Successfully suing Major League Baseball under federal antitrust law is no easy task. Not only does the league typically hire the best legal representation money can buy, but it is also the beneficiary of a unique, judicially-created antitrust exemption generally shielding it from liability under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Nevertheless, an enterprising plaintiff every so often decides to try his or her luck at convincing a court to set aside baseball’s exemption and hold MLB liable for various, allegedly anticompetitive practices.

These challengers typically hope to overcome baseball’s antitrust exemption in either of two ways. Initially, the plaintiffs usually try to persuade the trial court that the exemption does not apply to whichever of MLB’s business practices is at issue in the case, asserting that the league’s legal protection should instead be narrowly construed.

And — as is the case more often than not — when that strategy fails to work, the plaintiff’s fallback plan is to hope to be able to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its prior decisions affirming the exemption and instead hold that MLB is no longer immune from legal challenge under the Sherman Act.

Two such cases contesting MLB’s antitrust exemption are currently before the Supreme Court, both of which have been covered here previously at FanGraphs during their earlier stages of litigation.

In the first case, Wyckoff v. Office of the Commissioner, two former scouts have accused MLB teams of illegally colluding to depress the market for the services of professional and amateur scouts. Meanwhile, the second case — Right Field Rooftops v. Chicago Cubs — involves a claim that the Cubs have unlawfully attempted to monopolize the market for watching their games in-person by purchasing a number of the formerly competing rooftop businesses operating across the street from Wrigley Field and also blocking the view of some of the remaining rooftops by installing new, expanded scoreboards.

In each case, the plaintiffs failed to convince the trial court to construe the league’s antitrust immunity narrowly, and now they must hope they can convince the Supreme Court to reconsider the nearly century-old exemption it first created back in 1922.

Unlike most previous challenges to the antitrust exemption, however, the Wyckoff and Rooftop plaintiffs are not necessarily asking the Supreme Court to directly overrule its prior decisions and strip MLB of its antitrust immunity. Instead, the parties are primarily urging the Court to take their respective cases to clarify just how broadly baseball’s exemption ought to apply.

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The player by whom I’m most fascinated in the major leagues is Javier Baez. It might be because, the first time I saw him, what popped into my head was “Alfonso Soriano.” It might be because Baez, despite being able to do this, and this, and this, has yet to post even a 2.5-win season. I admit to thinking, after Baez’s 2013 season, that he was going to be a superstar. It hasn’t happened yet. But the tools are so loud that I’ve never stopped looking for signs that a breakout might be coming.

If Baez were to break out, it would probably resemble his effort over the first three-plus weeks of the 2018 season. Including Sunday’s game, Baez has produced a 187 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR in 80 plate appearances. Both figures place him among the top 10 qualifiers in the majors. His .444 isolated-power mark is first among that same group.

Of course, it’s always best to view March and April statistics with three shakers of salt and a heavy dose of skepticism. Accordingly, when looking further into how Baez has succeeded this season, I expected to find a good bit of luck. Turns out, there might very well be something here.

Last week, Travis Sawchik posted an update on the fly-ball revolution which heavily featured Baez. But Baez’s numbers, so far this season, are very different beyond just an increased propensity for hitting fly balls. Consider the following:

It’s hard not to notice that one of these years is not like the others, small sample size notwithstanding. So far, Baez has walked more often than ever before and also struck out less often. To put it a different way, consider: Baez has drawn six walks so far this season. He drew 15 walks in all of 2016. Baez has struck out 17 times in 19 games this month. He struck out 21 times last April in 17 games.

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If you were to examine the relationship between the matters about which fans most complain and the relevance of those matters to actual wins and losses, you’d likely find that lineup construction produces the weakest correlation. Who starts and who sits matters a lot. Bullpen management can make a real difference on a club’s record. Generally, though, the precise location of a hitter in the batting order doesn’t amount to much.

