The Jarred Kelenic Service Time Question Illustrates a Broken System
Jarred Kelenic is right, or at the very least, he’s not wrong. There’s no reason not to take the recent claims of the Mariners outfielder and his representative, Brody Scoffield, at face value. Their story — that Kelenic was offered a pre-debut extension and that when he declined to sign it, the club refused to call him up in 2020 for service time reasons — is totally believable, and is backed up by Kevin Mather’s now infamous remarks over Zoom to the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club; Mather, the club’s President and CEO at the time of his remarks, resigned last week. The proposed extension, which Mather described as a “long-term deal, six-year deal for substantial money with options to go farther,” speaks both to Kelenic’s immense talent as well as the Mariners’ desire to lock him up on team-friendly terms.
Jerry Dipoto, who addressed the situation last Tuesday, is right, or at the very least, he might not be wrong. Dipoto said what one normally would about a highly-ranked prospect who is generating hype but isn’t on the roster yet. (Here it worth remembering that GMs operate within the budget strictures ownership set for them. That’s not to say Dipoto has no agency, and owners look for GMs who are willing to let this type of fiscal responsibility take precedence over winning baseball games. But in reality, ownership should be on the hook to a far greater degree than the front office in the eyes of fans.) Kelenic has only played 21 games above A-ball. He hit a very solid .253/.315/.542 in those 21 games, as a teenager mind you, and was actually remarkably unlucky, as evidenced by his exceptionally light .246 BABIP. Still, a little more seasoning in Triple-A, as Dipoto suggests, might be beneficial. Kelenic’s approach could use some tightening and his strength gains have come with some of his twitch going backwards, which is starting to hinder him defensively.
But those are nitpicks, not deficiencies that should have kept him out of Seattle. Evan White proves the case. White isn’t nearly as talented as Kelenic, but he signed a pre-debut deal and was instantly the Opening Day first baseman in 2020. His bat wasn’t ready, as evidenced by a miserable 66 wRC+ to go with an ugly 41.6% strikeout rate, yet he was there. Was White the Mariners’ best option? Maybe. But did the fact that he signed the sort of big league deal that Kelenic turned down drive the decision to have him with the major league team while Kelenic futzed around at the team’s alternate site in Tacoma? No question.
The 2020 season, with it’s compressed schedule and frequent COVID-19 issues, forced many teams to push players to the big leagues who they didn’t expect to before spring training was shut down. I watched it up close with an Astros pitching staff that saw 10 hurlers make their major league debut. Facing a nearly two-decade long playoff drought, Seattle finished just two games behind Houston for a playoff spot in last year’s expanded format, and whatever tweaking he might still need to do, it’s nearly impossible to argue Kelenic wouldn’t have been an improvement over the Mariners’ left field situation, centering as it did around players like Tim Lopes, José Marmolejos, Dee Strange-Gordon, Sam Haggerty and Dylan Moore.
There’s nothing wrong with a team making a pre-debut offer per se. In Kelenic’s case, it would have provided him with what was almost certainly tens of millions of dollars of insurance against all sorts of things that can go wrong between now and when a player with no major league service time enters free agency. Kelenic turned it down, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Mather indicated that Kelenic was going to “bet on himself,” a phrase used frequently in such negotiations. I love players who bet on themselves. It speaks to confidence, and confidence is a big part of makeup. The problem comes when not signing the contract — rather than readiness — results in Kelenic not playing in the big leagues. As Scoffield and Kelenic told USA Today’s Bob Nightengale:
“It was communicated to Jarred that had he signed that contract, he would have debuted last year,” said Brodie Scoffield, who represents Kelenic. “It was made crystal clear to Jarred — then and now — that his decision not to call him up is based on service time.
Said Kelenic, who spent last year in the Mariners’ alternate camp: “It wasn’t just communicated one time to me. It was told to me several times. That’s the God’s honest truth. It got old.”
