Kris Bryant Loses Grievance as Trade Rumors Begin Anew
In the spring of 2015, Kris Bryant was coming off a historic minor league season. Splitting the year between Double- and Triple-A, Bryant hit .325/.438/.661 with 43 homers and a 192 wRC+. He then hit .425/.477/1.175 in spring training. But he didn’t make the Cubs’ Opening Day roster. Mike Olt, who had also spent some time in Triple-A in 2014, hit a good .302/.348/.545 in Iowa before posting an ugly .160/.248/.356 line in half a season with the Cubs; he started at third base ahead of Bryant. Olt was hit on his wrist by a pitch on Saturday, April 11, and didn’t start any games the next week. On April 17, with 171 days left in the season (exactly one day short of the 172 Bryant would need for a full year of service time), Olt hit the Disabled List with a hairline fracture and Bryant made his debut.
Due to the obvious attempt by the Cubs to manipulate his service time, ensuring he would not reach free agency until after the 2021 season, Bryant filed a grievance to recoup that lost day. According to Jeff Passan, Bryant has lost that grievance and will not become a free agent at the end of this season, having instead to wait an additional year. The ruling will be made public in a week, per Passan. While we don’t yet know the arbitrator’s exact reasoning, it’s hard not to see a decision in the Cubs’ favor as much else than a tacit approval of baseball teams keeping otherwise ready players in the minors for a few weeks at the beginning of the season in order to gain another year of team control. Bryant was the ideal player to file a grievance for service time manipulation, given his track record in the minors, his great spring, and lack of decent options ahead of him on the depth chart. If he can’t win, then who can?
The arbitrator may well have warned teams that while there was no real precedent to award Bryant his lost day, future cases might be decided differently; we’ll have to wait for the decision to be made public to know for sure. But even if that’s the case, the practical effect of such a decision is minimal given that the current CBA expires at the end of the 2021 season. The decision is a reminder that while service time manipulation is against the spirit of the CBA, proving such violations is extremely difficult. What’s more, the changes needed to curb the practice will have to be far more explicit in the next CBA. Service time manipulation like Bryant’s aren’t especially common and affect only a handful of players every year. But those it does effect tend to be among the game’s best young players, kept in the minors for reasons that have nothing to so with their ability. And the practice represents part of a larger issue involving the time it takes to get to free agency and the pay players receive before they get there.
The financial incentives for teams to engage in service time manipulation are obvious. Including playoffs, Bryant has averaged 186 games per full year of service time due to being held down for two weeks at the beginning of his career. Kris Bryant’s trade value is now higher with two seasons of team control remaining rather than one, and even at a salary potentially above $25 million in 2021, Bryant is still a bargain compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars he would receive in free agency. Every year of his prime a player spends under team control significantly reduces the amount of money that player could gain on the open market.
Service time manipulation is the result of a system that underpays players for their first six (or in Bryant’s case, nearly seven) seasons. A shorter path to free agency and greater pay for players under team control would lessen the incentives teams have to engage in this disappointing behavior. Those are issues that must be addressed through the next CBA, as relying on a convoluted grievance system, in which an arbitrator attempts to divine a team’s intent, appears to be insufficient to protect players. (Playoff positioning also seems to be an insufficiently compelling force in the players’ favor. The 2015 Cubs made the postseason, but as the second Wild Card, finishing three games out of their division; they were dispatched by the Mets in the NLCS. One wonders what a few more October home games or a more well-rested Jake Arrieta might have yielded.) I’ve proposed one solution previously with regard to this issue, but there are certainly many options out there.
Some teams have recently eschewed the practice. Last season, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Pete Alonso both made their respective Opening Day rosters, perhaps because their teams wanted to avoid grievances of their own, perhaps because they just wanted to win some baseball games. But the Blue Jays were clear about their intent to keep Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the minors before he went down with an injury; Nick Senzel’s agent called his client’s demotion to Triple-A “a simply egregious case of service-time manipulation.” And while a desire to avoid a years-long grievance may have motivated the White Sox to offer Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert extensions in lieu of a brief and unnecessary stay in Charlotte, the team was able to secure options for some of those players free agent years likely because of the specter of service time manipulation, and the diminished bargaining position Jiménez and Robert occupied as a result.
