Ben and Sam discuss why teams don’t pay a premium for elite free agents and why players who switch positions might not always do so smoothly.
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Last night, the Jays avoided arbitration with Josh Donaldson, agreeing to a two year deal that gives him nearly $29 million in guaranteed income, and helps the team avoid a second huge raise next year if Donaldson has another great year. The team had publicly stated their desire to get Donaldson locked up long-term, but as a Super Two coming off an MVP season, Donaldson had plenty of leverage to get paid while still retaining his ability to hit free agency after the 2018 season. The team can still revisit a longer deal with Donaldson if they wish, but most likely, this two year deal signifies that he’s not looking to sell any of his free agent years at prices the Blue Jays are currently willing to pay.
So, now, with that piece of business out of the way, the Blue Jays focus can turn towards a more pressing contract issue: what to do with star outfielder Jose Bautista. The face of the franchise, Bautista is in the final year of his contract, and will likely be the best hitter on the market next winter if the Blue Jays can’t sign him to an extension this spring. Both sides have publicly stated an interest in getting a deal done, though with the Jays bringing in Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins from Cleveland to run their baseball operations department, there’s some expectation that the club will operate a bit more conservatively, and that could limit their willingness to pay Bautista the kind of money that would convince him to forego free agency.
On the other hand, there’s clearly a lot of sentiment towards just giving Joey Bats whatever he wants, and the team will face significant negative backlash if they let Bautista leave, at least in the short-term. So even with some expected belt-tightening, let’s see if we can construct an extension that both sides would be happy with.
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: hi all! we’ll get this thing started shortly after noon EST
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| 11:50 |
: soundtrack: The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
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| 12:07 |
: let’s begin!@
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| 12:07 |
: After reading your Gallardo article, would you say, as of now, the White Sox are the most star-and-scrub team in baseball?
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| 12:07 |
: them or the Angels
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| 12:08 |
: Is this where we talk about the big Leafs/Sens deal???
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The Oakland A’s had a nightmarish season in 2015. They had the biggest difference in Base Runs vs. actual record out of any team since 2002. Their bullpen had historically-bad timing. And, finally, their defensive issues were on display most of the year, especially in the early stages of the season when they were on pace for a record-breaking number of errors. The infield was mostly to blame for the last problem, with Brett Lawrie and Marcus Semien routinely exhibiting the sort of lapses that have mostly been excised from players by the time they make it to the majors. It was ugly, and it was a part of why the A’s buried themselves in a hole in the AL West standings before the season was even a third of the way through.
Through May 21st of 2015, the A’s were on pace 169 errors, which would have been the most since the year 2000 by a fairly wide margin. Here’s a graphic from the previously-linked post from May 22nd of last season that shows the error gulf we were witnessing:
The A’s finished with only 126 errors, missing out on a particularly ignominious title. However, much of the defensive blame fell squarely on Semien during the early parts of the season, and for good reason: at the time of the May post, he had accounted for 16 of Oakland’s fielding and throwing errors. By the end of May, some were claiming that the A’s might not be able to afford to keep his glove at shortstop, despite his strong production at the plate. But the team did something about it: they hired Ron Washington to tutor the young shortstop on defense, and he started doing so on May 22nd. They got right to work, with Semien doing throwing mechanics drills, and often fielding ground balls with a plank-like glove to soften his hands:
His pregame fielding routine begins by taking grounders with a “flat glove.” Rather than a soft pocket, it has a flat surface, which forces a player to field the ball with soft hands. Semien fields balls to his left, then his right with the flat glove. Only after that does he slip on his regular glove.
Let’s check in on the latest in Yovani Gallardo rumors:
It took a while for any Gallardo talks to surface, but when they did, it was the Orioles, Rockies, and Astros at the forefront. Everyone agreed: those three were the lead suitors.
But the thought of a non-contending Rockies team forfeiting a draft pick for a pitcher entering his age-30 season seemed a bit peculiar, and then GM Jeff Bridich came out and said the talks were “overblown,” so people scratched the Rockies off the list. The Astros went and signed Doug Fister, and people scratched the Astros off the list. So on January 28, just the Orioles were left. On February 4, just the Orioles were left. And on February 7… just the Orioles were left.
Major League Baseball has taken a number of small steps designed to make it easier for consumers to watch baseball, even for consumers in local markets. MLB.TV has been around for years, but for fans wanting to watch local games on mobile devices or through non-cable set-top boxes and devices like Apple TV, Roku, or Chromecast, there had been few advancements. This offseason, however, MLB announced that the Fox-owned Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) would finally provide local games on something other than cable to cable subscribers.
This small step was accompanied by a somewhat forced step in the Garber settlement to offer out-of-town fans the opportunity to purchase single-team packages at a reduced rate. A lesser publicized part of the settlement prevents MLB.TV from raising prices (capped at 3% per year) unless the non-Fox RSNs also offer streaming for local games by the 2017 season, which Commissioner Rob Manfred expects to happen.