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The offer of a team-friendly deal isn’t the problem, nor is the rejection. The problem is the wink-wink, nudge-nudge perks that were offered to Kelenic as part of the deal. The promise of big league time is unofficially attached to the deal, but that’s not even necessary. It’s obvious because of the rules that define service time, as well as arbitration and free agency eligibility. If Kelenic signs a big league deal, all the mechanics are then in place to add him to the major league roster. His price for now and the future is fixed, and there are no 40-man machinations or service time considerations to worry about. He can just play.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The Padres are the current poster franchise for focusing on winning with their free spending ways, including Fernando Tatis Jr.’s recent historic extension. But their approach differs in another important respect. For while San Diego had signed Manny Machado and had a farm system brimming with talent, they weren’t quite ready to take on the Dodgers when Tatis made the Opening Day roster in 2019. That didn’t stop them. Tatis and Kelenic aren’t the same player, and only time will tell if Kelenic is worthy of a deal as monumental as the one Tatis just signed. But the Padres’ treatment of their young shortstop suggests a different approach is possible.
It all points to a system that is broken; the service time game is at fault more than its players. Kris Bryant didn’t win his grievance, the result of a situation where the actions that netted the Cubs an extra year of control were just as obvious (albeit not so obviously or publicly described), and Kelenic and Scoffield, should they file, face an uphill battle. It’s not that service time manipulation is legal per se, as much as Bryant’s 2019 case shows that teams are given wide latitude when determining a player’s readiness. After all, Dipoto might not be wrong, at least about that.
The fact that service time and economic considerations prevent the best product from being put on the field is infuriating. It also suggests that the answer to situations like this lies in fixing the rule. The easiest solution, at least on the surface, is one that starts a player’s clock the second he signs. Various time-frames have been thrown out, including eight years for college picks, 10 for high school draftees, and 12 for international signees. JUCO ball and the varying ages of foreign-born amateur players muddles things a bit, leading some to simply suggest an age, which would make for a simpler rule that allows players to become free agents before the season in which they turn 29, or 28, or 30. Under such a structure, if the player is good enough, they play. As a result, they give even more in terms of years and production to the team that signed and developed them. The exact years or ages are up to the MLBPA and the commissioner’s office to sort out, and the complications don’t end there; such an agreement could force all professional players into the union, which would be great for them but also makes the proposal a likely non-starter for Manfred and his associates. Still, it’s a start, and a necessary one. There are far more franchises like the Mariners than there are like the Padres these days.
Kevin Goldstein is a National Writer at FanGraphs.
There should be a decent incentive for the owners to fix this issue. Its much easier to sell tickets when your team is garbage if there are one or two prospects that the fanbase can get excited about.
The problem is most the proposed solutions are trying to tackle two problems at once. 1) what percentage of revenue should players be getting and 2) how should that revenue be divided up between veterans, young MLBers, and minor leaguers. That makes the owners resistant to any change that leads to a straight player salary increase without an offset. Its unfortunate because it ends up with an inferior product on the field which ultimately is going to further hurt revenue 5-10 years down the line in the form of a lower fanbase. But it seems like few on either side of these negotiations are willing to take a long term perspective.
Your point about multiple problem solutions being difficult is a fair one. Actually there are parties on the MLBPA side that don’t want revenue sharing. High end players and especially agents. Obviously the high end (high revenue) owners don’t want to pool their revenue, make smaller market teams competitive, and (potentially) devalue their team’s value.
I didn’t know that but it makes sense because for the math to work on increasing minor league salaries/ less arb years it means that Trout, Cole, etc. are taking less money. And you’ll notice Cole and 4 other Boras Corp clients make up the player leadership for the MLBPA
Yes. And it’s also easier to sell tickets when you’re winning.
I personally hate when organizations keep one or two guys. Why? Deal them, too, and start over. Nobody is going to the ballparks to see 8 randos and then a guy who gets on base one out of every 4 times.
It’s true but sad. Fans don’t love the game the way they used to. It’s all about celebrity and greatness. Too bad people don’t see it that these randos can be pretty fun themselves.