As for what this means for Bryant and the Cubs, Chicago has been looking to cut payroll after missing the playoffs in 2019. Including their competitive tax bill, the team spent around $250 million on the roster last season. This season, even with a very small projected tax, the Cubs have already cut payroll by $35 million. Trading Bryant would save them even more money as they start their new team-owned television network. In looking to cut payroll, the team likely doesn’t want to trade Javier Báez, and Bryant is the only high-salaried player who possesses any real value in trade.
Given Bryant’s ability to play third base and the outfield, the Cubs should find a lot of suitors. The Braves couldn’t retain Josh Donaldson. The Nationals let Anthony Rendon go. The Rangers still need a lot of help. If the Padres are in on Mookie Betts, they might as well make a call on Bryant. The Angels could get creative by taking on more than Bryant’s contract in exchange for Justin Upton. Maybe the Rockies and Cubs maneuver a third base swap of some kind. The Cubs could use some young pitching as well as a center fielder and, well, a third baseman. They might be able to make up some of Bryant’s lost production elsewhere, but if they do move him, it certainly looks like they are closing an otherwise open window of contention in favor of more money and minimal long-term baseball gain.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
You say: “Bryant is the only high-salaried player who possesses any real value in trade.” Where do you think Darvish stands? Would teams be willing to take Darvish and his contract based on his excellent 2nd half last year or is he still an underwater asset? Just curious.
I think you could make an argument that he’s similar to Ryu and Bumgarner in terms of his possible value going forward, but he also has a contract similar to Ryu and Bumgarner. They might be able to dump the contract on someone without getting much back.
He was an underwater asset the second he signed that contract just because of its length. His strong second half means that contract might not be a disaster, but there’s no way it has trade value at this point.
Disagree. As sadtrombone points out, Ryu just signed for 4/$80M and has a 2.8 fwar Steamer projection. Darvish has 4/$81M remaining and has a 3.8 fwar projection. Both are age 33, with Darvish 7 months older.
Talent is the scarce resource, not Surplus Value. The Quintana and Archer deals might be rich for Darvish given his age, but he can return more than Greinke did last year. The Cubs would have to take a bad contract back or send cash in the deal.
Most of the league should probably be willing to take Darvish for nothing. I would guess you could get something for him from somebody, just in that there are a lot of possibilities. It wouldn’t be a great deal of something.
I don’t know why they don’t trade Rizzo instead. While corner bats don’t have as much relative value, an All-Star corner bat still in his prime is still very valuable. He also doesn’t have any no-trade protection, and it’s much easier to place a 1B rather than a 3B with a decent stopgap pickup.
He just decided not to opt out. Cubs would have to pay down at least a little bit to get to market value.
Kris Bryant should announce that he will not re-sign with the Cubs when he is a FA. Also announce that he will not sign with any team trading for him. Prevent Cubs from getting value out of him.
Why? Doesn’t that just hurt him? If he truly wanted to prevent the Cubs from getting any value from him, he could just hold out and refuse to play, but that would be not smart for him, either.
This doesn’t make any sense. That would not stop the Cubs from getting value for him.
Teams aren’t going to trade for Bryant thinking about an extension, they are going to trade for him thinking they are getting an All-Star 3B for below market rate this year and next.
It’s pretty clear Bryant is going to go to free agency regardless at this point.
If service time manipulation depends on good faith dealings than so too does KB’s continued play. In the long run I’m sure it would be bad for him, but a lingering soft tissue injury, one that pops up in spring training and keeps him off the field throughout 2021 (despite his best efforts to rehab *wink*) would be just what the Cubs deserve
and that’d do wonders for his value in free agency.
As if a baseball player doesn’t want to play baseball.
Totally agree man. That would be fair
If you don’t believe you can win, then you make the best of the situation, and if the best of the situation is trading away everyone to make that next window open faster, then that’s what you do. I guess they think the writing is on the wall.
But it looks like they aren’t going to trade away everyone, just Bryant. Splitting the difference is the worst option.