These steps, along with burgeoning MLBAM technology and reports that ESPN is losing billions to cord-cutting viewers, have begun to raise more questions about when the sports right bubble might finally burst — when the current cable model might finally be unsustainable — and MLB fans will finally be able to purchase directly the rights to see the games of their local team (or in Iowa and Las Vegas, their six local teams) free from cable and the onerous blackout rules that accompany it. Unfortunately, nobody has an answer.
We’ll start with a man made of straw. You might think that David Ortiz’s stated intention to retire at the end of the upcoming season would mean he’d be limping to the end, a shell of his former self, a one trick pony without a trick, but that, Dr. Strawman, is decidedly not the case. A few months ago the venerable yet vulnerable (stab him and does he not bleed?) Jeff Sullivan wrote a piece titled David Ortiz Has Refused to Decline. At the time Ortiz was flat out refusing to decline, and since the piece was written in November and no games have been played between then and now, the thesis statement still holds true.
The 39-year-old version of Ortiz from the 2015 campaign was almost a carbon copy of his age-38 season. WAR hates him because he’s a DH (that’s a topic for another time) but by wRC+, Ortiz was roughly as good (or better) at the plate last season as Buster Posey, Manny Machado, Kris Bryant, and Yoenis Cespedes. Depending on the stat you use, Ortiz was somewhere within the top-20 hitters in baseball. Did I mention he was 39?
Now that Ortiz has announced his retirement, we are set once again for a year-long farewell party, not unlike the one Derek Jeter received. And in fact, that will be an interesting comparison to make considering Jeter’s accomplishments will make him a guaranteed first ballot Hall of Famer while there is some debate about whether Ortiz ever gets in at all. But I digress. Considering the success of Ortiz’s age-38 and age-39 seasons, I wonder if we might be in line to witness one of the best age-40 seasons of all time.
Ben and Sam banter about The Good Wife’s Super Bowl spot and discuss some potential unintended consequences of raising/shrinking the strike zone.
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If you’ve recently spent time with other humans, it’s likely that you noticed that they tend to be overconfident about how well they understand the world around them. Think of all of the people you know who have tried to weasel their way out of admitting they were wrong even when presented with strong evidence that they had misinterpreted a situation. Humans are bold and unapologetic in their declarations and do not like it when you point out that they’ve made a serious error.
It’s hard to criticize people for that when it seems to be a pretty fundamental aspect of the species. It’s not good or bad, it simply is. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy little moments when someone makes a compelling argument and then the world totally destroys their hard work by changing around them.
For example, two political scientists once wrote a book called Congress’ Permanent Minority? Republicans in the U.S. House which was the first major scholarly account of how a minority party operates when it expects to be in the minority for the foreseeable future. It’s a well-researched book and was well reviewed when it came out. Unfortunately for the authors, it came out in January of 1994, just 11 months before the Republicans would win control of the House for the first time in 40 years. It was a perfectly fine analysis, it was just totally detached from the reality of American politics almost immediately.
This morning, news came out that Yuliesky Gurriel, along with his younger brother Lourdes Gurriel Jr, have left Cuba and are in the process of setting up international residency that will allow them to become free agents eligible to sign with Major League teams. The older Gurriel is considered the best player in Cuba, and Baseball America’s Ben Badler has rated him as the top international player not currently in the Major Leagues.
While there have been a steady stream of Cuban defectors over the last year, the Gurriel brothers are perhaps the most interesting, not only because of their talent, but also because of the potential issues that their disparate ages might place on the negotiations.
A quick recap of the international rules, and why they could potentially present some interesting options for teams looking to really exploit the loopholes in the league’s international signing system. Cuban players over the age of 23, with at least five years of professional experience in Cuba, are exempt from the league’s international bonus pool rules, and can sign with any team for any amount with no penalties. Yuliesky Gurriel, as a 31 year old veteran, fits this criteria, and will be an unrestricted free agent, in the same way Hector Olivera was a year ago; Olivera got $63 million from the Dodgers last year.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is currently just 22, however, and if he signs before his 23rd birthday — October 19th, for the record — he’ll be considered part of a team’s international spending, with essentially a guarantee that a signing team would have to pay a dollar-for-dollar tax on his bonus, given the expected price tag for a quality young prospect. His signing is complicated even further by the fact that the teams eligible to sign him will change on July 2nd, as the Diamondbacks, Angels, Rays, Red Sox, and Yankees are currently restricted from signing young international players for more than $300,000, and after July 2nd, the list of restricted teams shifts, with the Cubs, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Giants, and Royals entering the penalty box.
