the box. All of a sudden, the catcher has to call a pitch and get the pitcher to agree to it, in five seconds. The catcher can, of course, think about what to call when the hitter’s not in the box, but he can’t give the signs until the hitter settles in. Ordinarily, we’d probably see the catcher trot out to talk to the pitcher about it…but there’s that pesky mound visit rule. Of course, right now there’s no real way to quantify this, because it’s all theoretical, but it would be interesting to look at in a baseball-specific study of the phenomena.

All in all, icing pitchers seems unlikely to be a widely used strategy. Even if it became a Thing, it might be one of the more easily fixable Things in baseball history. One would imagine that if batters tried to press their advantage, opposing pitchers and managers would certainly have something to say about it. The desire to gain a small advantage might finally inspire greater adherence to the one-foot-in-the-batters-box. After all, all umpires would have to do to address the issue is start enforcing that rule, and icing would be essentially mitigated. In fact, it might make sense for umpires to start enforcing that rule now, along with the pitch clock. After all, the pitcher can’t delay a game all by himself.

Last year, we discussed the lawsuit that former Yankees top prospect and current Athletics outfielder Dustin Fowler filed against the White Sox for the injury he suffered after colliding with a concealed electrical box while chasing a fly ball at what was then called U.S. Cellular Field (a vastly superior name to Guaranteed Rate Field). When last we checked in, the White Sox and the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (the two defendants in the case) had removed the case to federal court and were trying to use something called labor law preemption to argue that the case should be dismissed.

The White Sox invoked the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”), a federal law Section 301 of which states that federal courts, and federal law, govern all employment disputes where the rights of the parties have been collectively bargained. The team argued that “Plaintiff . . . was injured as a result of an incident that took place only because he was employed as a Major League Baseball Player pursuant to a highly regulated contractual employment relationship that specified all of the rights and duties of the respective parties – including with respect to Players health and safety.” Here, the White Sox pointed to Article XIII of the CBA, which governs players’ safety and health, and included a committee set up to assess potential player hazards.

Fowler, of course, disagreed, and noted the limitations of the Committee created by Article XIII.

At the time, I noted that while the issue wasn’t clear cut, I thought Fowler had the better argument. Last July, Judge Gary Feinerman agreed with Fowler, sending the case back to state court for adjudication of Fowler’s state law claims in a blistering opinion.

A state law claim is not completely preempted where a defendant contending that the claim requires interpretation of a CBA advances a frivolous or insubstantial reading of the agreement; rather, preemption applies only where the defendant’s interpretation of the CBA is arguable or plausible. . . .But the White Sox’s reading of Article XIII [of the CBA] is not plausible.  No club could have reasonably believed, based on the text of Article XIII, that the Committee would be able to identify safety risks so comprehensively and effectively that, as long as the Committee raised no objections, the club could simply assume that nothing in its premises posed an unreasonable risk to players.

In other words, Feinerman concluded that the team’s argument was implausible on its face, because it provided a means for teams to ignore real hazards to players simply by deferring to the Committee’s judgment. To Feinerman, that argument represented an absurd interpretation of the CBA – not to mention one that would have significant negative public policy ramifications.

Article XIII leaves no doubt that the clubs were in a vastly better position than the Committee to assess the safety of their own premises.  The clubs did not give up any control over their premises to the Committee, nor did they even grant it any consistent supervisory role.  . . . When the Committee does address a safety concern, its recommendations are only advisory, leaving final authority over the premises with the clubs.  It would have been wholly unreasonable for any club to delegate its responsibility to ensure the safety of its playing field to the intermittent and weak Committee described in Article XIII.

That language – calling the Committee weak – was an intentional swipe at Major League Baseball. Judge Feinerman was, in essence, finding that Fowler was entitled to a remedy in tort law because the CBA didn’t provide an appropriate remedy, either through the committee or through arbitration.

Feinerman also emphasized that the electrical box being a hidden hazard made the team’s argument implausible because it improperly placed the burden on the player rather than on the team. It was not the job of the player, held Feinerman, to alert teams to hazards on the playing field.

