Every spring, MLBPA chief Tony Clark travels around Florida and Arizona, visiting with all 30 major-league teams. He travels to learn of concerns and ideas from major-league players, and to communicate matters of importance. Clark also makes himself available to beat writers following major-league clubs.

In the spring of 2015, as collective bargaining talks loomed, I was in Bradenton, Florida, covering the Pirates. When Clark arrived at Pirates camp, I asked him if what players once considered a nonstarter, a salary cap — one that would guarantee a 50-50 revenue split — had become more palatable.

I asked him if any player that spring had expressed concern regarding the owners’ share of revenues, which has continued to increase over the last two decades. The trend has gained some attention in recent years at multiple media outlets.

“You’re the first person to ask,” Clark said.

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Currently, more than 75% of major-league teams — 23 out of 30, to be exact — play their home games in stadiums publicly owned by a local government entity. Each of these relationships between the franchise and its host municipality is, in turn, governed by a contract specifying the terms under which the government has leased its stadium to the MLB team.

As one might expect, disagreements between the franchises and their local communities occasionally arise under these lease agreements. Recently, two such disputes — one involving the Atlanta Braves and the other involving the Arizona Diamondbacks — progressed to the point that the team or local municipality opted to file a lawsuit against the other in state court.

S.M.P. Community Fund v. Atlanta Braves

In late December, the Atlanta Braves were sued in local state court by the S.M.P. Community Fund, an entity formed by the City of Atlanta to distribute funds generated by the Braves’ former stadium — Turner Field — throughout the local community. Under the terms of the Braves’ lease agreement, the team was obligated to contribute 8.25% of the parking revenue it generated at Turner Field, along with 25% of the net revenue generated from any special events held at the stadium, to the Fund. The Fund would then use these proceeds to benefit the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Turner Field.

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We’ve acquired 50 more tickets after selling out of our initial allotment. Sales are back open!

On Monday, August 21st, the first total solar eclipse to hit the United States in 26 years will make its way across the country, and the path of totality will take it right through the town of Keizer, Oregon, home to the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, the Northwest League affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. To celebrate the event, the Volcanoes are hosting EclipseFest, a weekend celebration of astronomy and baseball.

On the actual day of the Eclipse, they have scheduled a morning game (9:35 am first pitch) to allow for what they are calling the Total Eclipse of the Park; the game will halt during the event, and those in attendance will view the eclipse together. Included among those in attendance will be Effectively Wild hosts Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan; I will also be joining the festivities, and we want to invite FanGraphs readers and Effectively Wild listeners to join us for this unique convergence of baseball and astronomy.

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Andy Marte died in a car accident in his native Dominican Republic. He was 33 years old. Yordano Ventura died in a separate car accident in his native Dominican Republic. He was 25 years old. Those are the facts, and those are the ages, but the ages are presented as if they mean anything. Any lost life is a life lost too early, and there exists no formula to calculate a level of sadness. The baseball community is in mourning, as it has been too many times.

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Like many of us, Jackie Bradley, Jr. has been watching and enjoying the NFL playoffs. I asked the Boston outfielder for his thoughts on the contests, as well as some of the primary protagonists.

After acknowledging that there were some exciting games, Bradley made note of Pittsburgh wide receiver Antonio Brown’s surreptitiously live-broadcasting a video as head coach Mike Tomlin addressed the team. He doesn’t condone what happened.

“There’s always been an unwritten rule about that,” Bradley told me. “What goes on in the locker room stays in the locker room. Nobody from outside of the locker room should know what goes on inside the locker room. It’s like a family in there — it’s a tight-knit group — and it should stay that way. You wouldn’t want anything broadcast out of there, no matter what it might be.”

As for the quarterbacks playing later today — Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, and Matt Ryan — Bradley demurred on which he feels would have been most successful had he pursued a baseball career. He did opine that the foursome wouldn’t necessarily have worked off a mound. Read the rest of this entry »

The primary focus this week might be on the Hall of Fame results, but our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality rolls on. Earlier this week, we reviewed American League center fielders; today, we turn to their National League counterparts. As a reminder, we are using granular exit-speed and launch-angle data to determine how 2016 regulars “should have” performed.

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Back in 1947, nine players received at least 50% of the Hall of Fame vote. That’s the last time so many players have appeared on at least half the voters’ ballots. Until this year, that is. Three players were elected this time around (Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez.) Another six received more than 50% of the vote.

Generally speaking, breaking the 50% mark is a pretty good indication that a player is going to make it at some point. Jack Morris didn’t make it, Lee Smith barely got over 50% one year and now he’s been removed from the ballot. Gil Hodges never made it. But they’re in the definite minority.

