The incredible dangers faced by baseball players attempting to defect from Cuba in order to play professional baseball in the United States are by now well-documented. Yasiel Puig had to buy his freedom from smugglers. Yoenis Cespedes and his family were “abandoned for two days on a strip of sand more than 600 miles southeast of Florida.” Jose Abreu had to leave his son behind. Alexei Ramirez, Jose Iglesias, Aroldis Chapman, Yulieski Gurriel – all faced unspeakable hardships escaping from Cuba, often using smugglers or human traffickers, and risking kidnapping or worse. The situation led to a federal grand jury investigation into baseball’s links to human trafficking, particularly as it concerned the Dodgers.

Last week, MLB finally took action, reaching a deal with the MLBPA and the Cuban government that aims to end human trafficking by allowing Cuban players to access a posting system.

Major League Baseball, its players’ association and the Cuban Baseball Federation reached an agreement that will allow players from the island to sign big league contracts without defecting, an effort to eliminate the dangerous trafficking that had gone on for decades.

The agreement, which runs through Oct. 31, 2021, allows Cubans to sign under rules similar to those for players under contract to clubs in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

There will be further analysis in the coming weeks of the baseball implications of such an agreement. For our purposes, though, I’d like to focus on one aspect of the deal in particular that might prove problematic.

MLB teams will need to pay the FCB [the Cuban Baseball Federation, Cuba’s baseball authority] for the contractual release of players who are 24 years old or younger and who have five or fewer years of service. The fee will reflect 25% of the signing bonus. It will be up to the FCB to decide whether to release such a player. In contrast, MLB teams will be able to sign Cuban players who are 25 or older and who have at least six years of experience in FCB without the consent of the FCB (MLB teams will, however, need to pay the FCB 15% to 20% of the total value of those players’ contracts).

On the surface, this seems similar to the posting agreements negotiated with Japan and South Korea’s professional leagues. There’s just one problem: the FCB is an arm of the Cuban government, and has even been run by Fidel Castro’s son, who served as its vice president. This agreement means that MLB, an American business entity, would be paying money to an unofficial arm of the Cuban government. Because of the United States’ trade embargo, which remains in effect, it’s questionable at best whether this arrangement will survive legal scrutiny.

As to the embargo, it is not one law but rather a catchall moniker for various statutes, executive orders, regulations and other proclamations that are designed to prevent or impede economic relations between the two nations. It began largely through executive orders issued by President John F. Kennedy and years later would become codified into statutes, including the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996. Numerous regulations promulgated by the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Commerce Department have also clarified and altered the scope of the embargo. The larger point is that despite the warming of diplomatic and economic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the embargo remains in effect.

Dan Halem, MLB’s chief legal officer, told Reuters that the Obama Administration signed off on a deal of this type before it was finalized, due mostly to the fact that the FCB isn’t officially a government agency. And in 2016, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is responsible for implementing and overseeing the Cuba embargo, did grant MLB a license to explore a deal with Cuba.

But the Trump Administration has taken a different view, with the State Department telling NPR that, despite the agreement, nothing has changed: “baseball players will still have to go to another country to apply for a work visa, in accordance with U.S. policy.” The White House has signaled that it isn’t likely to approve the deal for the same reason, as the New York Times reported.

On Wednesday, a White House statement criticized baseball’s agreement with Cuba, saying the administration would continue to restrict Cuba’s ability to profit from American businesses.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control could revoke M.L.B.’s license to negotiate with the Cubans. If it does, it would signal a shift in policy that could affect many other companies doing business in Cuba.

And prominent members of Congress agree.

Some, like Sports Illustrated’s Michael McCann, have argued that MLB would have a legal remedy should that happen. The problem is that the “arbitrary and capricious” standard referenced by McCann in his piece typically applies more to domestic administrative proceedings, not foreign ones. And the reality is that the executive branch is given wide latitude to implement and enforce economic sanctions. As Alexander Cohen and Joseph Ravitch bluntly – and correctly – wrote for the Yale Journal of International Law,

The President’s constitutional and statutory authority includes the power to impose virtually any type of economic sanction. Thus, any challenge to an economic sanctions program on the grounds that the President is acting beyond his authority will fail.

So, to me, if the administration decides to scuttle the deal on the grounds of national security – i.e., that it violates the embargo – there likely isn’t much MLB can do about it. Certainly the league could seek a legal remedy, but its chances of obtaining one from a court are quite slim. It seems more likely that, if this deal is to be approved, it will require either a change of administration, or a change of heart by the present one.

The 2018 season brought with it a number of unexpected developments. The Braves won their division! The Athletics were good! Max Muncy hit 35 home runs! But those sorts of developments are why we watch baseball: the unexpected and the fun. There was another development in the 2018 season, though: the return of the opener, a baseball strategy that isn’t novel, but had mostly fallen out of fashion. It started with Tampa Bay and Sergio Romo, then spread through the rest of the league. Even teams like the Dodgers, who always seem to have more competent starting pitchers than available rotation spots, employed the strategy. The Athletics even used an opener for their playoff game against the Yankees, though there it was borne more from necessity.

The baseball logic for the opener is pretty straightforward. We know that pitchers, especially starting pitchers, face a times-through-the-order penalty. In general, the more times a hitter faces the same pitcher in a game, the worse the results will be for the pitcher and the better the results will be for the hitter. This makes intuitive sense. Pitchers get tired; batters adjust. Pitchers make more mistakes when they get tired, and hitters gather more data the more they see of a pitcher’s repertoire. An opener can help mitigate that. Having a reliever, especially one with a handedness advantage, face the top of the order in the first inning means that the pitcher who comes in afterwards won’t face that third-time-through-the-order penalty – at least, in theory. A pitcher who begins his night by facing the middle of a team’s order instead of the top can go five innings and face the top of the order only once – again, in theory.

But there’s a part of the opener we really haven’t explored yet – and it’s one the always-thoughtful Zack Greinke discussed with Steve Miller earlier this year.