That conclusion applies with particular force to a small, hidden hazard like the metal box that injured Fowler.  Because the box was hidden from players’ view … no player could have realized the risk it posed and attempted to convene the Committee to address the problem.  And it strains credulity to suppose (and the White Sox do not assert) that the Committee would examine such granular details of individual ballparks in its occasional meetings “for purposes of review and planning.”  It follows that the White Sox’s interpretation of Article XIII is not plausible, that the Basic Agreement therefore will not affect the White Sox’s duty of care to Fowler, and therefore that Fowler’s claims are not completely preempted under Section 301.

Feinerman concluded by calling Fowler’s claims “true state law claims,” and remanded the case to the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, for a disposition on the merits; it remains pending there before Judge Kathy Flanagan.

I think Feinerman got it right here, even if, legally speaking, I thought this was a closer call than he did. That said, there’s no doubt that this case, for a lot of reasons, represents a possible sea change in how tort law will deal with these claims moving forward. Last June, in the context of Reggie Bush’s $12.5 million verdict against the Rams, I noted that victories like that were exceedingly unusual.

Remember that it’s really hard — and therefore really rare — for a professional athlete to sue for an injury sustained on the field. Verdicts like the one in Bush’s case, for an injury sustained in game activity and without the intentional act of another, are incredibly rare in the modern law.

One of the main reasons for that is the issue of labor law preemption, which was raised in Bush’s case. And yet, in two major cases in consecutive years, a court has ruled that doctrine inapplicable in favor of applying state law tort claims. Feinerman’s ruling is a first for professional baseball, and carries the implication that teams are, in fact, liable in tort for injuries suffered by players as the result of on-field hazards. In fact, Feinerman’s decision could be read to require teams to adhere to the same duty of care towards athletes as they would towards any other person.

Nevertheless, Feinerman’s decision did contain some interesting limitations. First, Feinerman made a distinction between a duty owed by a team to its own players and a duty owed by a team to visiting players. While Feinerman didn’t explicitly say that a team doesn’t owe a state law duty of care to its own players, or that CBA preemption would apply in those circumstances, he nonetheless did state that a team’s duty to players not its own differs. On one hand, that makes a certain degree of sense, both from an employment law perspective (suing your employer is different than suing someone else’s employer) and a tort perspective (in theory, you will know your own home ballpark better than a visiting player will).

Second, Feinerman held that Fowler’s injury was reasonably foreseeable assuming all facts in the complaint to be true. That’s significant, because it essentially states that as a matter of law, hazards on a baseball field are reasonably foreseeable to cause injury where not expressly addressed by the CBA. That holding necessarily means that a team that camouflages a sprinkler, or an electrical box, or even an unpadded wall, could face liability if a player is injured coming into contact with it.

That doesn’t mean Fowler will necessarily win his case. The team may well have state law tort defenses, or Fowler’s legal team could prove unable to prove his case at trial for several different reasons. That said, we now have case law that the courthouse doors aren’t closed to a player who suffers an on-field injury during the ordinary course of a baseball game. And that’s a really significant development.

Remember Daisuke Matsuzaka? The right-hander was Boston’s big-ticket pickup back in 2006, with promises of a gyroball that never panned out. After his injury-plagued tenure in the majors ended, Dice-K went back to Japan and, after a brief, injury-induced hiatus, settled in as a decent mid-rotation starter for the Chunichi Dragons. His 2018 season earned him Comeback Player of the Year honors.

Then things took a turn.

If you’re at all familiar with Matsuzaka’s time with the Red Sox, you know that he wasn’t exactly a workhorse in Boston, with injuries ranging from Tommy John surgery to neck stiffness attenuating his MLB career. But the injury the 38-year-old suffered most recently can only be described as bizarre. Per the Japan Times:

Chunichi Dragons pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka took leave from his Central League club on Sunday in order to treat a right shoulder injury sustained when an overzealous fan pulled his arm last week.

Yes, that’s right – a fan of Dice-K thought it would be a swell idea to pull on the hurler’s right arm during a fan outreach event. The fan evidently pulled so hard that it caused inflammation in the right-hander’s shoulder, resulting in Chunichi shutting him down. Daisuke remains quite popular in Japan, however, leading some to speculate that Chunichi might actually sue the fan who pulled on the pitcher’s arm – and that the fan might even see jail time. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the course of yet another slow offseason, we’ve talked about labor relations and the free agent freezeout. But what we haven’t talked about is the opposite scenario.