In fairness, if he only gets on base 1 out of four times you probably aren’t getting much for him. But if a guy is young enough I can see the argument for keeping him.
“Its much easier to sell tickets when your team is garbage if there are one or two prospects that the fanbase can get excited about.”
I don’t think that statement is actually true. I’ve gone back a few decades in the attendance tracker on baseball-reference, and while success does increase attendance, it’s pretty much always a lagging indicator. Attendance goes up after a team is good and never before, even if they are stacked with young talent. Just look at the 2010-2011 Nationals (who had Strasburg and then Harper percolating up through the farm system), the 2011-2013 Royals (who had most of the core that would send them to back to back World Series breaking through at the major league level), or the 2014 Houston Astros (mediocre big league team with a stacked farm system and a bunch of promising youngsters).
None of those teams saw attendance spikes until after the team became good at the MLB level. The Padres had a minor rise in attendance in 2019 after starting Tatis Jr. in the majors on opening day, but they also signed Machado that offseason, and even that attendance number was lower than their 2015 attendance, which was the season they went all in and traded for the Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, and Craig Kimbrel. I don’t think that’s very strong evidence that not holding Tatis Jr. down to manipulate his service time sold a lot of tickets. Now obviously if there were no COVID restrictions, the 2021 Padres would have a very healthy attendance, but that’s because the team was very, very good last year.
I wonder what the tv ratings look like though? Do they see a bounce?
Unfortunately, it’s not what’s true, it’s what owners believe to be true.
It’s what they feel they can sell to us as true.
I should clarify, I meant 1-2 prospects debuting, not farm system rankings. I.E. you want to structure the arb system where the Mariners have Kelenic in their opening day roster if he’s the best option vs sending him to Tacoma for 3 weeks to work on his defense. So the proper years to compare would be Strasburg’s debut (2010) and Harper’s (2012). Both those years attendance was up Y/Y (though the team was better so I don’t think it makes either of our points).
You also do have to remember overall attendance in MLB has gone from 79m in 2007 to 68m in 2019
So what will the MLBPA have to give up to get this, and is this a higher priority than some other things they might want to get with that bargaining chip (whatever it might be)? Because the owners aren’t going to give up any control of their chattel without getting something back; we already know they are largely immune to public criticism and moral arguments and will drag their feet even when it isn’t a huge pocket-book issue (Chief Wahoo says hello). The commissioner works for the owners, so even “the best interests of the game” isn’t much of a impetus. We have a kind of tragedy of the commons situation, where what’s good for the game as a whole is bad for all of the owners individually, and what’s good for every owner is bad for the game. Unless they get some concession from the players as part of the next CBA, I expect we’ll see little but cosmetic changes as we carry on with teams saying all the “right” things while continuing to hold many of the most exciting new players down.
But short-sighted thinking is kind of a tradition among baseball owners, who tried to ban radio broadcasts and then television because they thought those outlets would take paying customers from their gates even if it eventually resulted in a larger audience for the sport.
” tried to ban radio broadcasts” one of my favorite baseball facts
The players want a lot of different things – an end to service time manipulation, get rid of the qualifying offer, fewer years of team control, more say in what happens when act of God shortens a season now, probably a few others. They don’t have much to give up. Maybe agree to include international players in the draft and, the big one, a salary cap.
I really think a cap is coming and that it could work for the players if they bargain hard. MLB is the only sport without a cap, but they really do have one because even the teams willing to spend the most have largely respected the competitive balance tax threshold. If there already is a phantom cap, might as well let the owners have a real one. At that point, you are just negotiating on numbers, not concepts, and that’s a lot easier. Even better if that cap can come with a floor. At least a dozen MLB teams have payrolls under the NBA salary cap, even though NBA rosters are half the size. More than 10 teams are under the NHL salary cap and that league isn’t nearly as financially successful as MLB. The players stand to gain significantly if they can get the sub-$50M teams to actually spend money. They might even have some support from the owners on a floor. The big spending teams have famously been upset when they send checks to Tampa, Miami, Cleveland, and others that doesn’t get spent on players.