Depends on what they get.
There are only a few teams that “can’t win” and the Cubs are far from that.
“Olt was hit on his wrist by a pitch on Saturday, April 11, and didn’t start any games the next week. On April 17, with 171 days left in the season (exactly one day short of the 172 Bryant would need for a full year of service time)…”
This is sort of misleading to prove a point. He didn’t start any games the next week, but Olt did play in them. In fact, he played the 14th. He did not play the 15th, there was an off day the 16th, and the Cubs made the DL move prior to the game on the 17th. That’s a fairly typical sequence of transactions when it comes to DL placements; teams typically don’t make moves on off days if they don’t have to.
Do I think the Cubs manipulated KB’s service time? Absolutely. Is it hard to prove? Absolutely. Using the above to justify the belief that the timing of their transactions proves manipulation is suspect, at best.
Craig’s St. Louis bias seeps into his articles at times.
The Cubs also went 5-3 (.625) in the short interval in which Mike Olt held down the fort at third base. People sometimes talk about those eight games as if they pulled the team down.
craig having genuinely solid baseball analysis and also being a clear hack who hates owners and the cubs no matter the rational cost is a real tough balancing act for people who are, you know, intellectually honest
Is it really suspect?
In the 4 games between Olt getting hit on the wrist and Bryant being called up the Cubs started Jonathan Herrera 3 times and Arsimendy Alcantara once. Herrera was a 30 YO journeyman who had played parts of 5 seasons with the Rockies and never managed even a .700 OPS with them. His career OPS+ at that point was 69. 2015 would be his last season in the majors and he played 24 games in the Mexican League over the next 2 years and hasn’t played since 2017 per FG. Alcantara was 23 and had hit well in the minors from 2012-2014 but had scuffled badly in half a season with the Cubs in 2014. He would make it to April 19th in 2015 before getting sent to the minors for the rest of the year where he scuffled badly. He played 86 games with the A’s and Reds in 2016-2017 while shuttling between various minor league levels with those 2 teams, then the Mexican League in 2018 and last year in the Mets’ system. Meanwhile, Bryant was sent down for whatever reason (work on his defense IIRC) and through April 11th had gone 4-12 with a HR, 2B, BB and a 1.024 OPS through 3 games.
Does anyone really think the Cubs were fielding their best team in April 2015 by starting Herrera or Alcantara? Choosing Olt over Bryant was service time manipulation. Starting Herrera and Alcantara over Bryant was blatant service time manipulation.
It’s absolutely suspect.
I don’t see what Herrera’s and Alcantara’s careers after 2015 have to do with this, considering the Cubs were bad in 2014 and were still largely seen as a year away in 2015. That’s still “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” territory, especially with Mendy.
As I said, I agree that they manipulated KB’s service time, but there’s really no definitive proof in my (and apparently the arbitrator’s) opinion.
As others have pointed out, the arbitrator made the decision required by the CBA and the fact that the Cubs didn’t blantantly come out and say “We’re sending Bryant to the minors so he’s still under club control in 2021” but said all the right things about “seasoning” or “work on defense” (I forget which one they used). Doesn’t make it any less service time manipulation.
I guess I disagree on what happened that last week and whether it means anything. Olt was at least a former top prospect who had put together some solid minor league numbers. He had flopped badly in his first go at the majors in 2014 but, you know, so did Mike Trout and dozens of other good/great players in their 1st shot. Sending Bryant down for him was at least defensible in some sense. But once he went down, there really is no defense for starting Herrera or Alcantara over Bryant. Neither was a prospect of note and had done nothing of note immediately before that either. I put their career info in there to show that not only were they not good then, they were not good later either.
I would also note that just looking at the 3B position is short sighted. The Cubs had no problem putting Bryant in the OF, even in 2015. In fact, he moved to CF for an inning in his 6th game on 4/22 and his 7th start in the majors on 4/23 was as the Cubs’ starting CF and he played the entire game there. If you look at the Cubs’ starters as a whole, he could have replaced Tommy LaStella (2 starts prior to Bryant’s call-up), Chric Coghlan (7 starts) , Alcantara (6 starts at 2B prior to the 1 at 3B), as well as Herrera (1 start at 2B along with 3 at 3B). Alcantara and Herrera I covered but this was pre-breakout LaStella. Coghlan had hit well in 2014 but not much the 4 years prior to that.