“[The opener is] really smart, but it’s also really bad for baseball,” Arizona starter Zack Greinke says. “It’s just a sideshow. There’s always ways to get a little advantage, but the main problem I have with it is you do it that way, then you’ll end up never paying any player what he’s worth because you’re not going to have guys starting, you’re not going to have guys throwing innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

Water is wet. Grass is green. Kyler Murray is a talented athlete. These are statements we know to be true. The first two aren’t especially relevant to FanGraphs, but the third one is.

In case you aren’t aware, the Oakland Athletics drafted Murray with the ninth overall pick of the most recent Major League Baseball Rule 4 draft. Back in April, before he was drafted, our own Eric Longenhagen was taken with the outfielder’s athleticism.

Evaluators see him as a crude but gifted speedster with good pop for his size who possesses more projection than most because of his athleticism. Murray is performing this year (.290/.390/.520 at publication) on the baseball field despite little prior in-game experience.

Murray was ranked 20th on FanGraphs’ 2018 Draft Board; his pre-draft report noted:

Despite [his limited playing time], he has been electric, showing even more physical ability than he had in high school and performing, slashing .290/.390/.550. He shows everything scouts could want to see after this kind of layoff and his only clear weakness is swing-and-miss against good off-speed stuff, both somewhat allowed with his power-based approach.

Take a look at that power-based approach for yourself:

One MLB executive, speaking with ESPN, even dropped the ultimate praise on Murray, comparing the young player to Mike Trout. \ Kyler Murray is a young, gifted hitter with star potential despite his rawness, which is why the A’s drafted him in the first round and gave him a $4.66 million signing bonus.

Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps the subject most frequently discussed in the chats and pieces that appear at FanGraphs is what the next great baseball innovation will be. Most teams have caught up on the analytics revolution heralded by Moneyball; even longstanding holdouts like the Orioles and Giants have surrendered to the inevitable and embraced the modern game. So what comes next? In an age in which everyone has access to advanced metrics, where will the next advantage be found?

One could argue that it’s already here and has been for a few years already, developing right under our noses. This movement actually started not in baseball, but in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which, in the past five years, began the gargantuan undertaking of incorporating biometrics – that is, the measurement of the bodies of the players themselves – into the fabric of the league. To see how this works, let’s take a look at this excerpt from a Tom Haberstroh ESPN story about how biometrics changed the career path of NBA star Kawhi Leonard.

When [Adam Silver] took over for David Stern [as NBA Commissioner], he made a series of changes to sharpen the NBA’s measurements. For the 2013-14 season, the league partnered with Stats LLC and installed SportVU player-tracking cameras in every arena. Now player speed, distance traveled and acceleration can all be cataloged and chewed on by data-crazed NBA fans and teams. The cameras even track potential assists.

In one sense, this sounds like the NBA version of Statcast. But it’s significantly more than that.

More quietly, in 2014 Silver hired a sports science institute called P3 Applied Sports Science to modernize the league’s draft combine. Beyond using tape measures, P3 puts players through a series of movements assessed by high-tech force plates embedded in the floor and cameras shooting from multiple angles, all feeding data into laptops. The founder, Dr. Marcus Elliott, says P3 asks not just how high do you jump but also how do you land and how high and how quickly can you jump a second time. The goal is to find patterns that predict injury. If a player lands on his right leg with disproportionately more force than his left, for example, that might be a signal of weakness in his left ankle. Even the smallest hitch in a player’s running pattern could, over time, create a chain reaction of physical breakdowns, a human butterfly effect.

So it is that the NBA has become primed to optimize a player with the right unique mix of physical attributes — the type of player who might have been overlooked just a few years ago.

In other words, while Statcast is looking at the metrics of what happened, the NBA has started looking for predictive metrics based on a player’s own physiological attributes.

During his second NBA season in 2012, Leonard was sidelined for 18 games with quadriceps tendinitis near his left knee. That offseason, the Spurs sent him to P3 to assess his vastus medialis, a teardrop-shaped muscle in the quads that powers the knee joint. “They focus on trying to balance out your body,” Leonard explains. “You don’t train there. I learned more about the body.” When P3’s evaluation showed imbalances from his injury — the particulars of which P3 refused to reveal to ESPN — Leonard and Shelton devoted that summer to ensuring his quads weren’t just strong but symmetrically and multidirectionally strong. “Most players are linear; they can run in a straight line and jump vertically,” Shelton says. “But with Kawhi, we focus on perfecting change of direction.”

The success of the NBA’s biometrics endeavors led the league the expand the initiative further – much further. In 2014, Eric Freeman wrote for Yahoo Sports that teams had begun monitoring their players’ sleep, and were proposing regular blood tests.

[T]he Golden State Warriors [are] having Andre Iguodala and others wear wristbands to monitor their sleep. In truth, most of the examples are fairly innocuous and involve players undergoing tests that would figure to improve their performance with minimal invasiveness. Every player mentioned also seems to take the monitoring and its results seriously, to the point where the information revealed could not be used against them in any obvious way.

However, the piece also includes several statements, like those from the Kings front-office members mentioned above, in which NBA decision-makers indicate that they would much prefer to track players’ fatigue levels with invasive procedures like regular blood tests. The stated goal is to keep players healthier so that franchises don’t lose money in salary via games spent on the bench, but the authors are right to suggest that the same information could easily be used against players in contract negotiations. . . . Rather, the question is if teams extracting data (or, as the recently retired Shane Battier fears, all bodily fluids) from players represents too much oversight and a breach of proper relations between employers and employees.

And last year, Jimmy Golen wrote for NBA.com that teams were now assessing players’ vital signs as they played, capturing that data and using it to predict injury and improve performance.

It is no longer enough for a basketball team to know how many shots a player makes, or even where he was standing when he made it.

Sports data is going biometric, tracking players’ heart rates, movements and energy levels to get a better picture of what’s going on inside their bodies as they run, jump and even sit on the bench. And, device-makers say, the technology can help coaches decide who needs a rest, who needs more work, or who might be most at risk for injury.

“Do you have eyes on every single athlete, every single session?” said Calvin Torres, a sports scientist with the tracker and data company Catapult, who’s heard all the complaints from old-time coaches who insist that they can do the same thing with their eyes and their instincts. “If you put a monitor on them, you do.”