You could also argue the players have negotiated themselves into such a position of weakness a rebalancing needs to occur and a strike would be much worse for the owners than any individual player.
“But did the fact that he signed the sort of big league deal that Kelenic turned down drive the decision to have him with the major league team while Kelenic futzed around at the team’s alternate site in Tacoma? No question.”
No question? I am sympathetic to Kelenic, but let’s not overplay our hand and ignore any facts that might get in the way of our default, un-nuanced approach to this. I’d say this quote below gives us at least a little reason for question.
“Part of the reward of signing a major league contract is that you are put on the 40-man roster,” Dipoto said, “but there was a very clear understanding that (accepting the deal) would include a minor league assignment.”
https://sports.mynorthwest.com/1319773/jerry-dipoto-mariners-contract-offer-to-jarred-kelenic-didnt-come-with-a-spot-on-mlb-team/
I would add that Kelenic and Scoffield haven’t denied the bit about the minor league assignment.
That changes everything. Having another 200 or so PAs in the upper-minors wasn’t a possibility after the minor league season was cancelled.
The arrogant tone of Mather made this worse that it probably was.
One of my favorite quotes ever. From Rob Neyer back in the day: “I’m continually struck by how many things that seem morally repugnant also wind up being — if you figure the math – counterproductive”
I simply do not see any way out of this. There is just no way to clearly define what counts as service time manipulation and what doesn’t. You can always make the argument that players need more seasoning in the minors, and Kelenic had 92 PAs at AA.
I think the alternative way of framing this is that neither Kelenic nor White were ready, but that if they signed the extension, there was no reason to keep him in the minors anymore. There’s no developmental reason to bring a guy up if he isn’t ready; it’s only when service time is irrelevant does it make sense to see what happens if you throw him into the fire.
That’s exactly right. From hindsight, White clearly wasn’t ready to hit major league pitching. Kelenic likely wasn’t either, but had he signed the contract the Mariners probably would have given him a shot at the majors too. The system is clearly broken.
The system uses service time to determine free agency. What standard would work better?
Age. Everyone’s a FA at 28.
That wouldn’t be great for all the players tho. That would benefit the phenoms and realistically they don’t need much help. It would drastically hurt late bloomers (i.e a lot of pitchers).
Actually that would hurt the phenoms I think. Someone reaches the majors at 19-20, they have to stay with a team for 8-9 years before getting a shot at free agency?
It would hurt the phenoms because they would have more years under team control but help the late bloomers as they are now free agents at 28 or whatever instead of 32.
I think your take is very very very good. I hope others don’t miss that this is a great way to frame this.
To repeat something I have said before: I have not yet seen a single proposal that eliminates service time manipulation. Anything proposed can be gamed.
I think you just have to take it as a given that service time manipulation will happen and see if you can negotiate something to counter it, like getting to arbitration earlier, or reducing the amount of time it takes to get to year one, or (and I know the MLBPA has resisted taking this on!) higher salaries for minor leaguers. There are much better ways to serve baseball players interests’ than playing whack-a-mole with loopholes. “Readiness” is inherently subjective; you just have to find ways to make things better overall.
The closest would be that one day of service time equals a year. Sure, you could be taking away some late season call ups, but that’s not what the vast majority of service time manipulation happening is. It is going into the season, how long can you hold off (3 weeks, ~2.5 months) and still get the player for the second half and playoffs.
Of course you’d either have to make this 7 years or provide something to the owners if it were 6 years, or this won’t happen, but that seemingly could be worked out.
You could tie the first year of service time to the thresholds that already exist for defining Rookie of the Year eligibility (130 AB, 50 IP, or 45 days on the active roster). This would allow a team to make late-season call-ups without necessarily starting their clock early, but if a player is really ready to contribute, the amount of time the player would need to be kept down in order avoid starting the clock is such a supermajority of the season that you would be squandering much of the benefit of even having that player if you only want to have them up for the 20% of the season that you can “safely” afford in that analysis.