So let’s take a look at answering this question: can players (and their agents) legally collude with each other? Teams colluding is somewhat straightforward: clubs make a collective decision to refuse to employ a player, or to offer a player more than a certain amount. We don’t have to go too far back in history to see what that looks like; the NFL, for instance, recently paid almost $80 million to settle claims that they did just that against quarterback Colin Kaepernick. For a baseball example, one need only look to the collusion cases of the 1980s, which ultimately resulted in ownership paying players a $280 million settlement; more recently, Barry Bonds filed (and lost) a grievance for collusion after the 2007 season.

Collusion by players wouldn’t be as simple. Players could, I suppose, all agree to not sign with one or more teams, but that would be inherently self-defeating if it restricted their own markets. More interesting would be if the players decided to coordinate on salary demands.

So let’s say that Manny Machado and Bryce Harper get frustrated at the slow-moving free agent market and tell their agents, Dan Lozano and Scott Boras, to coordinate their negotiations and agree that neither will sign for less than $300 million. Would that be collusion?

The preeminent legal definition of collusion is from Darren Heitner and Jillian Postal, who wrote a particularly excellent note on the subject for Harvard Law School’s Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.

Collusion at its core is collective action that restricts competition. Under federal law, particularly the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (the “Sherman Act”), collusion is prohibited; however, because of labor exemptions, what constitutes collusive, prohibited behavior in specific sports leagues varies based on the league’s negotiated collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”).

Now, in case you were wondering, the word “collusion” doesn’t appear in the Major League Rules, and it doesn’t appear in the Collective Bargaining Agreement either. However, the Collective Bargaining Agreement does say in Article XX – governing the Reserve System – that rights under the CBA are individual, not collective.

The utilization or non-utilization of rights under Article XIX(A)(2) and Article XX is an individual matter to be determined solely by each Player and each Club for his or its own benefit. Players shall not act in concert with other Players and Clubs shall not act in concert with other Clubs.

That’s the language that bars collusion. As Marc Edelman explained for Forbes:

Although collusion under Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement is not identical to collusion under U.S. antitrust laws, the language and case precedence track similarly. Under antitrust law, mere parallel behavior among competitors is not enough to trigger a violation. But, parallel behavior along with a plus factor is sufficient.

That’s just a fancy way of saying that the mere fact that everyone is acting in the same way isn’t enough on its own to trigger a violation of the CBA’s collusion language. That’s why the current talk of collusion based on teams possessing similar player valuations, like the recent comments from reliever Brad Brach, is probably misguided; unless the valuations were based on a universal metric or algorithm all teams share, it’s probably insufficient to constitute collusive action.

So what does constitute collusion? Unfortunately, the CBA never actually specifies the necessary evidentiary showing. Per Heitner and Postal, “The Basic Agreement does not provide what burden needs to be met in order to prevail in this type of grievance.”

Nevertheless, we know that for players to collude in violation of Article XX(E), they’d have to not only have the same salary demands – which would be parallel behavior – but also coordinate their salary demands with each other. Now, to do that, they’d probably use their agents – and while agents aren’t mentioned in Article XX’s prohibition on collusion, they are, well, agents. Legally, under something called agency law, the authorized actions of an agent are considered, legally speaking, the actions of the principal. So if Manny Machado and Bryce Harper tell Lozano and Boras to coordinate their negotiations, the players aren’t exempt from violating Article XX(E) simply because their agents are the ones doing the coordinating.

Despite that, Major League Baseball can’t actually enforce those collusion rules against Machado and Harper or their agents. That’s because of a small oversight in the CBA. Again, from Heitner and Postal:

Article XX(E) prohibits concerted action from both Clubs and players, but the Basic Agreement fails to specify any redress if players violate the provision. The remaining sections of Article XX(E) outline the damages players can collect if they show a violation of Section E(1). Sections E(2) and E(3) provide that in addition to awarding attorney’s fees and costs, an arbitrator can award an aggrieved player treble damages, calculated from lost baseball income if the injury was the product of two or more clubs.106 Further, if five (5) or more clubs are shown to have violated Section E(1), the MLB Players Association (“MLBPA”) is entitled to reopen the Basic Agreement for renegotiation.