Not a very Rizzo thing to do, but a 60fv 3rd baseman with 7yrs control projected for 2 war next year should get it done, right? Nats get all the value concentrated in two years as window closes (is closed?) and Cubs get both an immediate cost controlled 2 war and someone who will be around when they go for it next time. Bryant is projected for 9 war over next two seasons at a cost of around $40m so maybe $40 mil excess value @9m/war. That’s less money than a 60fv, but close enough.
I’m with you on this one! But, the Nats just want to contend without spending a fortune it seems. Plus, we tend to only get value out of our first round draft picks most of the time. The rest of drafts do little to help us, so it would be a long rebuild when it happened. Granted the first round drafting has been amazing!
So a guy that’s starting on 4/11 gets hit be a pitch. There are 2 days off between that day and 4/17 and probable swelling. So in a matter of less than a week, the Cubs call up Bryant , not knowing just how 5e cutoff date will land on At That time. But, per the author, the Cubs “:an obvious attempt
to circumvent the arbitration clock occurred. What? That sentence which is an opinion taints the entire article. Out, deserved a shot a 3b. His Spring was good. Yeah, I get that teams could and did benefit from the Players Union Agreement, to say the Cubs “knew by one day” that now Bryant would not qualify is flat out wrong. This article is more about political opinion than real fact. No one argues Bryant’s plaudits. He was a great pick ( Thank you Astros). But, enough with the Bryant’s day 1 was manipulated stuff. It was an outcome of who was on the roster, when the injury happened and perhaps 3-4 days of X-ray and forecast and a review of all options available 6 days …. take away the day of the event and the day of player transaction, and 2 days off….I think the call-up was not a severe delay. Normal business. Back then the DL was 15 days, not less. Be sure in those days..
I’m a Cubs fan, so I’m happy for my team, but yes in fact, they did know the exact date. Its not like the Super 2 when its just a guess. It’s a set amount of time, and all they had to do was count the days on a calendar. The date was well known at the time. Everybody knew exactly what they were doing.
They knew the date. Bryant was dramatically, historically better than Olt. They knew this and wanted Bryant longer
As would you, if you were Theo Epstein and had a mechanism that allowed you to keep a historically valuable player as an asset even longer.
Kris Bryant had valuable information on many Cubs elites, which is why they held him
I cant even make an Epstein joke
The Bryant service time issue was discussed ad nauseam for the entirety of Spring Training 2015 – there were many, many articles written about it and what the Cubs were going to do. It was probably literally the most-discussed baseball story of the moment. Everyone knew what was going on, everyone knew the dates, everyone knew Bryant was going to be up the instant there were only 171 service days left on the clock.
Ah, sure Bryant was better than Olt from the get-go, but after practicing all winter and expelling at spring training, he still needed another 11 days in the minors to work on his defense, right?
There is a difference between the Super Two arbitration date (where a player is granted a 4th year of salary arbitration), which is a floating date based on a percentage of players that would be eligible, and the free agency date, which requires a player to have logged 6 full years service time. That 172-day line is where a player accumulates a full year of service time.
So the man starts on November 4th. Between this date and 4/17 there are two days and possible swelling. So, in less than a week, the cubs, called Briant, did not know at that time how many days of crossing the border would be in the field. But from the author, the Cubs – “: an obvious attempt
Ignore Judge Watch. Something? It is a sentence that contradicts the whole article. And he deserved the ball in 3B. Spring is good. Yes, I have a team and they benefit from the covenant alliance to say that the kids – “know one day” that Briant won’t be called wrong now. This article is about a political point of view, not a fact. Nobody claims that Bryant is rich. That’s a great option (thanks, Astros). But enough with Brian on one, everything is manipulated. This is the result of those in this belt, when an injury occurs and maybe 3-4 days of Ks-Rai and a forecast and review of all the options available in 6 days … To have an event date and negotiation day in the player. and two more days …. i don’t think the call was seriously discussed. Normal operation. Then DL is 15 days, no less. Be safe this time …
What? Your comment reads as if it were translated from Serbian to Vietnamese to French to English. It makes no sense at all. How can it possibly have 5 thumbs as of this writing?
