The Myth of Six Years of Team Control
Last week, Ken Rosenthal reported — and others have since confirmed — that the Astros offered top prospect George Springer a seven year, $23 million contract. He turned them down, and has since been optioned to Triple-A, where he will begin the season. Presumably, had he accepted the contract offer, he may very well have been named the Astros Opening Day right fielder, as the contract would have nullified the benefits of keeping him from accruing a full year of service time in 2014, and it’s not like the Astros have a better right fielder blocking his path at the moment. However, since Springer did not accept the contract, he’ll have to wait at least a few weeks to join the Astros, and potentially a few months if they decide to try and get him past the Super Two cutoff as well.
On the one hand, it’s easy to paint this as a picture of an organization acting in bad faith, using the carrot of a big league roster spot to try and coerce a young player into signing away his future earnings potential. The MLBPA is even considering filing a grievance on Springer’s behalf — even though he isn’t a member yet, since he is not on the Astros 40 man roster — over the issue, though it would be nearly impossible for them to prove intent given that Springer only has 266 plate appearances in Triple-A; optioning out a young player with Springer’s contact rate would be pretty easily defensible on merit alone. But the perception of impropriety still exists, due to the appearance that his demotion was directly tied to his decision to reject the Astros contract offer, whether that is actually true or not.
The Springer news has brought about another round of calls for reformation of the rules in order to remove the incentives for teams to keep their best young players in the minor leagues to begin the season, and I’m with the crowd who thinks that MLB is best served by allowing teams to make roster decisions based on talent and performance rather than worrying about accrued service time. I’d rather see George Springer play in April than whoever the Astros end up rolling out there on Opening Day. But for MLB and the MLBPA to come to any sort of consensus on this in the next CBA negotiations, everyone will first have to admit that the concept of six years of team control is basically a myth.
The opening paragraph of the CBA’s section on Free Agency — Article XX, Section B — states the following:
Following the completion of the term of his Uniform Player’s Contract, any Player with 6 or more years of Major League service who has not executed a contract for the next succeeding season shall become a free agent, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of this Section B.
Six or more years. The CBA does not say that a player is entitled to free agency after six years in the big leagues; it sets six years as a minimum for a player to be eligible for free agency. It explicitly states that players can have more than six of service before they are free agent eligible, but they cannot have fewer than six years. The six year line is a minimum, not a maximum, and nowhere in the CBA are players guaranteed free agency following their sixth calendar year in the Major Leagues.
The reality is that the rules, as they are written, give Major League teams control over a player’s rights for seven years, not six. And seven years of control is and has been the norm for nearly every player in MLB.
In MLBTradeRumors Arbitration Tracking tool, there are 179 players listed who were arb eligible this off-season. Of those 179, exactly 10 of them — 5.6% of the population — reached their service time level with the minimum number of days required and are on track to reach free agency with exactly six years of service. Six of the 10 are relief pitchers, who aren’t exactly going to hit it rich in free agency anyway. Only four currently active arbitration eligible regulars — Jason Heyward, Austin Jackson, Colby Rasmus, and Mike Leake — are on pace to reach free agency with the minimum level of service time. Everyone else is going to fall into the “or more” category, and will have had their rights controlled for seven seasons before they reach free agency, not six.
And this is why the Astros made George Springer a seven year contract offer. They already owned his rights for seven years. Teams can choose to forfeit one of those years of team control in exchange for a few extra weeks of production up front, but that’s simply not a good trade-off for big league teams to make, which is why almost no one does it. If the MLBPA wants to negotiate an end to service time manipulation in the next CBA, it will almost certainly have to agree to codify the seventh year of team control in order to do so. Because that seventh year of control already exists, for all intents and purposes.
Now, this isn’t to say that teams should be making young prospects take-it-or-head-to-the-minors offers. You don’t want the rules to allow teams to essentially force MLB ready players to sign bad contracts in order to get called up, but we should also acknowledge that there’s another interpretation of the facts here.
After all, we know that the contract offer to Springer was not made in isolation; the team reportedly also has made long term offers to both Robbie Grossman and Matt Dominguez, Major League players with minimal accomplishments at this point in their careers. As an organization, the Astros seem to be clearly betting on the positive expected value of signing early career contracts on the hopes that they get one big breakout star. If by locking up five young players, they avoid the massive cost escalation that would come from one of them developing into an All-Star, the savings from that one deal alone could cover the increased costs of signing the entire group.
In order to make this kind of bulk-buying strategy work, however, you have to actually get a pretty decent sized group of players to sign, and the Astros simply don’t have that many extension-worthy Major League players. One could even argue that Grossman himself is perhaps the least talented player we’ve ever seen offered a long term deal, and his inclusion in the group purchase strategy shows that the Astros have expanded their pool to include players who wouldn’t otherwise normally be extended offers at this point in their career.
Springer is certainly more talented than Grossman, and more worthy of a long term commitment from the franchise, but he’s also a prospect who has never hit in the big leagues before; based on MLB precedent, he too is an unusual candidate for a long term deal. The fact that the Astros offered a barely above replacement level guy like Grossman a multi-year deal suggests that perhaps their plan is less nefarious than it has been made out to be, and that they are simply attempting to limit their costs by applying Groupon’s business model to baseball players.