Salary floor and salary cap and all this hand wringing goes away.
If anything, a salary cap would increase the incentive to delay a player from reaching free agency. If NBA teams could keep the players they drafted in the G league and have them on rookie contracts for longer, they’d be doing the same thing.
Yet, no league with a cap has this issue. So no I doubt that it would make it worse.
They don’t have farm systems that are this expansive so of course they don’t these issues.
And they have a salary cap where all teams spend within a defined band, you’re right, of course they don’t have these issues.
Oh boy! well, that isn’t true. They don’t have a minor system of importance or depth because of the limitations…Hence no issues because they don’t anything to be at issue with. It is absent of relevance.
Classic cart before the horse thing you are working with…
(I know this won’t be popular because new ideas or theories that are not consistent with consensus are evil, I hope it can help some to understand the system isn’t as broken as it’s been made out to be)
This is the hook for the MLBPA. This isn’t a problem they have any interest in solving. They know it but they like it for publicity. This is why:
This problem is circular. To give Kelenic an early start, the MLBPA would be giving up money for all the other players that aren’t necessarily ready to contribute from getting the most money when they reach free agency. So instead of helping the one potential superstar that is still likely to make a lot of money, they negotiated this and agree to it to support the majority of the members in the union.
In addition to bringing this to the forefront every year by the media, they enjoy the sympathy that the owners are ‘cruel’ (despite being that they negotiated this) and use that sympathy as leverage elsewhere, or whenever they go into a strategy that hurts fans they can use this for cover for a while (such as a potential shut down in the next negotiations).
The long-form:
Service time is about giving teams who invested in the prospect a reasonable return for development. They want a certain value especially since afterward the player either can leave or get more money. So the trade-off is service time. The league and MLBPA know this ‘time’ is necessary for the teams ( a nonstarter).
This means that it is a timer: a fixed period of time. Whether you start it early or later it is the same. The situation that we see as ‘manipulating’ is the team trying to get the best possible play for their money. The MLBPA and this case Kelenic want to start the clock early because it makes him reach free agency earlier for likely a huge payday.
The tiff is that the player is ready but the team isn’t letting him play. The team wants better performance for its development so it holds the player back until he is more finished to squeeze the profit from their investment. This back and forth often gives us the argument that we should let the players start early. The league’s response is that we need more compensation for allowing the player to start early (more time until free agency).
This doesn’t fly with MLBPA because they would lose money because most players would be older by the time they get through. So instead of the MLBPA agreeing to those demands and hurting the whole pool of players not as fortunate as Kelenic (who can get extensions that add lots of AVV a la Tatis or Trout). They agree to this service time because they want the investment in the prospects to sustain the talent of their union.
It is about the balance between the players that need development and those that are super talented. Hence why there are Super 2, etc.
The issue by solving one side of the problem, you are unfortunately causing the league to push back elsewhere. Making this a circular issue that won’t be solved. The MLBPA has found a good equilibrium for this game theory problem. So instead of trying to solve it, they use it for good publicity for fans that see it as a solvable problem.
I will say, leading with “new ideas or theories that are not consistent with consensus are evil” is a tad unnecessary and attempts to prematurely deflect any legitimate criticism of your ideas, which are well stated. You can lay it on out there without the prologue, it’s good enough to stand on its own 🙂
Thanks, I appreciate your words. I certainly didn’t want to uninvite legitimate criticism. I just threw on the trigger warning because there is a lot of criticism that floats around that isn’t remotely constructive and wanted to avoid it after how hot people were with this situation last week. Seeing the comments, it didn’t turn the way I imagined the shadows could be.
Overall I like the approach you are trying to take in your suggestion. I don’t begrudge teams for making business decisions with their baseball teams. They are in both the business of competitive baseball, but making money is apart of that.