Was Bryant sent down after Olt came off the DL?
There is value in this decision. It is now clear to all involved that neither MLB, nor the teams, nor the arbitrators are acting in good faith. That the conclusion matters more than the facts. That the process is a sham, a façade draped over the real machinery of power.
P.S. I still remember when MLB fired Shyam Das (the supposedly “independent” arbitrator) because he wasn’t finding in their favor often enough.
This. The players need to push for something like 30 or 60 days equaling a year of service so that teams need to wait until August to get an extra year.
Yeah, i think it’s an easy fix. Lower the round up number for a full season to the point that any team hoping to contend isn’t going to bother toying with it. Some basement dwellers might wait until July or August to promote a finished product still I guess.
No, if players really wanted to stop it cold, they would push for an independent review board that convened at the end of each season to review all service time manipulation complaints for that season. The board would be empowered and encouraged to grant to a maximum of three years of service time to a player for examples of service time manipulation. The first time a team lost three years of control of a young Mookie Betts level player would be the last time any team attempted any service time shenanigans.
No matter where they put the deadline, teams will manipulate it for the borderline cases. In this case, it would just affect the players who deserve to get called up in July but will have to wait until August instead of the early season call-ups. Contending teams might be less willing to do so in that case, but non-contenders certainly will, and there are more and more non-contenders the deeper into the season you get.
There are a lot of ways to change it. They can reduce the number of years, reduce the amount of time that constitutes a “year,” calculate it by total days on the roster instead of years, pay young players more to reduce the financial gap that the teams are exploiting, or count time on the 40 man roster instead of the 25. Teams are forced to put guys on the 40 man or expose them to Rule 5 and obviously the Cubs weren’t going to expose Bryant to rule 5. You could even make players eligible for Rule 5 earlier to discourage manipulating that promotion. There are probably others I am not thinking of.
One thing I know for sure though: whatever system they come up with, teams will seek ways to manipulate it.
Most of those ideas are infeasible due to the havoc they would wreck on small market finances or because teams will just manipulate service time around the new deadline instead.
The one thing that might work is your 40-man roster service time idea, as you could set the service time deadline to the same deadline needed to make players ineligible for the Rule 5 draft, forcing teams to either give their prospects an extra year of service time of expose them to the Rule 5 draft. Of course, the years under team control and arbitration eligibility would have to be pushed back an extra year or two to account for the time prospects generally spend in the Minor Leagues while on the 40-man roster. There could still be some issues such as prospects on the 40-man roster being rushed to the Majors before they’re, but this is the first decently reasonable solution that I’ve seen on the issue.
That’s always been my preferred fix as well. Make a player’s first year of service time kick in after 70 or 80 days or some such. If the 2015 Cubs knew they weren’t going to get Bryant until August if they wanted to mess with his service time, he would have been up in late 2014 like he should have been.
For the first year in particular, you could have it coincide with whatever season the player’s rookie eligibility expires, using the well-established standards for ROY voting.
“That the process is a sham, a façade draped over the real machinery of power.”
Or, rather than the overly dramatic interpretation, it just means that the players union screwed the pooch on rolling the tape forward on the implications of the service time rules in the last CBA, and their young star players are paying the penalty. It was *clearly* service time manipulation, but, to me, that’s secondary to the larger question of: is that against the rules in the first place. If not, you can pound the table about good faith and ‘spirit’ all you want, but that doesn’t mean you get what you want.
This x1000. The PA knew exactly what they were giving up and exactly how it would be used. They knew exactly from the getgo. They traded it for more $$$ for veteran players.
Really, against the “spirit” of the rule?? What in the world law school did you go to?
I don’t think it’s that clear cut. There are unintended consequences to every deal/contract/legal settlement in the world. Often, the consequences aren’t obvious until the deal actually goes into effect and everyone’s incentivized to discover them.