Given the significant bonus differences between pool-eligible and pool-exempt players, it would seem to be a fairly easy call for the younger Gurriel to wait until the winter to sign, when every team could bid on him, rather than forcing himself to deal with a diminished market of bidders. Additionally, by removing the tax from his cost of signing, Lourdes Gurriel could almost certainly capture the full amount a team would want to spend to bring him into the organization, rather than going halfsies on his value with the league. Logically, it seems like the younger Gurriel should simply tell teams that he won’t sign until October 20th, and let them negotiate with him under the presumption that he’ll be exempt from the bonus pool structure.
However, because he’s defecting at the same time as his older brother, there is potentially another path here that could allow the younger Gurriel to sign before he turns 23; the Gurriels could package themselves together. As Badler has written previously, “package deals” for prospects have been going on for years.
Package deals have always been a part of the signing process in Latin America, where trainers and Mexican League teams often hold the decision-making power rather than the players and their families. Since a trainer might have a larger commission in one of his lesser prospects than he has in the main prospect a team is trying to sign, the trainer might ask the team to divert some of the money it earmarked for his top prospect to his lesser player, ensuring a greater profit for himself.
With the bonus pools, package deals play a greater role, which is what we said would happen from the beginning. If a team wants to sign a player on July 2 but needs to save money against its 2015-16 pool, it can sign a player from the same trainer during the current 2014-15 signing period with any money left in its current pool, essentially as an upfront payment. Or it can make it up on the back end by promising a signing during the following period.
Then there are the teams facing the signing restriction penalties for exceeding their pools that have the greatest incentive to do package deals. Since these teams can’t sign a player for more than $300,000, they can sweeten the pot by signing several players from the same trainer. A self-interested trainer could make more money by signing his main prospect and three other low-level players with one team for $300,000 each to get $1.2 million in bonuses rather than sign his main prospect for $800,000 with another team. It’s not always easy to detect when it’s happening, since there are often multiple trainers with a commission in a player, and the deals don’t necessarily have to be signed on the same day. A package deal can also be done by signing multiple members of a player’s family.
Essentially, it’s money laundering, except it’s not breaking any laws and it’s not violating any MLB rules. Teams have done these types of maneuvers before to massage their bonus pools before, with MLB already setting a precedent by allowing them.
It’s not too hard to imagine what a package deal for the Gurriels might look like. The older Gurriel can sign for whatever he wants, and because of the vast differences in evaluating older players from Cuba, pretty much any size signing bonus can be rationally defended. Just making numbers up — I have no idea what these guys are going to get — let’s say the market settled on $70 million for the older Gurriel and $20 million as a fair price for his younger brother, which would impute a $40 million total cost to the signing team if he signed before he turned 23. A team signing both would be on the hook for $110 million, but only $90 million of that would go to the Gurriels; that creates an incentive for some creative accounting.
If a team wanted to try to convince Lourdes Gurriel to sign before he turns 23, they could potentially structure the contracts so that Yuliesky Gurriel got an $85 million contract, with Lourdes Gurriel signing for a $10 million bonus with the same club; given what lesser Cuban prospects have gotten recently, $10 million would seemingly be Lourdes’ floor, so as not to make it too resoundingly obvious as to what was happening. In that scenario, the Gurriels gets $95 million between them, while the signing team only pays $105 million in total, as they’d pay a $10 million tax on the younger brother’s signing. The team would save $5 million on the two players, but the brothers would receive $5 million more than if they signed separately while Lourdes was restricted by the bonus pool system.
Of course, there are all kinds of reasons why something like this probably won’t happen. For one, it seems likely that Lourdes’ contract multiplier is much higher by waiting until he reaches free agency, and can compare himself to guys like Yasmany Tomas and Rusney Castillo, arguing for something north of $50 million himself. It’s also not clear that there’s a team out there with a need for both players, since they both profile as near MLB ready infielders; the Dodgers are the obvious candidate to outspend everyone, but it’s not obvious what they’d do with two more guys who reportedly profile best at third base. It’s probably more likely that a win-now team is more interested in the older Gurriel, while a rebuilding team would be motivated to spend more to land the younger brother, so that their best choice is to sign with separate franchises.
But it’s at least an interesting thought experiment that I’d imagine some front offices will work through over the next few months. Because the overage tax on the signing bonuses for pool-restricted players have to be paid up front, only a few deep-pocketed teams could realistically make it happen, but for a team like the Phillies, it might be just the kind of opportunity they were looking for. Sure, Yuliesky Gurriel might not still be a productive player by the time their rebuild is complete, but they could potentially sign him, let him show what he can do at the big league level, then trade him for more prospects once he was an established big leaguer, using his signing as a way to buy more young talent while also reducing the size of the tax they’d have to pay to sign his younger brother.
And given that the next CBA is almost certainly going to tear up the current international signing system, this may be something like the last chance teams have to make a move like this. If the league is going to push heavily for an international draft in CBA negotiations, perhaps teams with money to spend and a desire to add talent will exploit the flaws of the current system one last time before the league overhauls a broken system once and for all.