In other words, the CBA says that players can’t collide, but provides no punishment if they do so. That means that even if players did collude, MLB probably couldn’t do anything about it.

So why don’t players and their agents collude all the time? That’s actually a question we’ve answered already, back when we discussed agents and conflicts of interest. Remember, the MLBPA has some pretty strict rules governing agents and conflicts of interest:

§5(B)(12) – Actual or Potential Conflicts of Interest – No Player Agent, Expert Agent Advisor or Applicant shall engage in any conduct which, in the MLBPA’s reasonable judgment, may create an actual or potential conflict of interest with the effective representation of players, or the appearance of such a conflict, provided that the simultaneous representation of two or more players on any one Club shall not, standing alone, constitute a per se violation of this provision.

Lozano and Boras coordinating their negotiations would absolutely be a violation of that provision. That’s because coordination of negotiations would mean that agents are doing something other than trying to extract the best deal possible for their own clients. It might not be actionable collusion, but it might be something worse for the agents: breach of fiduciary duty, resulting in the loss of their agency certifications. And that’s why players and their representatives don’t collude – in addition to potentially getting worse deals, if they tried, their agents would likely lose their jobs.

The deepening cold war between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association has touched on topics ranging from shoes to minor league pay to free agency. What it hasn’t garnered as much attention are player benefits, such as pensions and healthcare.

There’s a popular misconception that any professional baseball player who spends even one day on a major league roster will receive free health care for life. In reality, that’s not true. Instead, what one day of service gives you is the right to buy into a healthcare plan, which isn’t really the same as free, comprehensive coverage. A player’s eligibility for health and pension benefits is tiered, and depends on how much time the player spent on a major league roster, how much service time he accrued, and can even be a matter of which years he played, as different benefits are available to different eras of players. Different plans carry different co-pays and have varying coverage maximums.

In other words, this isn’t that dissimilar from any other employer-based health insurance system. But playing baseball isn’t like other employment, and that can lead to trouble for former players.

The Major League Baseball Players Association has, throughout its history, done a poor job securing benefits and pensions for its members and their families during collective bargaining negotiations. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached, at long last, the finale of our series on how to fix salary arbitration. The previous installments have all focused on how the arbitration process works, and how it might work better – from changing evidentiary rules, to granting greater independence to the arbitrators, to eliminating the either/or model. But today, we’re going to look at something different: who is eligible for arbitration, and how we might replace the current system with one designed to adapt to the realities of the current market for player labor. Doing so requires addressing service time manipulation, and ensuring that both sides can opt-in or out of a particular arbitration hearing and also that players are paid even in a slow free agent market. Can we do all of that without breaking teams’ payroll? I think the answer is yes.

A little over a year ago, Travis Sawchik floated the idea of adding restricted free agency to baseball, which would bring the sport more in line with the NFL and NBA. More recently, he revisited the topic.

Players with more than three years of service time but less than six are eligible for arbitration. The first year of arbitration eligibility is supposed to garner a player about 40 percent of their open-market value, the second year 60 percent, and the third year of arbitration approximately 80 percent, though that estimate does not always apply. While arbitration earnings are far greater than pre-arbitration salaries, which are typically near the minimum salary, they are still short of market value.

The type of restricted free-agency system that owners attempted to implement in 1994 seems increasingly beneficial to players today. That system could have made young star Francisco Lindor a 25-year-old free agent this winter and Mookie Betts a 25-year-old free agent last winter.

An approach similar to other sports leagues could address many of the problems inherent to baseball’s current system. So let’s examine how Travis’ system might work in practice. To start, let’s look at current rules for arbitration eligibility, courtesy of the fantastic FanGraphs Library (which, if you’ve never used, you should).

