Madison Bumgarner is staying in the National League West, but it won’t be with the Giants, the only professional organization he’s ever known. And he’s not joining the Dodgers, the championship-starved, longtime rivals who pursued him after losing out on Gerrit Cole, either. Instead, the 30-year-old lefty will join the rebuilding Arizona Diamondbacks via a five-year, $85 million contract, one that includes $15 million in deferred payments as well as a five-team no-trade clause.

The deal is the fourth-largest for a pitcher this winter after those of Cole (nine years, $324 million with the Yankees), Stephen Strasburg (seven years, $245 million with the Nationals), and Zack Wheeler (five years, $118 million with the Phillies), but it’s well short of the $100 million-plus contract he was reportedly seeking. Indeed, the gap between the third- and fourth-largest deals is strikingly large, particularly given that the two pitchers are similar in age (Bumgarner is 10 months older than Wheeler) and that for our Top 50 Free Agents list, both Kiley McDaniel and the crowd had the two pitchers very close together in terms of their paydays. The teeming masses estimated that both would receive four-year deals at $72 million, with McDaniel estimating $68 million for Wheeler and $64 million for Bumgarner.

It’s not hard to understand the discrepancy. Wheeler was worth a hefty 9.8 WAR over the past two seasons, including offense, with 5.3 (4.7 from pitching) in 2019. Bumgarner was worth 5.2 WAR over that same span, with 3.7 (3.2 from pitching) in 2019. Given his recent performance and the mere 749.1 major league innings under his belt, Wheeler, despite the injuries in his past, is seen as a pitcher who’s still on an upward trajectory, while Bumgarner, with 1,846 innings to his name, may have his best days in the rearview mirror. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Jeff Kent took a long time to find a home. Drafted by the Blue Jays in 1989, he passed through the hands of three teams who didn’t quite realize the value of what they had. Not until a trade to the Giants in November 1996 — prior to his age-29 season — did he really settle in. Once he did, he established himself as a standout complement to Barry Bonds, helping the Giants become perennial contenders and spending more than a decade as a middle-of-the-lineup force.

Despite his late-arriving stardom and a prickly personality that sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, Kent earned All-Star honors five times, won an MVP award, and helped four different franchises reach the playoffs a total of seven times. His resumé gives him a claim as the best-hitting second baseman of the post-1960 expansion era — not an iron-clad one, but not one that’s easily dismissed. For starters, he holds the all-time record for most home runs by a second baseman with 351. That’s 74 more than Ryne Sandberg, 85 more than Joe Morgan, and 86 more than Rogers Hornsby — all Hall of Famers, and in Hornsby’s case, one from before the expansion era (note that I’m not counting homers hit while playing other positions). Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances in their career who spent at least half their time at second base, only Hornsby (.577) has a higher slugging percentage than Kent’s .500. From that latter set, only Hornsby (1.010) and another pre-expansion Hall of Famer, Charlie Gehringer (.884), have a higher OPS than Kent (.855). Read the rest of this entry »

SAN DIEGO — In the wake of a record-setting season for total home runs — 6,776, or 1.39 per team per game, an increase of 21.4% relative to last year, and 11.0% relative to the previous record, set in 2017 — on Wednesday morning, Major League Baseball released its long-awaited report from a committee of scientists and Rawlings representatives in their attempt to account for what has happened during the 2017-19 seasons. Shortly afterwards, an eight-member panel consisting of representatives from the committee, Rawlings, and MLB then fielded questions from the media. It was a lot to absorb, even given familiarity with the topic, but the general impression from all that’s been put forth is that MLB and Rawlings don’t have the firmest of grips on their product and its performance.

The full 27-page “Preliminary Report of the Committee Studying Home Run Rates in MLB” (PDF) is highly technical, and worthy of further scrutiny, scientific study, and perhaps skepticism, but a few things came through in the press conference and a cursory trip through the report. First, Rawlings and MLB denied that there’s anything underhanded when it comes to changing the ball. Said President/CEO of Rawlings Michael Zlaket, “We have never been asked to ‘juice’ or ‘de-juice’ a baseball. And we’ve never done anything of the sort. Never would.”

Second, beyond a reiteration of the committee’s 2018 finding (PDF) that the ball-to-ball variability in aerodynamic drag is greater than the year-to-year change in average drag — a consequence, the league and Rawlings maintain, of using a product made of natural materials and constructed in part by hand — is that even the scientists involved in MLB’s committee are still grappling with the complex interplay of factors that affect drag. Seam height plays the biggest role, but hardly the only one. It will take further study to untangle the other factors — work that both Rawlings and MLB say that they’re committed to doing, via the committee. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts, and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown has stalled somewhat in the two years since, as he’s added just 5.4% to reach 59.5%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading with voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result is time run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but like Bonds, needs to regain momentum.