The issue is the service time and when that clock starts. I completely agree that the clock should start when the player signs their first contract. I would prefer to see all players given the same timeframe though. Signing an 18 year old out of high school and a 22 year old out of college should have the same time frame for the player. The advantage would be that the college player would ideally require less time in the minors as they have spent time developing in college. This could incentivize drafting less players out of high school. The other issue with your idea is the time frame, it is still way too many years for the team to have control over where the player is employed. Professionals should have more say in where they live and work. Not keen on the idea of putting an age on it either; 28, 29, 30, all seem way to old to have to wait for free agency. The amount of team control years needs to be reduced if this change is going to happen so that players have choice sooner.
I side with ownership quite often in a lot of situations, but this is one where I think it is down right wrong that they have the amount of control that they do. If you are a two sport athlete in high school or college, it is reason enough to not choose baseball as your path. Pick the sport where you have more opportunity to control the city where you will leave and work and who your employer will be.
I hate hate HATE this.
Don’t forget the Indians missed the playoffs in Lindor’s rookie season (2015) by 4 games. Instead of bringing up Lindor, they played a negative WAR Jose Ramirez in his place (wRC+ of 72 for the season).
If the Tribe had Lindor, there’s a better than even chance they would have made the playoffs.
Now, we don’t know the exact amount but we know the teams make a lot of money on playoff games, especially when the series go past the necessary amount of games (the owners don’t rev-share games 5,6,7 in a 7-game series). You have to believe the Indians could have made enough money during the playoffs to acceptably mitigate the financial impact of losing a year of control. And when you look at how Lindor’s tenure ended in Cleveland, it has to make baseball fans even angrier.
In addition to that, teams could always just promote players and take that lost year into account when negotiating the long-term deal, like they do with arbitration years.
Once you show free agents that you prioritize winning, they want to come there. Once you show your own players the same thing, they will play better. Winning is the rising tide. Service time is stupid, and everyone knows it. Let’s come up with something better.
Yeah, what were those idiots doing, trying to see if they could develop a useful player out of some scrub like Jose Ramirez.
Also, the timing of Lindor’s promotion (mid-June) would not have meant losing a year of control. Possibly he would’ve been Super-2.
4 games out isn’t that particularly close, and it would’ve been for a road wildcard game, no assurance of making extra playoff money.
The general phenomenon you were describing makes some sense, but this example is not the smoking gun.
Not to mention the fact that hindsight is not a good method of evaluation of service time manipulation. There were a lot of good prospects who also stunk it up after their call ups last year (Adell, Carlson, Mize, Pearson, Bart, and others).
We can’t pretend that front offices knew which rookies would have improved the team and which one’s wouldn’t have.
I can tell you that Lindor was ready from Day-1. It was a Super-2 issue – you are correct. Either way, it’s manipulation. And the Indians had no other option than Ramirez (Mike Aviles?), who stunk that year.
If the Indians were trying to really develop Ramirez in the majors they probably wouldn’t have sent him back down to the minors for 25% of the season. He was one of the worst regular players in the league.
4 games is absolutely close when you consider one strike here or there is the difference.
Leading up to his time in MLB Lindor was seen as a glove-first SS who can hit for average. This was backed up by his low exit velos and minuscule power numbers in the minors.
If you saw this as a fluke and knew his slugging would jump 100 points after his promotion then I am happy for you but this was not the industry consensus at the time.
I don’t think the Indians were foolish when they decided not to rely on a slapstick SS with questions to carry them to the playoffs.
If they go with the age-based free agency, I wonder if MLB gives in at an age where having your young superstars (Tatis, Soto, etc.) in the majors for 7-10 years outweighs what they lose elsewhere. I’m just not sure that this break even age isn’t to far into players’ 30s. In which case, the MLBPA would never accept.
The break even age should be based on players that receive multi year contracts as free agents, and I can’t imagine it would be older than 30. If going down this road, it should be 28 at the oldest. But also you’d still have arbitration so for example Juan Soto going through arbitration for the 5th time should be getting like ~$35-40 million.