Take the Cubs as an example. Chicago’s leadoff hitters batted .246/.324/.422 with a 94 wRC+ last year, which isn’t ideal production from one of the most important spots in the lineup. The team still managed to average more than five runs per game, though — and even if they completely optimized their lineup, it likely wouldn’t have netted the team much more than 10 extra runs over the entire course of the season.

Now, 10 runs isn’t nothing: over the course of the year, a close playoff race might turn on that margin. And while the Cubs might have left runs on the table, this actually probably isn’t a case where the manager — in this case, Joe Maddon — is actually to blame. Finding a leadoff hitter for the Cubs has proven to be a difficult proposition. Consider how the team performed last season by batting-order spot.

Kris Bryant mostly batted second, Anthony Rizzo mostly batted third, followed by a mix of cleanup hitters including Willson Contreras, Rizzo, Ben Zobrist, and a few others. Everywhere else, the Cubs were mostly average, especially if one regards the eighth and ninth spots as one given Maddon’s habit of sometimes batting the pitcher eighth.

Such a disparity between the leadoff spot and hitters two through four is actually pretty common. MLB teams recorded a collective 99 wRC+ out of the leadoff spot last year while producing a 112 wRC+ in the next three spots. If suboptimal, it’s also not unusual. A year ago, we were discussing a new type of leadoff hitter in the Kyle Schwarber mold, but it didn’t really hold. It especially didn’t hold for Schwarber, who started slowly.

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The Braves and Cubs played a game on Saturday that offered some of the best elements in baseball, including a collection of great young players and an amazing comeback. It also possessed some of the game’s worst possible qualities, including awful weather and incredibly sloppy play likely caused by that same bad weather.

In the end, we saw the Braves jump out to a 10-2 lead and feature a 99.4% chance of winning the game as late as the seventh inning. Despite adding a few runs, the Cubs’ win probability was still just 2.0% in the eighth after Efren Navarro whiffed to record the inning’s second out. Nine two-out runs later, Chicago’s probability of losing was just 2.6%.

Here’s the win probability chart from the game (from this box score):

For five full innings in the middle of the Saturday’s contest, things appeared to be over. Before we get to the craziness of the eighth, however let’s talk a little about the weather. Cubs manager Joe Maddon did not believe the game should have been played and then added his perspective.

“I thought the 2008 World Series game I participated in was the worst. It just got surpassed,” Maddon said. “This is not baseball weather. The elements were horrific to play baseball in. That is the worst elements I ever participated in in a baseball game. Ever.”

Maddon has certainly been around for a while, so his comments carry some weight. His represents merely one opinion, though. What about the players? What about Peter Moylan, for example?

“I’ve been playing since 2006 and never seen anything like that,” said veteran Peter Moylan, the last of the relievers in the inning and the one who threw the wild pitch that let in a run. “We’ve been rained out and been snowed out, but we’ve never had to play through (expletive) like that.”

So, not a big fan. How about Freddie Freeman?

“I don’t understand it one bit. It was the worst game I’ve ever been part of weather-wise.”

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the third installment of this series, we’ll hear from four pitchers — Anthony Bass, Matt Andriese, and Bobby Poyner — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Anthony Bass (Cubs) on His Splitter

“I learned a split from my friend Matt Shoemaker, who is with the Angels. That’s his out pitch. I picked it up from him, and then when I was overseas in Japan [in 2016], I watched the way they threw their splits and started incorporating that into the way I use mine. It’s started becoming a swing-and-miss pitch for me.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, a slider or split-finger fastball in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. As the quality of competition improves, a pitcher frequently needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the first installment of this series, we’ll hear from Jeff Hoffman, T.J. McFarland, and Drew Smyly on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

——

Jeff Hoffman (Rockies) on His Slider

“The one pitch in my repertoire that I haven’t thrown my whole life is my slider. I picked that up in college. It actually started as a cutter, but I couldn’t really keep it small, like a cutter, so it turned into a slider. I’ve kind of just hung with it through the years, embracing it as a slider.