What law school did I go to? Harvard. Swing and a miss by you!
He literally asked… You don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to already. I learned that in law school.
Avoiding asking questions to which you don’t know the answers is a pretty piss-poor way of learning anything.
Why are you blaming the last CBA? The service time rules have been in place for decades, and there have always been manipulation cases. We’ve just had a number of high profile cases more recently with one of those cases filing a grievance.
There’s lots of pretty good research from a bunch of different disciplines on how arbitration screws in the individual employee/smaller firm. It doesn’t surprise me that the players’ union hadn’t read up on this literature, I think it was still pretty new when the CBA was being negotiated. The fact that the mechanisms weren’t enough, and that the MLB fired Das, is what’s truly crazy to me.
It’s too bad American sports largely ignore the CAS, because this is the kind of situation the CAS is designed for.
The arbiters job is to rule based on the verbiage of the CBA. The fact is this, the CBA was vague and didn’t define manipulation explicitly; this ambiguity practically forces the arbiter to rule with the team and accept any explanation provided by the club. Intent cannot be proven without some exact guidelines and requirements placed in the CBA. While the arbiter would agree with you personally that they manipulated the service time, they are forced to rule in favor of the team based on the ambiguity within the CBA. Here’s the key ruling that likely drives teams ability to not act in good faith, and exploit the rule that was in fact in place:
AMBIGUITY – There is no legal enforcement of an agreement if the parties use a key term within the contract that can be open to at least two interpretations.
Basically, readiness has multiple interpretations and the arbiter is forced to accept the reason given to them by the team, due to the verbiage within the CBA Being poor.
There’s a difference between salary and value and as such, Willson Contreras has great value. I daresay enough to where a team would be willing to give cash back or eat a high contract if paired with Willson.
“High paid” might be the qualifier that puts Contrerars ineligible at $7M.
I’d argue that Hendricks with $55M/4 years is significantly below market price as well.
One could argue that the window of opportunity has already closed, especially when contrasting the Cubs’ relative inaction during this offseason to what teams like the Reds have done within the division. A lot of players have to hit their higher-percentile projections for the team to win this division, and combined with the dearth of talent in the minors, maybe resetting one year early vs. one year late is the better play.
This site projects them narrowly to be the best team in the division. I dunno how you can say that.
I’m a Cubs fan and I had faith in them the last two years and it has not been rewarded. The same underperforming core is now a year older and the only change has been to replace a HOF manager with a zero experience manager.
They won 95 games two years ago and were tied for the best record in the NL. They were better than they were in 2017.
The idea that the Cubs have been disappointing for two years running has become the accepted narrative and it’s absurd.
They could easily go 89 wins and take that division. You really think the brewers, reds, or cardinals are , right now, going to be able to dominate? Cubs have at least 3 serviceable pitchers and all-star talent all over the infield.
“Service time manipulation” looks a lot like “optimized decision making” to me. I simply don’t buy the argument in Sheryl’s article one bit. Sure, maybe players expect and want teams to act differently, but saying an action violated the ‘spirit’ of the contract, and saying said action is an actionable breach of contract are two hugely different propositions. A small portion of players got shafted on this – doesn’t mean teams are doing anything wrong in a legal sense. Heck, I don’t think it’s even wrong morally – do you not want your GM to optimize the team for success (within the rules of course)? Shouldn’t MLB also want that? And if you don’t like the rules, negotiate for different ones!
In short, Bryant was never going to win this and I don’t think an $18 million player claiming he’s been victimized is a particularly good look.
“Heck, I don’t think it’s even wrong morally – do you not want your GM to optimize the team for success (within the rules of course)? Shouldn’t MLB also want that?”
See, this is the kind of thinking that I find pernicious. The obvious assumption is that the owners’ and fans’ interests are perfectly congruent, and diametrically opposed to those of the players. Why would we ever assume that the interests of the owners and fans are aligned, particularly given the price-gouging and penny-pinching they so routinely engage in, to the detriment of the sport and the in-stadium experience? Why would we assume that the interests of the players and the fans are opposed, given that we pay money and spend our time (the only truly non-renewable resource) watching the games?