Players are eligible for arbitration hearings if they meet any of the following requirements:

• They have at least three full seasons of MLB service time, and less than six. Players with six or more years of service time become free agents after their contracts have expired, while players with less than six seasons are under team-control. Up until players have acquired three seasons of service time, their salary is determined solely by their team. For years three through six, players can take their salary demands to an arbitration panel if they can’t reach an agreement with their team.
• If they have less then three full seasons of MLB service time, but are within the top 22% of players with more than two years of service time. This is called the “Super Two” exception, and it often leads to top prospects being held down in the minor leagues until they have passed the Super Two threshold. For more on this, see our Super Two page.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, Nathaniel Grow and I each wrote that it looked like the longstanding battle over minor league wages might be on the verge of ending with the passage by Congress of the Save America’s Pastime Act, a statute that had the dual effect of capping minor league players’ pay and threatening the existence of Independent Leagues. Despite Major League Baseball’s success in lobbying for and obtaining passage of the Act, it seems that the league isn’t done yet, moving its fight from the federal level to the states.

Last week, Ben Giles of the Arizona Capital Times reported that MLB is backing a bill introduced in the state legislature by Representative T.J. Shope that would exempt minor leaguers from Arizona’s state minimum wage laws.

HB 2180 would carve out minor league baseball players in Arizona law by enshrining the exemption in federal law in state statute. If signed into law, the bill also applies retroactively, meaning teams would be free from liability against any prior claims that the law was violated.

Now, you might be wondering why MLB is going to such lengths to exempt minor leaguers from state minimum wage laws when the federal statute is already on the books. The answer is pretty straightforward. Even though there is a federal minimum wage – it is set at $7.25 per hour – states also have their own minimum wage laws, many of which require higher hourly rates than the federal statutory minimum. The way the law is written, the federal minimum wage acts as a floor, meaning that a state is legally allowed to require a wage that is greater than the federal wage, but can’t have a minimum wage that falls below it. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps the most commonly discussed issue with the current arbitration system is the pervasiveness of traditional metrics, like home runs and runs batted in, over more advanced metrics like WAR and wRC+. Last time, we talked about how arbitrators use those metrics, and how they have slowly begun to garner greater acceptance as part of arbitration decisions, despite misgivings from agents some agents about whether or not they are properly understood or used by arbitrators. This time, we’re going to explore in greater detail the metrics and evidence itself – and see where there might be a possibility for improvement.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement provides a fairly straightforward list of criteria arbitrators are allowed to consider when ruling on a player’s salary.

The criteria will be the quality of the Player’s contribution to his Club during the past season (including but not limited to his overall performance, special qualities of leadership and public appeal), the length and consistency of his career contribution, the record of the Player’s past compensation, comparative baseball salaries . . ., the existence of any physical or mental defects on the part of the Player, and the recent performance record of the Club including but not limited to its League standing and attendance as an indication of public acceptance . . . . Except as set forth in subsections 10(b) and 10(c) below, any evidence may be submitted which is relevant to the above criteria, and the arbitration panel shall assign such weight to the evidence as shall appear appropriate under the circumstances. The arbitration panel shall, except for a Player with five or more years of Major League service, give particular attention, for comparative salary purposes, to the contracts of Players with Major League service not exceeding one annual service group above the Player’s annual service group. This shall not limit the ability of a Player or his representative, because of special accomplishment, to argue the equal relevance of salaries of Players without regard to service, and the arbitration panel shall give whatever weight to such argument as is deemed appropriate.

Helpfully, the CBA also gives us evidentiary rules outlining what criteria is not admissible:

(i) The financial position of the Player and the Club;

(ii) Press comments, testimonials or similar material bearing on the performance of either the Player or the Club, except that recognized annual Player awards for playing excellence shall not be excluded;

(iii) Offers made by either Player or Club prior to arbitration;

(iv) The cost to the parties of their representatives, attorneys, etc.;

(v) Salaries in other sports or occupations.

Here’s further detail on what can be used:

Only publicly available statistics shall be admissible. For purposes of this provision, publicly available statistics shall include data available through subscription-only websites (e.g., Baseball Prospectus). Statistics and data generated through the use of performance technology, wearable technology, or “STATCAST”, whether publicly available or not, shall not be admissible.

Read the rest of this entry »