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Brendan Rodgers is living up to his billing. Drafted third overall by the Colorado Rockies in 2015 out of a Florida high school, the smooth-swinging shortstop slashed .336/.373/.567 between high-A Lancaster and Double-A Hartford last year. His calling-card bat speed on full display, he crashed 18 home runs in 400 plate appearances.

Rodgers was seemingly born to hit. He’s worked hard to hone his craft, but at the same time, letting his natural talent shine through is his M.O..

“I keep hitting as simple as possible,” explained the talented 21-year-old. “Body movement, stride, how my hands work… everything. I keep all it to a minimum. I try to not make the game harder than it is.”

Mechanically, Rodgers sticks with what he was taught “when he was younger.” He told me that the Rockies haven’t suggested any notable tweaks, and that for him “it’s all about being on time and in rhythm.”

He doesn’t have a leg kick — “just a little stride” — although he did have one back in his formative years. Wanting to feel more balanced, he “shut that down and spread out a little bit,” which he feels helps him stay in his legs better. Approach-wise, he attacks the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Baseball Systems Software Engineer

Location: Chicago, IL

Description:
This role will primarily focus on the development and maintenance of the Cubs internal baseball information system, including creating web interfaces and web tools for the user interface; building ETL processes; maintaining back-end databases; and troubleshooting data sources issues as needed.

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• Assist in the design and implementation of web interfaces for the Baseball Ops information system
• Develop and maintain ETL processes for loading, processing and quality-checking new data sources
• Identify, diagnose and resolve data quality issues
• Build and/or support mobile-friendly user interfaces and experiences
• Build and/or support web services and business-layer applications that speak to both back-end databases and front-end interfaces
• Provide development support and guidance to Baseball Operations power users and general support to all Baseball Operations front-office and field personnel, as needed
• Examine, and where appropriate, prototype new technologies in the pursuit of creating competitive advantages through software, applications and tools
• Partner with Data Architects and Infrastructure/Operations resources on the Information Technology team to ensure secure, scalable and high-performing applications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or Related Quantitative Subjects
• Expertise with modern database technologies and SQL
• Expertise in Python, Java or C#
• Experience with Javascript
• Experience with front-end Javascript frameworks like ReactJS, Angular or Vue
• Experience with HTML/CSS
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Working knowledge of advanced baseball statistics and sabermetric concepts

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• Experience with the R programming language
• Experience with Pandas, NumPy and SciPy Python Libraries
• Experience working in a Linux environment
• Experience building web or native applications for mobile devices
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Ronald Acuna is a very, very good prospect. As a 19-year-old last season, he played his way to Triple-A and recorded one of the top adjusted batting lines across the entire level. According to ZiPS, he currently projects as the fourth-best position player on the Atlanta Braves. By Steamer, he’s sixth best. Both systems regard him as the organization’s second-best outfielder.

For all this, however, Ronald Acuna will probably not appear on the Braves’ Opening Day roster.

If he doesn’t, it’s possible that Atlanta will provide a legitimate baseball reason. Given the scarcity of 20-year-olds in the majors, choosing not to roster one typically doesn’t require an elaborate explanation. There were no 20-year-old qualifiers last year, for example, or the year before that or the year before that.

But Acuna is also pretty special and, as noted, already one of the best players on his own team. If Atlanta chooses to break camp without him, it’s likely due to another reason — namely, to manipulate his service time.

Because 172 days represents one big-league season of service time, a team can leave a player in the minors until he’s capable of accruing only 170 days, thus buying the club an extra year of control. If they leave Acuna at Triple-A, the Braves will hardly be the first club to do so. The Cubs did it with Kris Bryant, the Yankees appear likely to do it with Gleyber Torres. None of this is new.

What I’d like to consider here, though, is a legal argument that might compel clubs to include these players on their Opening Day rosters.

A couple of years ago, Patrick Kessock wrote an excellent article for the Boston College Law Review in which he argued that service-time manipulation was probably a violation of the CBA. The basis of his argument was that, by keeping a player in the minor leagues for the purpose of gaining an extra year of control, the team was violating what is called the “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.” So: what is this covenant? And, more importantly, is Kessock right?