“service time and economic considerations prevent the best product from being put on the field is infuriating.”
If I am a Cubs fan, I have Bryant for a whole year at his peak. As an Ms fan, I totally hope that we delay bringing up the kids as long as possible! They cant win this year, they cant win in 2022… Who is infuriated? False outrage..
Given how it played out, between the down financial year and Bryant playing worse than terrible, he probably does better because they manipulated his service time. It was still wrong and unintended. But in the end, I have to think Bryant is happy he wasn’t a free agent this offseason.
Would a player with 92AB at AA actually be the best product on the field? The Ms had players they were interested in seeing what they could do in the corner OF spots
81PA to Lopes – fail
50PA to Marmolejos -fail
31PA to Strange-Gordon – last gasp to show any value – fail
44 PA to Haggerty who along with Moore’s 90PAs were actually productive
With no pandemic and a full minor league season, Kelenic’s likely scenario was for a few September ABs in 2020. Given a “normal” year for 2021 I would see it as making perfectly rational sense to have Kelenic begin the season in the minors and that has nothing to do with service time manipulation. If he had been putting up wRC+ numbers above 160 in the high minors…yeah, then this is an actual discussion.
I mean this ignores the reality that many top-end prospects spend very little if any time at AAA.
AAA is largely home to borderline guys and guys trying to get back or hang on – the elite prospects very frequently go from AA to the majors with precious little time (definitely not a full season) spent at AAA.
On the other hand there IS a huge jump between A-/A+ and AA.
But elite talents very frequently move very quickly through those ranges, and the problem with the Kelenic situation is more or less declaring that its impossible for him to do that: players with his pedigree DO do that sometimes, and a fair world would recognize that possibility and, if he performs, allow him to do it. That he’s an absolute no, and the extremely-not-MLB-ready Evan White got to spend the whole year in MLB because he extended, is exactly the problem laid bare.
Easiest solution: make it an overall service time that starts on draft or signing day.
Make it 10 years for international, 9 for HS, 8 for college. That makes players free agents around 27-29 so it could be acceptable to owners and both player and team are given an incentive to develope quicker as quicker development means more years in the majors.
I think 12 years is too long though
What if we just had no salary constraints at all and players could command what the (free, not collusive) market says? Don’t the capitalist owners want to follow their favorite system? Why is this a ridiculous suggestion? I say get rid of the antitrust exemption and let all parties bargain freely. Not sure why this is supposed to be the death of baseball — why does it need such systematic protection from the free market?
ETA-The optimum number of “years of control” of an employee is zero. The depravity is spelled out in the open.
If the free bargaining of labor is fatal to a business, doesn’t it stand to reason that particular business is so flawed it shouldn’t exist? If a business requires monopoly protection and massive wage restraints to profit, isn’t it an affront to free market principles? Asking the Milton Friedmans in the commentariat here.
No other league has the anti-trust exemption, so of course it should be gone from baseball.
While I understand the economic incentives to stifle playing time, this is one of those corporate strategies where the change has clearly not benefitted the esthetics of the game, Dial in back two decades ago and more, and September call-ups to see the kids play, or midseason, injury-driven ones to do the same sometimes revealed new stars for fans to hope on. It’s startling to see this not only go in the opposite direction, but to see fans cheer it on. Some would rather see Kelenic in the minors to control him (and pay him less) than see him on the field.
If the issue is that players are developed at the cost of teams, and thus owners need to get their pound of flesh in return, why not have the league sign players out of HS/College and run a minor league system/academy/whatever (funded by owners) and make the cost of player development a shared league cost.
Players are then ‘drafted’ by teams when they are ready to be added to major league rosters.
Hockey, you have a few minor league levels, but much of the development happens in juniors/college. The NHL team that drafted you still has your rights while you are playing in juniors/college.
A bigger problem is cheating organizations and the people who work for them.
There can be two things!