Somehow so many fans ended up deciding that they are aligned with the ownership class, rather than the player class. (One can fruitfully speculate on the reasons for this.)
Given that MLB owners have been granted monopoly control over these treasured civic institutions, we must insist that they run the teams with something other than the maximization of financial extraction or WAR/$ or whatever. We would like them to invest the ludicrous levels of profit they are extracting from theseonopoly institutions back into our favorite players, into the on-field product, into the stadium experience, and into the civic community in which these are situated.
The type of mind that could celebrate when a billionaire manages to win a battle against the best interests of an amazing baseball player is wholly alien to me.
Found the Bernie Bro. You literally spoke around everything the previous post said cuz class warfare.
Dude, this is their site. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It being their site.
Hell yeah, Bernie rocks 🙂
“One can fruitfully speculate on the reasons for this.”
That’s a rather loaded statement, with obviously intended political import, but it’s really not that complicated: almost ALL fans identify with the interests of the *franchise* (not ownership per se, ask a Mets fan how they feel about the Wilpons) because, as the common cliche goes, we basically root for laundry. Players come, players go. An Edgar Martinez, a Cal Ripken, Derek Jeter, Ryan Zimmerman or Stephen Strasburg who play their entire career with one team and become part of that team’s identity? That is extremely rare in the modern era, and getting even rarer. But for fans, identity *with the team* is something that stays forever. So yes, fans are going to want to make sure that their great players stay around for as long as possible.
The fact that these players, even when they’re getting shafted like Bryant obviously was by the Cubs, are still (even in the worst case scenario) making millions upon millions more than most fans will ever see in their lives certainly doesn’t hurt either. Labor/management dynamics break down completely for the average joe when the money involved gets into bickering about astronomical sums that would immediately solve nearly every financial problem in that average joe’s life.
Man, it’s like some people just don’t understand basic human nature and psychology. It takes rigid ideology to drain that kind of empathy out of you.
Well said Oddball Herrera
It is well said if the speaker intends to declare himself a sociopath who willfully discounts the concept of right and wrong in human behavior.
Seems to me Craig, that this in fact does not constitute “service time manipulation ” given the Cubs operated within the parameters set forth by the CBA, along with an actual judge ruling in the Cubs favor. If that’s not conclusive, I’m not sure what is.
If the is a “spirit” of the CBA, it’s got to be some sense of good-faith conduct, and that was clearly not applied in Bryant’s case…but, it was not enough for the arbitrator. In a way, that’s helpful, in that it clarifies that the CBA needs to be changed on this point. I’d suggest a few tweaks. If a first year player reaches a qualifying season in PA, 50 appearances or 120 IP pitched, that’s a full season, regardless of when he’s added to the Major League roster. Further, unless he’s signed an extension, he gets to elect free agency after his age 30 year, again, regardless of service time. Neither are those sea changes, but they make the process a little fairer. It’s absurd seeing Donaldson go through free agency the first time at age 34.
In that case, teams will just bench or sparingly play the borderline players during the last week or two of the season to keep them from reaching those milestones unless they’re still fighting for a playoff spot. They already do this sometimes where vesting options are concerned.
Well, I’m minus two so far. I’m just looking for possibilities, because I think the system needs tweaking. I don’t think a competitive team would sit an emergent star if they were in the middle of a playoff race. Usually, they cut back on playing time when vesting options are involved when the player is having a poor year–it might be harder to bench either success or actual needs. No solution is going to work everywhere.
I’ve been going back and forth in my head about which is worse for the player – the Cubs/Bryant type of service time manipulation, or the insanely team friendly contract extensions that the Braves coaxed out of Albies and Acuna.
I think Albies is the all-time winner on that one, and will literally never be topped.
At least most other early career extension have literally topped Albies’s in how much money they get. You shouldn’t be using “literally” here with “topped” to refer to a minimized record. It’s probably not even the literal record, anyway.
Now if you want to argue that it’s the most team-friendly extension ever signed and won’t ever be surpassed in that manner, then I might agree, but even then you shouldn’t use the word “literally,” because Albies’s personal friendships with his teammates have nothing to do with the matter.