These efforts have been so successful that teams in other leagues have joined them. As Golen wrote, “Catapult is already working with 16 NFL teams, 15 in the NBA and four in the NHL, along with more than a thousand in high school, college, national and pro teams in dozens of countries and sports from rowing to rugby and badminton to bandy.” By last year, NBA teams were talking about quantifying injury risks based on movement pattern analysis.

What’s missing in this strategy is objective, reliable information about a prospect’s injury risk factors and physical proposition. Unfortunately, there is not yet a mandatory pre-draft test that supplies such data. That’s where movement pattern analysis technology comes in – technology that provides coaches with a virtual team of biomechanical experts that output valuable insights that can lead them to making a more informed draft selection. With the latest solutions offering quick & automated assessment, teams need no more than a few minutes to obtain this imperative piece of knowledge during personal pre-draft workout sessions.

By getting a complete picture of a player’s capabilities — how strong his knees are, how stable his ankle movement is, how refined is his jumping technique — teams can greatly increase the likelihood that their pick will remain healthy and able to perform daily, and develop training plans that will enable turn them into the superstar they were yearning to get. Adding this piece to their puzzle, NBA decision-makers can sleep just a bit more soundly at night, knowing that they are way ahead of the curve.

This is the newest frontier in professional sports – and in major league baseball. And it’s easy to see why: the ability to quantify player injury risk, movement, and health is tantalizing. Imagine if teams could predict, based on movement pattern analysis, a pitcher’s risk for ulnar collateral ligament damage? Or if a team could anticipate injuries like Prince Fielder’s ultimately career-ending spinal damage before he signed his $214 million mega-deal with the Tigers? And the applications go beyond just injuries. Range could be quantified for infielders not just based on Statcast, but on physiological capability. Lateral movement and first-step quickness could be improved and predicted, not just measured. Age-related decline could be predicted with exacting accuracy based on measurable bodily degradation. Simply put, such technological advances could revolutionize professional sports.

But it’s not that simple. Why? Because teams are players’ employers. Think of the privacy concerns that could arise from your employer measuring your breathing, your heart rate, your blood levels, and even your sleep patterns, sometimes when you aren’t on the job. Suddenly, employees never have true off-time, because their employer knows their physiology whether they’re on the clock or not. If health information leaked to the press, it could be embarrassing or worse. There’s a reason that Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which you probably know as HIPAA; in the United States, health information is and should be private.

FanGraphs’ own Rian Watt wrote for Vice Sports last year that the issue is rapidly approaching a critical point.

Imagine an office job wherein every keystroke, every mouse movement, and every roll of the desk chair is tracked and logged. Or don’t—such jobs already exist. Then add a heart rate monitor, a live video feed, and the inability to leave for another employer to that picture and you have a general sense of life as a professional baseball player in the biometric future.

The issue is that while HIPAA regulations say an employer generally can’t require an employee’s healthcare provider to turn over medical records, those regulations don’t prevent an employer from asking the employee to tender those records. In other words, HIPAA likely doesn’t stop baseball teams (or the NBA, or the NFL) from collecting biometric data. As Barbara Osborne and Jennie Cunningham wrote in an excellent article for the Marquette Sports Law Review:

Under the statutory language of HIPAA, most of the medical staff employed by professional sports teams would almost certainly be considered healthcare providers subject to the privacy and security requirements of HIPAA. . . . However, [the Department of Health and Human Services] issued a response during the notice and comment period that communicates the opposite effect: DHHS first noted professional sports teams were “unlikely to be covered entities” that would need to abide by HIPAA privacy rules. Further, even if teams would be covered or partly covered, DHHS noted that—although it did not condone a blanket reduction of privacy for an entire group of individuals (like players), it is fully within the purview of employers to “mak[e] an employee’s agreement to disclose health records a condition of employment” (as is maintaining a certain level physical fitness). DHHS adopted language “excluding employment records maintained by a covered entity in its capacity as an employer from the definition of ‘protected health information.’” Operationally, the effect of the guidance is to affirm teams’ power to compel players to disclose health information (waive HIPAA privacy) and subsume the information into the employment record of each player. Once considered part of the employment record, the contents of the record are not viewed as protected health information.

Recognizing this, the National Basketball Players’ Association (NBPA) negotiated language governing biometric data into their latest collective bargaining agreement with the NBA. Article XXII of the NBA’s CBA, governing Player health and fitness, guarantees that all player health information will remain confidential and the property of the player, and limits its allowable uses. And biometric data obtained from wearable technology cannot be used in contract negotiations.

Data collected from a Wearable worn at the request of a Team may be used for player health and performance purposes and Team on-court tactical and strategic purposes only. The data may not be considered, used, discussed or referenced for any other purpose such as in negotiations regarding a future Player Contract or other Player Contract transaction (e.g., a trade or waiver) involving the player. In a proceeding brought by the Players Association under the procedures set forth in Article XXXI, the Grievance Arbitrator will have authority to impose a fine of up to $250,000 on any Team shown to have violated this provision.

The National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA) also sought protections for its players in its most recent CBA, including language saying that “players must agree to disclosure of their injury relevant HIPAA information…”

But so far, the MLBPA’s approach has been curiously divergent from that of the NBPA and NFLPA. While those unions have been working to limit the use of wearable technology and biometrics, the MLBPA has been slow to seek any protections for MLB players. And given how wearables and biometrics entered baseball in earnest in 2016, that’s somewhat distressing, particularly when you consider the warning Nathaniel Grow gave when he covered this topic most recently:

All told, then, with the exception of mandatory DNA testing, there is currently very little legal protection preventing MLB teams from subjecting their players to the obligatory collection of biometric data. As a result, given the prominent role that wearable technology is poised to play in the industry in the near future, this is certainly an area that the MLBPA would be wise to try to address in the next CBA.

And in August, Stephanie Springer wrote for The Hardball Times that MLB has approved nearly a dozen different wearable devices for in-game use, collecting data on everything from sleep patterns to heart rates.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the MLBPA has necessarily been asleep at the switch. Attachment 56 to the latest CBA, which governs wearable technology and data, guarantees the confidentiality of data obtained from wearable technology.