Has any consideration been given to starting the service time clock as soon as a player is protected from the Rule 5 draft? With an unprotected player, nobody thinks he’s ready for the big leagues. But once protected from Rule 5, only one team is determining whether or not he can play at that level. That sole control enables manipulation, so taking that away should go a long way in fixing it.
As sound as your on the 40 man roster, that does start your service time clock, in a way, because of the limited number of options. So usually a maximum of 9 years, maybe 10 if it is a rare case where they get a 4th option.
Nine or 10 years is almost always past a player’s peak. Seven years is already too long.
In the spirit of novel, and perhaps nutty approaches to this, 2 offerings:
1) Control years over a prospect start at 3 years from draft date (or maybe from Nov 1 after that) for a signed college player, 4 years for a HS draftee that signs, 5 years for an IFA signed at age 16 .
Teams can lengthen that control period based on the signing bonus paid, with every $1 million in bonus (maybe starting at over $1 million, and perhaps prorated) over $1 mil adding a year (or partial year for a partial million) of control. (I’m not married to the actual dollar values here – just consider it an outline). So teams can buy more control over players by getting them to agree to larger bonuses. By and large it really opens the market up for the bottom of the market and gives teams added value for their investment. Kinda used Rule 5 rule timeframes as a surrogate here.
2) Since the bulk of the most egregious manipulations happen in year 1, consider year 1 of service time to be complete as a full service year with 90 days of service (including any prior Sept call up time) up to 180 days of it. So teams do have to pay a price and make a judgement on holding guys back well longer than they or their fans may think justifiable, but also encouraging them to just bring the kid up right away, or whenever they are actually ready, so there’s not such a hard number that demands Kris Bryant plays 2 more weeks in the minors to prove his readiness. Still some possible room here for Super 2 manipulation but just tossing it out.
#1 sounds like a pretty good option–whenever a player is Rule 5 eligible and needs to be added, one year after that their team control starts. Or team control starts one or two years after being added to the 40-man. I think this is about as good a solution as you can get.
On second thought, this could be really bad for the players. It would only be a good thing if team control wasn’t expanded in response. If every player had an extra year of team control to fight through, but it starts one year after they get promoted to the Rule 5, guys who are precocious and aren’t on the 40-man yet would just get a full extra year added.
This would be a good example of how making things that are not-gameable are not always good for the players.
Another thought is for some portion of revenue sharing to be used exclusively for signing a team’s own players. IOW, say the Pirates wanted to sign Ke’Bryan Hayes long-term after he wins the 2021 ROY. They would have a pool of shared revenue available to pay for a couple of +6 years, or to raise the AAV of the contract to “market level.” But that revenue would be use-or-lose, not available for the owner to pocket for “operations.” Since revenue is already shared, the rich teams couldn’t complain since they’re already ponying up.
I agree that a fixed age will take care of all of the service time manipulation and give teams incentives to play kids when they are ready.
Sending a player to AAA who has less than 700 professional at bats and less than 100 above High A is a “broken system.”
NUTS!
When you cycle through a bunch of garbage in his place, though…
I have little issue with medium and smaller market teams manipulating service time to maximize a year in the future where they can go for it all. If Kelenic not playing in the majors in 2020 increases the chance of the Mariners winning it all in 2023 and contending a few years later. They are businesses seeking to maximize profit. It’s not like Kelenic won’t earn enough during his career that he need not have to work again if he invest it wisely. 2020 does not change that.
Somebody has to decide when. The owner is paying and the union agreement allows it. Both sides do whatever they can under the agreement. Bringing a player up also means a union member losing their spot. Do you want the player to decide? Some lousy panel like the arbitration panel?
Players need to fight for this in the new CBA . I like the idea of a reasonable age cut off or x years of major league service time. Whatever comes first.
I think this is more of a flawed system than a broken one. Arbitrary cutoff points with big discontinuities tend to create perverse incentives, but I would hardly expect the “losers” in these situations to suffer much, unless one calls making a few less millions out of many millions “suffering”. Unions tend to care about their veteran members a lot more than their future members, so this is unlikely to ever make it to the front burner.