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Last winter, as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper became the first free agents to reach the $300 million plateau, the Yankees kept their powder dry, deciding both that they had enough depth at those players’ respective positions and enough money spent beyond the Competitive Balance Tax threshold. Despite a considerably more glaring need in their rotation, they bypassed the market’s top free agent pitcher, Patrick Corbin, as well, unwilling to go to a sixth year to secure his services, which ended up selling for $140 million to the Nationals. On Tuesday, the Yankees spent the money they had been squirreling away, agreeing to a nine-year, $324 million contract with 29-year-old righty Gerrit Cole.

The Yankees reportedly outbid the Dodgers, Angels, and multiple mystery teams (possibly the Astros and Giants) for Cole, a pitcher whom they have coveted since selecting him in the first round of the 2008 draft (28th overall), only to lose out to his commitment to attend UCLA. Three year later, he was the first overall pick by the Pirates, for whom he pitched from 2013-17 and helped to two Wild Card berths, before being traded to the Astros for four players in January 2018, just two and a half months after Houston had won its first World Series.

In Houston, Cole reconfigured his arsenal, scrapping his sinker and relying more upon his four-seamer and breaking balls, and ascending into elite territory. Over the past two seasons, only Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer have outdone his 13.4 WAR and his 2.67 FIP, while only deGrom and Justin Verlander have bettered his 2.68 ERA; no starter in that span has outdone his 37.3% strikeout rate. In 2019, Cole set a record for an ERA qualifier by striking out 39.9% of all hitters while also leading the AL with 326 strikeouts, a 2.50 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, and 7.4 WAR. Not only was he poised to hit the market at the apex of his value to date, he was positioned to hit a trifecta unseen since the winter of 1974-75, when Cy Young winner Catfish Hunter of the three-time defending world champion A’s was suddenly declared a free agent after owner Charlie Finley failed to make deferred annuity payments in a timely fashion as stipulated by his contract. Read the rest of this entry »

Didi Gregorius has a new home, with a familiar manager. On Tuesday, the 29-year-old shortstop agreed to a one-year, $14 million deal with the Phillies, meaning that he’ll reunite with new skipper Joe Girardi, under whom he played from 2015-17 with the Yankees while developing into a strong two-way contributor. The short-term deal gives Gregorius a shot to rebuild his value after a subpar season in which he missed over two months due to a late-2018 Tommy John surgery and then hit for just an 84 wRC+, his lowest mark since his 2012 rookie season. It closes the door on a return to the Yankees, who declined to issue him a $17.8 million qualifying offer, and it’s a relatively low-cost bet on upgrading the Phillies middle infield, where the double-play tandem of Jean Segura and the recently non-tendered César Hernández both underperformed in 2019.

The Amsterdam-born, Curaçao-raised Gregorius had produced just 1.9 WAR in 191 games for the Reds (who signed him in 2007 and brought him to the majors in late ’12) and Diamondbacks (who acquired him in a three-team deal centered around Trevor Bauer in December 2012) before being dealt to the Yankees in December 2014; he arrived as part of a three-team deal that sent Robbie Ray and Domingo Leyba from the Tigers to the Diamondbacks and Shane Greene from the Yankees to Detroit. Given the nearly impossible task of filling the shoes of the just-retired Derek Jeter (to whom former Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers had audaciously compared Gregorius in 2012), he proved more than up to the task, quickly illustrating that he could cover far more ground at shortstop than the aging superstar, whose glovework was never his strength. Even with just an 89 wRC+ in 2015, Gregorius was worth a solid 3.1 WAR, 2.9 more than Jeter provided in his final season.

Developing a more pull-oriented approach with more consistent elevation of the ball, Gregorius’ left-handed swing played exceptionally well in Yankee Stadium at a time when balls began soaring out of the park at record rates. From 2016-18, Gregorius hit 72 homers, more than any other shortstop besides Manny Machado (107), Trevor Story (88), and Francisco Lindor (86), and over that span batted .277/.319/.472 (109 wRC+) with 8.8 UZR, and 11.6 WAR, seventh among shortstops. He set career highs with 27 homers, a 122 wRC+ (.268/.335/.494, the last two also highs), an 8.4% walk rate, and 4.7 WAR in 2018, but shortly after the Yankees were eliminated in the Division Series, the team announced he would need surgery on his right elbow.