Any and all Wearable Data shall be treated as highly confidential at all times, including after the expiration, suspension or termination of this Agreement, shall not become a part of the Player’s medical record, and shall not be disclosed by a Club to any party other than those persons listed in this Paragraph 4 without the express written consent of the Player and the Association. In addition, all such Data must be destroyed or permanently deleted in the event a Player requests to have such Data destroyed or deleted, in which case a Player may request a copy of his data prior to its destruction or deletion.

This language is based, in part, on an Illinois statute called the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), and mirrors the language of the Illinois law. But there are differences. For one thing, biometric data is defined much more narrowly in Attachment 56 than it is in BIPA, giving MLB significantly more latitude. And Attachment 56 conspicuously omitted this language from BIPA:

A private entity in possession of biometric identifiers or biometric information must develop a written policy, made available to the public, establishing a retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying biometric identifiers and biometric information when the initial purpose for collecting or obtaining such identifiers or information has been satisfied or within 3 years of the individual’s last interaction with the private entity, whichever occurs first. Absent a valid warrant or subpoena issued by a court of competent jurisdiction, a private entity in possession of biometric identifiers or biometric information must comply with its established retention schedule and destruction guidelines.

And there are some other notable omissions. While the most recent CBA does guarantee that wearable data cannot be used in salary arbitration, there is no prohibition in the CBA on using it in contract negotiations generally, or in trades. Unlike the NBA’s CBA, there is no provision providing a penalty for violations. And unlike both the NFL and NBA agreements, the MLB CBA does not contain strict language stating that medical records are the property of the player. Now, the CBA does provide a prohibition on public disclosure:

A Club Physician or Certified Athletic Trainer treating a Player . . . shall be prohibited from making any public disclosure of a Player’s medical information absent a separate, specific written authorization from the Player authorizing such public disclosure.

That this language is less stringent than the NBPA negotiated has real effects, because it transfers the burden from the League to the player. And perhaps most significantly, the MLB CBA and Attachment 56 do not include minor league players within their scope, meaning that major league teams seemingly can lawfully compel minor leaguers to surrender data from wearable technology. As Nicholas Zych wrote for the DePaul University Journal of Sports Law, “In the approaching battle over [biometrics data] ownership, rights-holding Clubs will have a strong upper hand over MiLB players.”

And that’s another reason why the current CBA scheme is so flawed from the player perspective. If teams already know sensitive information regarding minor leaguers’ health – information which they are not required to keep confidential given the exclusion of minor leaguers from the CBA – it could give them a plausible-seeming reason to delay promotions and stunt service time accrual, and perhaps even manipulate trade value. And major leaguers could see their earning potential reduced by medical and biometric data dating from when they were in the minor leagues. When players are called up to the major leagues, sensitive data regarding their health may already have been compromised without remedy, giving further ground to a team which wishes to exploit it.

“With all of this, player consent is critical,” says Alan Milstein [to Watt], a New Jersey-based attorney who practices in both bioethics and sports law. . . . “A young player, 19 years old, when he sees the team physician, is going to be under the impression that that physician is his physician, and that there’s going to be some kind of doctor-patient relationship with some kind of fiduciary duty that the physician owes to him,” Milstein notes. “But that physician really works for the team, and that creates a lot of ethical issues.”

So what’s the solution here? This is one issue where the MLBPA needs to take a much firmer stance, not only on behalf of major league players but minor league players as well. Thus far, the MLBPA has notably been the least active union when it comes to these issues, and also the only one which provides such limited protections to future high-end professionals; the MLBPA CBA gives no defense to minor leaguer whose biometric data is being collected until the day he is added to a 40-man roster. That is simply not tenable, particularly given the incentive it gives teams to extract as much data as possible from minor leaguers for as long as they can. The MLBPA has essentially provided a route by which teams might one day have a staggering amount of private health information concerning its members, almost none of which will be subject to legal protection.

We’ve talked a couple of times this year about a potential new revenue stream for Major League Baseball: legalized sports gambling. As a quick refresher, back in May, the United States Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (“PASPA”), the federal law that banned states from permitting sports gambling in the United States (outside of Nevada, which was exempt). Even before PASPA was nullified by the Supreme Court, its imminent demise had been seen coming for a while, and so several states had already passed, or were in the process of passing, laws permitting sports gambling within their borders. Those laws, in many cases, took effect as soon as the Supreme Court ruled that PASPA was unconstitutional. And so it was only a matter of time before we saw the major sports leagues get in on the action themselves.

Enter MGM Resorts International, which took advantage of the opening to strike an exclusive deal with Major League Baseball to become the league’s first official gaming and entertainment partner. What does that mean? Well, I’m glad you asked.

As an official sponsor of MLB, MGM Resorts will domestically promote its brand and gaming options across MLB’s digital and broadcast platforms, including MLB Network, MLB.com, the MLB At Bat app and additional fan engagement offerings to be jointly developed.

MGM Resorts will be identified as an MLB-Authorized Gaming Operator and utilize MLB’s official statistics feed, on a non-exclusive basis, throughout its digital and live domestic sports gaming options. MLB will also make enhanced statistics available to MGM on an exclusive basis. In addition, MGM Resorts and MLB will work together on comprehensive responsible gaming measures and work to protect the integrity of the game both on and off the field.

If that seems a bit opaque to you, you’re not alone. So let’s break this down. This is not, as some have said, an event heralding MLB’s acceptance of players gambling and the rehabilitation of the reputation of Pete Rose. Nothing MLB has done overrides or modifies Rule 21, which prohibits players from betting on games. Nor does it mean illegal sports betting is going the way of the dinosaur; if the news is any indication, that dubious vocation is alive and well.

But it does mean that Major League Baseball is, for the first time, officially sanctioning gambling on games – and perhaps more. For starters, MGM is getting official access to MLB’s stats, but it is not getting exclusive access to most of them. That means MLB can turn around and license most of the same data and intellectual property to other gaming companies as well. And MLB made sure that its other gambling ventures (yes, they do exist!) aren’t impacted.

As to the future, as of today, there are no plans to integrate wagering on baseball into MLB’s digital and mobile platforms, such as the popular “At Bat” for mobile devices. The deal also does not impact MLB’s equity investment in DraftKings for fantasy baseball, although there has been talk that both MLB and the NBA may be looking to divest themselves of their ownership stakes in daily fantasy sports companies.