The “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing” is a legal doctrine governing contracts. In a case called United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., the United States Supreme Court held that a collective bargaining agreement is “more than a contract.” But we also know from a Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals case called United Steelworkers of America, etc. v. New Park Mining Co (yes, the Steelworkers have a lot of lawsuits) that “the covenant of good faith and fair dealings which must inhere in every collective bargaining contract if it is to serve its institutional purposes.”  That’s just a fancy way of saying that the covenant of good faith and fair dealing is a part of CBAs, too.

So having established that this doctrine applies, what does it mean? You’ll remember from a previous post that we talked about Restatements, books which explain the majority rules in certain areas of the law. If we look in Section 205 of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, we find this: “Every contract imposes upon each party a duty of good faith and fair dealing in its performance and its enforcement.” And each Restatement has what are called “comments,” which are really explanations and examples of what the rule means. The comments to Section 205 are pretty long, so I won’t reproduce them here, but they do provide a pretty useful definition, as follows:

“Good faith performance or enforcement of a contract emphasizes faithfulness to an agreed common purpose and consistency with the justified expectations of the other party; it excludes a variety of types of conduct characterized as involving “bad faith” because they violate community standards of decency, fairness or reasonableness.”

It’s the “justified expectations” language on which Kessock hangs his hat. Teams, after all, are supposed to compete for championships. Kessock argues that, therefore, “[t]he MLBPA can assert that its reasonable expectation is that MLB clubs will assign players to the major league roster once club executives believe that players have reached full minor league development and can help the
team compete for a championship.”  But that might not be not so clear-cut. After all, it’s also a justifiable expectation that teams are also supposed to try to win multiple championships. Therefore, gaining that extra year of control over a good player is reasonably geared more towards that goal.

But I still think Kessock is on to something here, and there might be another way to argue this using the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Remember that minor-league players aren’t members of the MLBPA until they get called up. And that means that, by keeping a player in the minor leagues, a team is deliberately postponing a player from becoming a member of the union for the club’s own benefit. And that (arguably) could be regarded as bad faith.

It seems to me that a viable argument can be made that it is unfair to postpone a player’s entry into the union solely for a team’s pecuniary gain. Article II of the CBA states that “[t]he Clubs recognize the [MLBPA] as the sole and exclusive collective bargaining agent for all Major League Players, and individuals who may become Major League Players during the term of this Agreement, with regard to all terms and conditions of employment” (emphasis mine). I think the MLBPA could argue, based on Article II, that its justified expectations are that MLB won’t attempt to circumvent players’ pecuniary gain by keeping them out of the union, because future major leaguers were an anticipated part of the CBA.

Now, there is an obvious counterargument: since future major leaguers were an anticipated part of the CBA, they should have reasonably expected MLB teams to do something which the CBA doesn’t expressly prohibit.  And even if a player could make the argument work from a legal perspective, there are a whole host of practical problems to solve. After all, I’ve never seen a prospect without any flaws at all (especially pitchers), so proving a prospect is being kept in the minor leagues solely for service time reasons is a tall order. Even Ronald Acuna struck out in over 30% of his plate appearances in A-ball last year, providing a plausible path for the Braves to argue he needed more seasoning in the minors. Also, we’re talking here about the player filing a grievance, not a lawsuit. Grievances take a long time to resolve: Kris Bryant, who filed one in 2015 for service-time manipulation by the Cubs, was still waiting for a resolution two years later.

But, with all that said, I do think that Kessock is right: there’s at least a plausible argument to be made that service-time manipulation violates the spirit of the CBA, if not its letter. And the spirit of the CBA is what the covenant of good faith and fair dealing is designed to protect.

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Orioles’ Andrew Cashner signing, recent “super-teams” that missed the playoffs, and Marcus Stroman’s arbitration tweets, then preview the 2018 Cubs (16:27) with The Athletic Chicago’s Sahadev Sharma, and the 2018 Padres (46:43) with The Athletic San Diego’s Dennis Lin.

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