His 2019 season debut on June 7 came inside of eight months following TJ surgery, making it one of the quickest returns by an infielder. Yet he hit just .238/.276/.441 with 16 homers in 344 PA overall, and just .207/.250/.420 for a 69 wRC+ from August 1 onward, managing just 0.9 WAR. He went 9-for-33 in the postseason, with a grand slam in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Twins.

Via Statcast, Gregorius’ quality of contact wasn’t the issue; he actually hit the ball a bit harder in 2019 than ’18, and in the air with a bit more frequency:

The big difference in his two seasons was what happened when he didn’t make contact. With his chase rate rising from 36.2% to a career-high 41.1%, Gregorius made less contact (67.0%) with pitches outside the zone than ever before, and matched his career high in swinging strike rate (11.4%) while setting a new high in strikeout rate (15.4%) even as his walk rate dipped back to 4.9% — hence the dent in his wOBA. The collection of stats paints a picture of a player who was pressing. Not that he ever admitted to it, but it wouldn’t be hard to understand why, given that Gregorius was attempting to demonstrate he was back to full health and worthy of a long-term contract after missing a good chunk of his walk year; in the spring, talks regarding an extension with New York had been scuttled.

Though Gleyber Torres‘ defensive metrics at shortstop were modest (-2.1 UZR, 1 DRS in 77 games), the Yankees apparently saw enough from him to be comfortable in returning the going-on-23-year-old to his natural position for 2020. Such an alignment would help to alleviate an infield logjam, by making DJ LeMahieu the regular at second base, the position he played while winning three Gold Gloves with the Rockies from 2015-18; he made 66 starts there in 2019, with another 75 at the infield corners. That would leave Luke Voit and Mike Ford to play first base, and Gio Urshela and Miguel Andújar to cover third base, with the latter, who missed nearly all of the 2019 season due to a torn right labrum, possibly subject to a move to first given his brutal defensive showing (-16.0 UZR, -25 DRS) as a rookie in ’18.

As for the Phillies, they recently non-tendered Hernández, who had yielded diminishing returns in recent seasons, declining from highs of 3.8 WAR (2016) and 111 wRC+ (’17) to 1.7 WAR and 92 wRC+ in ’19. While they signed Josh Harrison to a minor league deal late last month, and still have Scott Kingery, man of many positions, the addition of Gregorius — who also reportedly drew interest from the Brewers and Reds — means that the going-on-30-year-old Segura will move from shortstop to second base, where he spent 2016 with the Diamondbacks while setting career highs in WAR (5.0) and wRC+ (126). In 2019, he hit .280/.323/.420 for a 92 wRC+, an 18-point drop from the year before; his WAR dipped from 3.7 to 2.3 despite just a minor decline in defense (from 0.8 to -1.3, though via DRS the drop was from 5 to -5). Having both Segura and Gregorius in the lineup means getting walk rates of around 5% from both middle infielders, which could be a problem for a team on which only Rhys Hoskins and Bryce Harper walked more than 45 times.

Projection-wise, Gregorius is forecast to produce 2.5 WAR via ZiPS and 2.6 via Steamer, a performance that would be well worth the salary and would set the shortstop up for a multiyear deal, though probably nothing on the order of what he could have hoped as he put the finishing touches on his 2018 season. With Segura projected at 2.4 WAR but having recently been worth well more than that, the upside is a pair that could produce about 8 WAR instead of five, which is basically what the Phillies got from all of their second basemen and shortstops combined in 2019 (5.1 total).

The team still has to figure out what to do when it comes to third base, with Maikel Franco also non-tendered after a -0.6 WAR season, and in center field; Kingery will probably figure in the mix at one position or the other, perhaps keeping the hot corner warm for 2018 overall number three pick Alex Bohm, whom general manager Matt Klentak expects to arrive sometime in 2020. The Gregorius signing has reportedly taken the Phillies out of the hunt for Anthony Rendon, though they may still be “interested bystanders” when it comes to Josh Donaldson, which is a more plausible premise for a John Hughes movie featuring an unrequited crush at a high school dance than a major infield upgrade.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

If Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time, then the same goes for Barry Bonds as the greatest position player. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.

Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism. The younger Bonds had his own issues off the field, as allegations of physical and verbal abuse of his domestic partners surfaced during his career.