“Literally” is literally modifying “never” in the previous post. If you’re going to literally be pedantic, get gud m8.
He’s literally stating that he literally believes that contract will literally never be surpassed in how offensive he finds it. Using literally in an opinion statement is fine (e.g. “this is literally the dumbest post I’ve ever read”) but risky because sometimes literal facts can prove an opinion to be literally wrong. Anyway, you literally supported his point when you said you might agree with him.
I’m literally going to sleep now.
You’ve literally given me a headache. But it’s literally smaller than the one Lanidrac gave me.
What’s worse for the player is the Cubs/Bryant type of service time manipulation. There the player has no power.
The insanely team friendly contract extensions have to at be agreed upon with the players. Albies and Acuna didn’t have to make those deals, and may have done it against advice, but at least they had the choice. If a team decides to screw a player with service time manipulation, there’s really nothing the player can do.
Read the contract Craig. Geez.
Do I think the Cubs manipulated Bryant’s service time? Yeah, probably. Is it actionable? Probably not. The CBA is absolute; it says six years, not a day less. The arbitrator really could not rule in Bryant’s favor; to do so would have obliterated the plain language of the CBA and made free agency subject to an arbitrator’s subjective and non-measurable opinion of how “nice” a team was to a player. That sort of thing might very well have led to a lockout and a lawsuit. Baseball doesn’t need that.
That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be a remedy in the next CBA. If I were Tony Clark, I’d be working on some kind of proposal in which players who end a season with more than five years of service, but less than six, can be eligible for some kind of restricted free agency depending on how many days of service they have above five years. They might be able to get the owners to consider this if they dangle some kind of offsetting proposal, like maybe ceilings on arb salaries, or a reduction of service time accrual for players who are on the IL for an extended period of time.
It doesn’t relate to free agency, but such players do already get partially re-compensated, as that’s the exact reason the Super Two rule exists.
As I’ve said before, the current pay scale system, while unfair, is completely necessary in order to maintain competitive balance. You think small markets have it hard now? How will they compete when they can’t even afford to keep the young stars they drafted and developed for a reasonable amount of time? At least a third of MLB teams will be forced to act like the Rays, trading away almost all of their young stars before they get too expensive for them to pay.
Since the system itself can’t be overhauled, there’s no easy solution to this specific problem. No matter where you put the deadline, teams are going to manipulate the service time of whichever players wind up as the borderline cases, and MLB can never force teams to make certain roster decisions as long as they follow the rules.
What if a portion of revenue sharing funds were allocated to extending a team’s own players which have not yet reached free agency? Make so that the fund can be carried over for X amount of years and if it used in that time frame it is must be redistributed among those players on the 40 man roster, or something similar.
How does balance compare in the Premier League?
In other words, change is hard, so let’s just accept the crappy system we have now.
Why should the costs of competitive balance be borne by young players? There are alternate ways for competitive balance (which really isn’t very competitive currently).
1. Rich teams could subsidize the “poor” teams.
2. MLB could put one or more teams in the greater NYC area, reducing the financial advantage of the teams in NYC.
3. MLB could use a portion of the revenues that they receive to subsidize the salaries of pre-free agent players on teams in smaller metropolitan areas before dispersing the moneys to the teams.
But, it is cheaper for MLB and especially the high revenue teams to force young players to subsidize “competitive balance”.
Bryant will earn $18,6M this year and turned down a $200M offer. He could get $25M next year. Although this decision enables management to cheat players, it is hard to find a “loser” among Bryant and management. In fact, either way the decision went, the likely loser is the fan base, which either pays for the increasingly beyond-exorbitant profits of ownership and salaries for players and has to prepare for a system in which many teams can’t or won’t sign hometown favorites while also seeking other good players to become competitive. The facts of Bryant’s compensation as the “loser” in this process shows that too much money from regular people is being transferred to players and management.
Arbitrator got this one right!
A possible solution would be to have hard ceilings and floors on team compensation and more revenue sharing.
Theo simply followed the rules like so many others. With all the comments you would think he committed a criminal act or something.