That opens quite a few doors for MGM, as SB Nation notes.

For starters, one of the most interesting parts of this agreement is that MGM will have access to MLB’s statistical data. Despite the fact that baseball and various gambling venues have had a tenuous relationship over the years (to say the least), this means that MGM will likely use that data to set the betting lines and they’ll be at the forefront in that regard.

That kind of access carries some value, as Forbes relays.

MGM Resorts locations will be see labeling such as “MLB-Authorized Gaming Operator” for digital and live gaming events. As part of the deal, MGM will be granted the use of official league logos and marks. MGM will have a visible presence at the so-called MLB Jewel Events, including the All-Star Game and the World Series.

So what did MGM pay for this unprecedented deal? Actually, that’s not at all clear. MLB didn’t disclose how much MGM paid, but at least one unconfirmed report placed the figure at $80 million. And if that seems light, that’s because (at least in one sense) MGM paid for not all that much, as Christian Pina explains.

In the new industry of mobile apps, this all comes back to the flagship app for MLB, MLB At Bat. No, MLB-At Bat isn’t acting as a DraftKings type of sportsbook for you to place bets, it’s honestly mostly just an open line of communication. Major League Baseball will give MGM and MGM’s mobile applications free-reign over their up to the second stats, next-gen stats (exit velocity, spin rate, etc), and most likely input some live betting expected win %’s pulled from MLB At Bat right into any mobile app parented by MGM.

In short, it really doesn’t mean much for you, the gambler and consumer, which isn’t what you probably wanted to hear.

So in one sense, this is, despite the gaudy headlines, not much more than Major League Baseball garnering a new sponsor in a new area that was previously unavailable; were it, the price MGM paid would likely have been substantially higher. As the official gaming sponsor for Major League Baseball, MGM mostly just bought advertising rights. MLB will have other sponsors and gaming partners, but MGM paid for the use of the word “official” by being first in line.

But in another sense, MGM did score a major coup here. Why? Because MGM is receiving exclusive access to what MLB calls “enhancing” statistics, which MGM Resorts will use for the purpose of setting betting lines. In other words, MGM just purchased the right to set betting lines based on Statcast data, which would, in theory, allow for in-game betting based on those data and metrics. (The specific form that data takes, and which exact Statcast stats and feeds will be available to MGM, is still unclear.) And MGM does have avenues to grow its relationship with the league even further, because its contract is only with MLB and not with any of the thirty individual teams. MGM is currently negotiating with multiple teams in the hopes of signing official sponsorship deals with them as well. And Statcast data will allow for more accurate betting lines and more realistic gaming. How Statcast might be used for betting is an issue that has yet to fully develop – and it’s one we’ll be following closely as this new frontier comes into focus.

I’d like to ask your permission to depart from my normal subject. Usually, I tell you what the law says on a given matter. It may not seem like it, but the law doesn’t really account for what I think. Some of what I tell you is what I think is right, and some of the law I tell you about is the sort of thing that, were I able, I would strike as immoral, or stupid, or both. But the law generally doesn’t care what Sheryl Ring thinks of it, and while I do, in some of my cases, advocate for changes in the law, I’m not going to do that here.

This time, with your permission, I’m going to talk about feelings. My feelings. About why I love baseball. About why I have always loved baseball. And about how it impacts me when baseball doesn’t quite love me back. This piece is about the human cost of major league baseball teams employing alleged domestic abusers. This isn’t about policy; what MLB should do about the issue, I will leave for another day. This is about my stakes.

At its best, baseball can transport us to the place of hopes and dreams, where impossibly high barriers no longer seem insurmountable and mortal humans become giants. Baseball writing can do much the same, done well. Earlier this year, in a piece that still resonates with me, Meg Rowley said this:

Communities are home to all kinds of folks engaged in different bits of sin and kindness, all experiencing different stakes. We’re knit together by our sins and our kindnesses, sometimes quite uncomfortably. One such sin is the everyday kind, the sort of casual meanness and lack of care we all wade through all the time. It’s a smaller kind, but we still find ourselves altered by it.

It’s a passage I’ve found myself reflecting on this week after the Cubs made the decision to tender troubled and suspended shortstop Addison Russell a contract; earlier in the offseason, it seemed as if Russell wouldn’t be back with the team in 2019. Following the decision, both Russell and the Cubs’ President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein released statements to explain their decisions. To define the path forward. Russell spoke of being responsible for his actions, using words like “therapy” and “progress.” Epstein spoke of accountability, and partnership, with Russell and organizations committed to domestic violence prevention. They spoke of the future. But the discussion left me unsettled. And as I thought about it, I came back to Meg’s piece.

That was the everyday sin, the sin of disrespect and unfeeling. It is what makes our community less than perfect and less than perfectly welcoming. It is troubling, this lack of care.

I fell in love with baseball when I was a little girl. But back then, it wasn’t from watching games. I didn’t watch my first baseball game until the Yankees’ short-lived 1995 playoff run. The next year was when I came out to my mother for the first time. My mother didn’t want a trans daughter, and so she hid me away. I became the family secret, kept in my room for days at a time and brought out at night, after my sisters were asleep, for my mother to try the latest “de-transing” technique she had learned. Sometimes they were physical. Sometimes they were worse. She’d hit me, or have my father hold me down whilst she held a towel over my head and poured vinegar on it – yes, that is what we now call “waterboarding.” She chose vinegar because the fumes made it hard to breathe. One of my mother’s favorite games was to have my father hit me with a belt. But not by starting off that way; that wasn’t her style. She would hold me down at the kitchen table, and start by hitting the table with the belt. And then again, a little closer. Again, a little closer. Again, a little closer. I’d flinch, each time, as the belt drew closer, until the impact finally came.

Afterwards, confined to my room again in the early hours of the morning, my father would sneak in after my mother was sleeping. He’d regale me with stories about the game the Yankees had played the previous day, telling me about pitcher’s duels and mammoth home runs. And he’d always end the same way: “Don’t tell your mother.”