As he aged, media and fans turned against Bonds once evidence — most of it illegally leaked to the press by anonymous sources — mounted that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during the latter part of his career. With his name in the headlines more regarding his legal situation than his on-field exploits, his pursuit and eclipse of Hank Aaron’s 33-year-old home run record turned into a joyless drag, and he disappeared from the majors soon after breaking the record in 2007 despite ranking among the game’s most dangerous hitters even at age 43. Not until 2014 did he even debut as a spring training guest instructor for the Giants. The reversal of his felony obstruction of justice conviction in April 2015 freed him of legal hassles, and he spent the 2016 season as the Marlins’ hitting coach, though he was dismissed at season’s end.

Bonds is hardly alone among Hall of Fame candidates with links to PEDs. As with Clemens, the support he has received during his first seven election cycles has been far short of unanimous, but significantly stronger than the showings of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro, either in their ballot debuts or since. Debuting at 36.2% in 2013, Bonds spun his wheels for two years before climbing to 44.3% in 2016 and 53.8% in 2017 thanks to a confluence of factors. In the wake of both Bonds and Clemens crossing the historically significant 50% threshold, the Hall — which in 2014 unilaterally truncated candidacies from 15 years to 10 so as to curtail debate over the PED-linked ones — made its strongest statement yet that it would like to avoid honoring them in the form of a plea to voters from vice chairman Joe Morgan not to honor players connected to steroids. The letter was not well received by voters, but in the two cycles since, Bonds has gained just 5.3 percentage points. Like Clemens, he needs to recapture his momentum to have a shot at reaching 75% by the time his eligibility runs out in 2022.

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10:03

Jay Jaffe: Good morning — or afternoon, depending upon your time zone — and welcome to the Winter Meetings edition of my lately-not-so-weekly chat. Post-Thanksgiving travel hell prevented last week’s installment, which strengthened my resolve to get this one in despite being 3000 or so miles away from home. I’m in the media room at the Hyatt and thus prone to distractions like greetings from folks around me but we’ll try to get this done. Anyway, the big news here so far is last night’s Modern Baseball Era Committee result, which added the ridiculously overdue Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons to the Hall of Fame; you can see my writeup here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/marvin-miller-and-ted-simmons-are-now-hall….

10:04

Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show…

10:07

Jay Jaffe: I know there was a lot of hype and hope for Whitaker this time around, and I’m sorry to see that he missed out. However, if you look at this year’s Modern Baseball ballot, every candidate besides Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans had been considered multiple times by small (or not-so-small) committees, and the fact that both of those guys avoided the “less than X votes” cluster means that they’ll almost certainly get other shots. Miller and Simmons had each been considered at least three times before and both had missed by exactly one vote in the past. I’m not surprised the voters decided it was “their turn.”

10:08

Jay Jaffe: Not unless they announce so themselves, which they are most definitely NOT supposed to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount given that he’s maxed out at 16.7% in four years on the ballot, that after receiving a 5.6% jump in this past cycle. Nonetheless, his advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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SAN DIEGO — To the extent that the Hall of Fame’s Era Committees exist to right past electoral wrongs — a debatable proposition given some of the results over the years, to say nothing of those from its late and unlamented predecessor, the Veterans Committee — the Modern Baseball Era Committee in one fell swoop fixed the Hall’s most glaring and embarrassing omission on Sunday while also giving hope to candidates squeezed off the writers’ ballot before their cases could get a full airing. By electing former MLB Players Association Executive Director Marvin Miller, the voters finally enshrined the most important non-player and one of the most impactful figures in the game’s history. By electing eight-time All-Star catcher Ted Simmons, they finally honored a candidate who quite shockingly received less than 5% of the vote from the BBWAA in his first ballot appearance and was thus ineligible for future consideration in that context.

Miller and Simmons were the two honorees elected from among a slate of 10 candidates who made their greatest impact upon the game during the 1970-87 period. Each member of the 16-voter panel consisting of Hall of Fame players, executives, and media members/historians was allowed to vote for up to four candidates, with 75% needed for election. Simmons received 13 votes (81.3%), Miller 12 (75%). This was the third election cycle of the new staggered Era Committees — via which more recent eras are considered with greater frequency — since a 2016 reorganization. Each one has selected two honorees, and five of the six have been living ex-players — which is five more than were elected by the expanded Veterans Committee and the older Era Committees from 2003-16.

As executive director of the MLBPA from 1966 to ’82, Miller revolutionized the game, overseeing its biggest change since integration via the dismantling of the reserve clause and the dawn of free agency, thus shifting a century-old balance of power from the owners to the players. Miller helped the union secure a whole host of other important rights as well, from collective bargaining to salary arbitration to the use of agents in negotiations. During his tenure, the average salary of a major league player rose from $19,000 to over $240,000, and the MLBPA became the strongest labor union in the country. Read the rest of this entry »