So how does the future look for the six candidates who crossed the 50% threshold but failed to reach the 75% mark? And what about players who’ll become eligible in the near future? Trying to predict the fate of those holdovers three, four, five years from now presents challenges, but we can see who will have a shot. Below, I’ve attempted to do just that.

Names of candidates through 2021 from Baseball-Reference.

*****

2018

For a more detailed look at next year’s ballot, check out my piece on it here, but the list below contains the notable new players.

First-ballot no-doubters: Chipper Jones.

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Larry Andersen is famous for being traded for Jeff Bagwell. Phillies fans know him for his fine work on the club’s radio broadcasts. In terms of his playing career — he pitched in the big leagues from 1975 to 1994 — Andersen is known for having one of the best sliders in the game.

His best years were with the Astros when he was in his mid- to late 30s. From 1986 to -90, the right-handed setup man appeared in 293 games and fashioned a 2.55 ERA and a 2.53 FIP. His 445 innings over the stretch were sixth-most among relievers.

His signature pitch was elite. As Rob Neyer wrote at ESPN back in 2004, “Larry Andersen perfected his slider to the point where he rarely bothered throwing anything else.” In the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, Larry Dierker was quoted as saying his former teammate had the best slider he’d ever seen.

Anderson told me about his slider midway through the 2015 season.

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Andersen on why his slider was so effective: “The way I threw it — this is from talking to guys I faced, and ended up playing with — it looked like a fastball. A number of them told me: ‘I swear it’s a fastball; it looks like a fast one.’ That’s the key. Hitters aren’t committing to hit the ball when it’s three feet in front of the plate, they’re committing to the ball when it’s halfway there. The best hitters obviously pick up the spin, but if they see fastball and commit, and it’s not a fastball, they’re not going to have much luck.

“I basically tried to throw my slider how I would grip a four-seam fastball. I would kind of just rotate my fingers to the side of the ball a little more. That was probably more my cutter. I really had three pitches with one grip. It was essentially more pressure, and where my fingers were placed on the ball.

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We tend to form memories poorly. In middle school, my band teacher was fond of telling us that if you only played two parts of the song correctly, to make it the beginning and the end, because most people wouldn’t remember anything else.

So it may be with Andruw Jones. If you pressed most people on what they remember most about Jones, there’s a decent chance that they’d recall him as the 19-year-old who homered twice in the 1996 World Series and also as a really fat guy who was terrible in his 30s. In between those two endpoints, though, he had a Hall of Fame career.

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Baseball will grow again.

In the modern era, there never has been a longer expansion drought.

Perhaps once the stadium situations involving Oakland and Tampa Bay are settled, baseball will consider expanding for the first time since admitting the Diamondbacks and Rays in 1998. (It’s possible that teams like Tampa or Oakland would relocate, but research by Craig Edwards earlier this week revealed how infrequently MLB teams change addresses.) Perhaps now that baseball owners have cashed in some of their investment in MLB Advanced Media, expansion talk will become more serious in the coming years. Having a new CBA agreement could also help.

Wherever, whenever baseball expands, at some point, every business seeks new markets to enter.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred expressed interest in expansion last year and is in favor of targeting international markets like Mexico City and Montreal . There are also domestic contenders often cited like Charlotte, Las Vegas, Portland, San Antonio. Some believe a third team would do well in the NYC market, though territorial rights – among other issues – complicate matters. Back in 2012 for Baseball Prospectus, Maury Brown used a thorough methodology to rank expansion candidates.

Given the game’s history in Montreal (the Expos drew 2.1 million or more fans four times in five years from 1979 to -83), and the recent successful exhibition games there, I suspect Montreal is a favorite to land a team. Who wouldn’t love to hear more of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3ZUN-kSGA

Assuming the sport reaches 32 teams in the not-too-distant future, assuming one team is placed in each league for an even 16-16 split, MLB then would be met with interesting logistical issues. Baseball could perhaps remain with the status quo of three divisions in each league, but having unbalanced divisions seems awkward and unfair to teams in those divisions. Asked about division setup, Manfred indicated it’s unlikely the sport would remain with the three-division setup following expansion.

“From a technical perspective it would be easier to divide the schedule up by four. Having five teams in the divisions is problematic from a scheduling perspective.”

So with expansion, baseball will have have to redraw its maps, and there would be some interesting issues to work through.

Issue No. 1
Are four-team divisions in each league optimal or two eight-team groupings?

Issue No. 2
Should MLB expand the playoffs to six teams per league, or keep the field at five?

Issue No. 3
Should MLB realign teams by geography, or try and preserve as many of the rivalries and division arrangements as possible?

Issue No. 4
Should MLB keep interleague play or abolish it? (With teams evenly distributed in leagues, interleague play is no longer a scheduling necessity.)

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