I became a Yankees fan because of my father – because of what those stories did for me. As the years passed, my father’s stories became my lifeline. He would, on occasion, talk my mother into letting me watch a baseball game on television. Usually, he would slip me box scores without her knowing, or leave the newspaper’s baseball pages underneath my pillow. And when he persuaded my mother to let me go outside, I would spend hours with a yard-sale softball bat and a tennis ball, throwing up a ball and hitting it, over and over again, pretending I was the first woman on the Yankees.

I started to write my own stories and tell them to myself, about players I’d read about in the newspaper clippings my father left for me. When I was 13, my father arranged for me to help Bob Socci, the play-by-play announcer for the local minor league team, the Frederick Keys (the Orioles’ High-A affiliate), with his radio broadcast. Bob let me announce a couple of innings, which was the high point of my childhood. (My father convinced my mother to allow this by agreeing that my birthday would thereafter go unacknowledged.) I announced the game like it was another of my stories. I announced that game over and over to myself in the months that followed.

When I was 16, broken from years of abuse, I became actively suicidal. I went to my mother and begged her for help. She told me she hoped I did kill myself, because then she would be rid of her family shame. And then she told me to be sure I left no marks on my body, because it would make her look bad at my funeral. She recommended that I hang myself, because she could hide the marks with a collared shirt. It was in that moment that I realized that if I was going to be saved, I would have to save myself. I did it by telling myself a different baseball story every day, over and over. I made teams, spent hours projecting fictional triple-slash lines and standings, doing all the math by hand. That was my life between the ages of 8 and 16, when I started college. There was no school, there was no outside world. But there were the stories.

So when the Yankees acquired Aroldis Chapman — who was the first player suspended under baseball’s domestic violence policy — when they acquired him not once, but twice, it felt, oddly, like a personal betrayal. It felt, as Meg so aptly stated when describing our community’s sins, like disrespect and unfeeling. I felt unwelcome. The Yankees had gone from an escape from my pain to a reminder of the same. It felt as if the Yankees didn’t care about that pain, or the pain of other survivors. I don’t mean to compare myself to Chapman’s victim, nor to claim that our experiences, what we went through, are the same. But I do know what it’s like to have a member of your family inflict physical pain. I know what it’s like to have a family member try to kill you, on purpose. I know what it’s like to be smaller, weaker, unable to fight back except by simply staying alive. I know what it’s like to want to end it all, and have a family member hate you so completely that she openly wished for you to die.

There are an untold number of Cubs fans who understand the pain I’m talking about. It’s the type of pain that only comes from having a spouse, a domestic partner, a loved one, a parent, treat you like you are unworthy of love and deserve nothing, nothing but that pain and hardship. There’s something Melisa Reidy-Russell, Addison Russell’s ex-wife, wrote on her Instagram that captures this feeling.

But, somehow he could ALWAYS find a way to make me feel like it happened because of me, or because I wasn’t listening to him. It was ALWAYS my fault – You don’t realize it, but its a sick mind game that you get sucked into – All your source of happiness somehow is controlled by that one person, depending on how they decide to treat you on a daily basis. Feeling the need of affirmation from him became the main source of how I felt happiness. Always trying to please him to show him I was good enough, strong enough, worthy enough… it consumed me & before I realized it, I was so far gone from the person I used to be.

She might as well have been describing how I felt as a little girl about my mother. It is the feeling an abuser creates in their victim. Bruises heal, and scars fade. The emotional pain can last a lifetime. And, like an old wound that aches when it rains, it crops up every so often. The Cubs’ decision to retain Russell did that for me.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, but there’s a human side to baseball. Not just that players are human beings – they are, of course – but also that we, the fans, are human. We don’t watch baseball because we have to. We watch baseball because it brings us joy. It brings us happiness. It mimics life, yes, but it’s also an escape from that life. Baseball doesn’t owe Addison Russell a job. But it does owe us, the fans, a game that takes us away from our pain and into a better world, one where everything is possible, even 100-mile per hour fastballs and frisbee sliders. Keeping Addison Russell elevates the push to create the perfect baseball team over the perfect baseball experience.

When I was a little girl, baseball loved me when no one else did. For that, I will forever love baseball back. But I wonder sometimes if baseball still loves me. It’s a difficult feeling. It’s a hard question to ask. I’d like to be able to stop asking it. Russell and Chapman, Roberto Osuna and Derek Norris – they remove me from the stories. They turn the stories dark, and remind me of the monsters that can people them. I’d like to have my stories back. But more than that, I’d like to have baseball think my stories matter.

On the heels of stadium disputes erupting in Arizona, Seattle, and Anaheim, at least one American city is moving forward with plans to woo a major league club, whether it be an existing team or an expansion one. As ESPN reported:

A group seeking to lure a Major League Baseball team to Portland announced that it has signed an agreement in principle to develop a 45-acre waterfront site.

The agreement with the Port of Portland was announced Thursday by the Portland Diamond Project. The group also released artist renderings of a new ballpark at the port’s Terminal 2.

You can see the Portland Diamond Project’s statement here.

“We believe this has the potential to be a transformative landmark project for this city,” [PDP Founder and President Craig] Cheek said. “Building an iconic, state-of-the-art ballpark along the Willamette River will catalyze economic development and capture great views of both the urban scale of the city and regional character of the Pacific Northwest.”

This letter of intent with the Port kicks off a collaborative process with the City of Portland, and local communities, to create a Major League Baseball ballpark and community destination.

“We’re committed to building a sustainable, equitable, and accessible ballpark that reflects what makes Portland such a special place to live,” Cheek said. “That means outstanding locally sourced food and beverage amenities, environmentally sustainable construction and operations, opportunities for makers and small businesses, and an atmosphere that celebrates diversity and inclusion and is welcoming to all Portlanders.”

The renderings show a beautiful 30,000 seat ballpark.

So how likely is this to actually happen? Well, on the one hand, Portland would be building a stadium with no team yet, so there’s a bit of a “Field of Dreams” element here: if you build it, will they come?

That said, it’s entirely possible that, in this case, someone will. Why? First, the Portland Diamond Project has real money behind it, with noted singer and model Ciara Harris and her husband, Seattle Seahawks Quarterback and noted baseball fan Russell Wilson, among the more notable investors in the project (each invested separately). And both seem particularly enthused about the possibility of bringing a big league team to Portland.

Second, Portland’s municipal government has already voiced at least some willingness to partially fund the project.

“And I see this as a huge economic opportunity as I’ve said, it’s an opportunity to build a central city neighborhood from scratch and to do it right,” [Portland Mayor Ted] Wheeler said.

“And so it’s a very compelling vision. It’s an exciting opportunity,” he added.

Because of that, taxpayers will help make the development happen if things get that far.

“It would be very naive to assume there will be no public contribution. In any large scale economic development strategy in any urban development we do, tax increment financing comes in to play,” said Wheeler.

And third, Major League Baseball has long looked at Portland as the logical location for a big league club.

In an appearance on FS1’s First Things First, Manfred mentioned six potential expansion cities and explained that the addition of new teams would also lead to division and playoff realignment. Manfred elaborated that MLB has a “real list of cities, that I think are not only interested in having baseball, but are viable in terms of baseball.”

“Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville in the United States, certainly Montreal, maybe Vancouver, in Canada,” Manfred said. “We think there’s places in Mexico we could go over the long haul.”

The Diamond Project believes a Portland ballpark could be ready for first pitch as soon as 2022. Now, there is one minor hiccup: Portland doesn’t have a team yet. And while expansion is a possibility, there’s also no guarantee it will happen any time soon. So let’s examine another potential route to filling Portland’s new ballpark: a current team moving.

I should say up front that while all of the teams I’m about to discuss face varying degrees of uncertainty surrounding the location of their home parks going forward, none have expressed an affirmative desire to leave the general geographic areas in which they currently play. This is a bit of speculation on my part. But the emergence of Portland as a viable major league city could change the calculus around that decision, just as it might serve as a new point of leverage in their existing markets, and there are three teams that could potentially fit the bill. First is the Tampa Bay Rays, who are actively looking for a new ballpark and have encountered a few obstacles in their quest to build a new ballpark in Ybor City. Still, Commissioner Manfred remains optimistic that the team will remain in Florida, so we can probably cross them off the list.

Then we come to the Angels, who opted out of their lease earlier this year. The Angels’ lease now ends after 2019, which means their timing would line up nicely with the opening of Portland’s ballpark after a short extension. This is made somewhat more plausible by the team’s continued inability to get a municipality to agree to fund a new stadium, and the fact that the team has begun appraising Angels Stadium and the land on which it sits in preparation for a potential move. But the Angels are still an imperfect fit, if only because it’s possible Anaheim wouldn’t agree to a three-year lease knowing the franchise is departing anyway. Moreover, leaving California would mean the Angels giving up their rights to a long-term television deal that pays the team in excess of $100 million per year. So whether the Angels elect to move could come down to what they value more: a publicly-funded stadium, or a lucrative television deal. (This may be why some press reports at the time of the opt out suggested that if a move came, it would be within Southern California.)

That leaves one other team that might be a possibility for Portland: the Arizona Diamondbacks. We’ve talked before about the Diamondbacks’ uneasy relationship with Maricopa County, which culminated in a lawsuit settled earlier this year:

But it’s not at all clear that Phoenix will pony up to pay for a billion-dollar ballpark that critics said wasn’t even necessary. So if the city won’t pay, the county won’t pay, and the team won’t pay, that just leaves a Native American tribe if the team were built on tribal land like the Snakes’ spring-training facility is. Either that, or nobody does, and that means that the team might end up looking out of state.

Portland offers the Diamondbacks everything they want: a new stadium, public funding, and a new, hungry fanbase (though with few of the team’s namesakes to be found in Oregon, presumably a rebranding would be in order). And there’s more:

Under the [settlement agreement], if the Diamondbacks found a new location in Maricopa County, the team could leave Chase Field without penalty in 2022, five years earlier than the team’s current contract.

But that’s not entirely accurate. Paragraph 19 of the settlement agreement actually lets the team move out of state without penalty in 2022 if Major League Baseball were to decide, in its sole discretion, that the team had to depart Chase Field. And local tribes haven’t exactly been lining up to fund a stadium on tribal land, particularly given that the team would receive no tax benefits from building there. In fact, one municipal government official, in response to the Diamondbacks’ overtures, told team owner Ken Kendrick to “take your stupid baseball team and get out [of Arizona],” recommending the team go to West Virginia.

Now, it’s still likely that an expansion team ends up filling Portland’s new ballpark, just as it’s possible that, despite investors’ current enthusiasm, a ballpark and team never materialize there at all. But it’s not out of the question that an existing team could make a move to the west coast. Portland is preparing to build a brand new stadium. We just have to wait and see who comes.

Before the 2018 season, two previously big-spending teams had plans to drop below the luxury tax threshold and reset their tax rates. The first, the Yankees, nonetheless had a successful season, winning 100 games en route to a Wild Card win and Division Series berth. The other, the Dodgers, had a more successful season, making it to the World Series for the second consecutive year before succumbing to the Red Sox (themselves big spenders) and Ryan Madson. In both cases, however, we have teams with young talent that look to be contenders for years to come, so the conventional thinking going into 2018 was that both franchises would drop below the tax limit for one year to reset their rates and then be active in what was long thought to be one of the most coveted free agent class of the decade.

So though the Dodgers have already accomplished their major offseason business – inking Clayton Kershaw to a contract extension, thereby avoiding the lefty ace hitting free agency – many expected them to return to something more closely resembling their 2017 ways, when the team spent a whopping $290 million between payroll and taxes.

But earlier this month, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times, reported that may not actually be in the offing.

. . .

Last month, we talked about the potential conflicts of interest raised by the New York Mets hiring former CAA super agent Brodie Van Wagenen, who used to represent several high-profile Mets, as their new General Manager. Since then, we’ve gained additional information regarding the terms of Van Wagenen’s contract and how he and the Mets have attempted to address those conflict of interest concerns.

It’s worth noting that at the outset, the Mets didn’t offer a terribly specific answer to the question of how Van Wagenen had avoided breaching the fiduciary duty he owed to clients like Jacob deGrom and Yoenis Cespedes (among several others) when he accepted the Mets’ GM job. The day after my initial piece on the subject, John Delcos noted for Forbes that reporters asked Van Wagenen about the conflict of interest.

That was the subject of one of the first questions asked of him this afternoon, and before Van Wagenen could answer, Wilpon interrupted and said he had spoken with the commissioner’s office and Major League Players Association chief Tony Clark, adding, “We have provisions in Brodie’s contract to deal with any conflicts of interest.”

What those provisions are, neither Wilpon nor Van Wagenen would say. Van Wagenen, who, as expected, appeared polished and highly professional, said, ‘The goals between players and management are more in line than people think.'”

That answer doesn’t adequately address the issues attendant with Van Wagenen’s hiring. As I explained on Flipping Bats and Winning Games, agents have knowledge teams don’t, ranging from players’ medical conditions to their desired salaries. And even if players and management were to have similar goals, they’re still adverse negotiating parties. When we found out more about the contractual provisions that addressed conflicts, the details also left something to be desired. Per the New York Post:

Though he is no longer their agent, the 44-year-old is privy to information regarding his former clients that could give the Mets an advantage over a player. And that could also include negotiations for a long-term deal, because Van Wagenen might know their final asking price.

“We didn’t discuss specifics on any one player like that,’’ Wilpon said of deGrom’s future. “I think [deGrom] is to be determined and Brodie is going to have to recuse himself from some of those discussions. He will have to set an overall tone for the organization, which way he wants us to go, and then we’ll have to have some others be responsible for doing the actual contract.”

There are two problems with this approach. First, remember that, as we discussed last time, Van Wagenen was legally required to obtain a waiver of conflict of interest, with informed consent, from each player separately. Based on Jeff Wilpon’s comments, that didn’t happen. We do know that Van Wagenen kept his clients informed.

But based on the available reporting, it appears unlikely those conversations included informed consent waivers. For instance, Jacob deGrom told MLB.com that Van Wagenen’s “transition was ‘a little confusing,’ adding that he’s still trying to ‘wrap my head around it.'” And deGrom told the New York Post that “I don’t really know how to feel” about the “conflict-of-interest stuff.” MLB.com relays a conversation between the two that illustrates just how confusing this can get.

Shortly after Van Wagenen became GM, divesting himself of all interests in CAA and forfeiting the chance to represent deGrom in contract negotiations, he chatted again on the phone with his ex-client.

“Have you talked to my agent?” deGrom recalled asking him.

“I don’t know who that is,” Van Wagenen deadpanned.

“Yeah, me neither,” deGrom said, laughing.

For now, deGrom is still working out that detail, as he tries to determine how Van Wagenen’s move to the Mets’ front office might affect him.

That doesn’t sound like someone who provided informed consent for Van Wagenen’s new job, and there have been no reports confirming that deGrom – or any of Van Wagenen’s other ex-clients – signed any such written waivers.

Now, Van Wagenen did say that he would recuse himself from dealings with his former clients, which is good. But Wilpon suggested something else.

“The GM gives some guidance, but he’s not totally involved with every last detail,” Wilpon said. “[Van Wagenen] can give us direction. He just can’t be involved in the negotiation. Is it something we are worried about? No. We gave it a lot of thought and obviously I went through the process of making sure that everybody was OK with doing this kind of arrangement, of bringing an agent in to our side.”

For legal purposes, if Van Wagenen is providing “guidance” or “direction,” it really doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t in the room for negotiations. A true recusal would require him to have nothing whatsoever to do with his former clients’ contract negotiations. Direction and guidance creates the possibility – or at least the appearance – that he could disclose private information to those doing the negotiating. Avoiding that possibility would require the Mets’ General Manager to be absent from dealings regarding the Mets’ biggest stars, which creates a host of practical problems, as Phil Mushnick correctly notes.

Exactly how is that going to work? When, for example, deGrom’s future is discussed and determined, Van Wagenen will leave the room or, to be extra cautious, leave the country? Or will that determination be a quick process completed while the new GM, with no say whatsoever, is out to lunch?

His input won’t be solicited, known, weighed or, at the very least, fully suspected? Or are we to believe that the Mets hired a GM whom they’ll gag and handcuff when it’s time to make big decisions? Van Wagenen seems too smart to not know better. But we’re not?

So far, we haven’t seen Van Wagenen recuse himself from Noah Syndergaard trade talks, even though he represented the ace right-hander before taking the Mets job. And Van Wagenen raised eyebrows when he said that ex-client Tim Tebow, who this year posted a 106 wRC+ (along with a 34.6% strikeout rate and an unsustainable .418 BABIP) in Double-A, would nevertheless get promoted to start the 2019 season.

““I reject the notion that I’m going to be in a conflict of interest now or that I’m going to compromise my own reputation, past behavior and my own integrity,” Van Wagenen said to the New York Times‘ James Wagner. But that’s sort of the problem – Van Wagenen doesn’t appear to give the possibility of conflicts of interest its due consideration. And there are potential issues on the other side of trades, too. As Wagner notes: “Some G.M.’s may be leery of what inside information Van Wagenen has if he, say, offers a Met who is a former client of his in a trade.”

So the concerns now go beyond internal conflicts of interest. Can Brodie Van Wagenen run the Mets as he needs to with such significant limitations? Or will he circumvent those limitations in order to get the best deals for his team? At this point, we just don’t know. It would be a relatively simple fix, too; if the parties did follow the law, they could confirm they had written conflict waivers from all involved. But the fact that the Mets and Van Wagenen have allowed the situation to percolate suggests they may not have taken that step – and now, for better or worse, every move Van Wagenen makes will be viewed through that lens moving forward.

Cindy Hyde-Smith is not a baseball player. This is undoubtedly the first time her name has ever been mentioned on this site, and, with any luck, it will also be the last. That’s because Ms. Hyde-Smith is a Republican United States Senator from Mississippi, a state that has no major league baseball team. After being appointed to the seat earlier this year to replace the ailing Thad Cochran, she’s running to be elected in her own right, facing Democrat Mike Espy in a high-profile run-off Senate election set for November 27.

Ordinarily, this isn’t something we would cover at FanGraphs. But over the weekend, Major League Baseball found itself in a bit of hot water after donating $5,000 to Ms. Hyde-Smith’s campaign.

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