And keep in mind, these long term deals have nothing to do with short term cost savings. The Astros aren’t saving money in 2014 by sending Springer to Triple-A; they’ll have to pay at least the same league minimum salary to whoever plays right field as they would have had to pay to Springer. Their offer to Springer was about future cost savings, just like every other extension signed this winter. In pretty much every negotiation between team and player, the carrot that the team has to offer is guaranteed security now in exchange for a lower best-case scenario outcome if the player stays healthy and turns into a star. The Astros offered Springer $23 million worth of security for the rights to put a cap on his arbitration salaries, and likely to get an option or two on his first couple of free agent years. It doesn’t have to be viewed as a gun-to-his-head ultimatum tied to his desire to not spend a few more months in the minors.
More importantly, though, we should just accept the fact that Springer isn’t being robbed of anything that he has an actual claim to. The CBA does not give players the right to free agency after six years of team control. It gives him free agency after at least six years of team control, and that has developed into an accepted minimum of seven actual years for almost every player in baseball. There are very likely better ways to codify this so that teams wouldn’t have to option out top prospects for a few weeks at the beginning of their first year, but the first step to modifying the rules would be to accept that the window of team control is, in all practicality, actually seven years.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The issue is the MLB definition of a “year”, which is 172 days of service time on a major league roster. The Tigers gamed the system by bringing Porcello up a few days into his 1st year.
He essentially will have pitched 7 full seasons in the majors before FA.
It’s a loophole. Loopholes will always be found and exploited.
If Springer signed the contract (offered in September of last year, by the way, not last week as portrayed by some) would he be the Opening Day RF? Probably. But even if he signed it and was making $750K in 2014, the Astros STILL may have kept him in the minors for a few months for development.
Same concept of sorts as with Puig and other Cuban imports of recent days. Guys still need fine-tuning, even with guaranteed contracts.
“But even if he signed it and was making $750K in 2014, the Astros STILL may have kept him in the minors for a few months for development.”
With a team like the Astros, what’s the practical difference between developing in the minors and developing in the majors? In neither environment do you have a bunch of dedicated fans hanging on the outcome of every game, much media attention, or job insecurity.
The practical difference between hitting against Felix Hernandez instead of Brandon Maurer?
What better way to find out if a guy is able to hit major-league pitching, though? It’s not Hernandez out there every day; he’d face his share of okay-to-mediocre pitchers as well.
The guy almost had a 40/40 season last year. I think we know all we’re going to know about his performance against Brandon Maurer…
It’s my understanding that teams prefer players to be at an appropriate level of competition in order to optimize their development.
Too hard of a league, and they can’t work on what they need to. Plus, it can stunt development (anecdotally) by bringing a player up too fast, because they are simply too overmatched.
If this weren’t the case, I think we would see teams put their 18 y.o. draftees right into AAA.
The difference is Delmon Young and other players who leap past AAA or with little AAA time to the majors. I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure players doing good without much time in AAA is the exception and not the rule.
Isn’t the article claiming that the 6 years thing is a myth, and so it’s not really a loophole to get 7 years?
You’re correct that the 172 day definition of a service year is the heart of the issue. The trick will come in changing that definition, though. If you lower the number of days required to be given a full service year, then the league will have to agree to either surrender the seventh year of control they already have — which would raise costs, since players would get to FA more quickly — or players would have to agree to move back FA until after seven years of service in order to keep something like the same structure in place now.
I doubt the MLBPA wants to surrender on this issue and just admit that teams actually do have seven years of control right now. And I doubt MLB will concede a shorter service time year without getting something pretty sweet in response. So the fix might be difficult to implement.
“the league will have to agree to either surrender the seventh year of control they already have — which would raise costs, since players would get to FA more quickly ”
Would it raise costs or shift costs? Wasn’t it Charlie Finley who argued that if the owners just gave up the six (plus) years of control supply would come into better balance with demand and the owners would save money? Or more simply, if the younger guys get big free agent contracts a year earlier, would the teams spend less elsewhere to compensate?
I’m trying to imagine a non-gamable system that would remove the perverse incentive to keep good players in the minors too long… I don’t really see what would be practical. (Super-two is actually worse–missing two weeks of play is basically just a long road trip or a short DL stint, but 2 or 3 months feels like we’re stealing a real irreplaceable bit of a player’s talent just to game contract status.)
I’ve always thought they should have every team kick in something like $2M, then dole out the $60M as merit compensation to the guys making the minimum, or thereabouts (admittedly, it’s a half-baked idea). So Trout might get an extra $2M in merit pay, while John Q Reliever gets an extra $100K for putting up a 3.50 ERA in 40 innings.
Not that this fixes the service time issue, but it at least might re-allocate some of that money available only for free agents to players that outperform the free agents, without taking away the 6-7 years of team control, which is one of the only things that allows a $70M payroll team to compete with a $170M payroll team.
Brian, if the players are worried about the minimum wage rookies, then they can get that $60MM from the overpaid players who are playing like crap. Pujols and Hamilton can give a few million to Trout, Johan Santana could’ve given some money to Harvey last year, etc.
It’s counter intuitive, but the 6 year thing was actually the Union’s idea–and it wasn’t considered a “concession”. Marvin Miller was just that smart and realized that by giving up money early in their careers, the guys who made it past six years would make orders of magnitude more money through this kind of limited free agent market model. They did the research and came up with six years as the “Sweet spot” for what players could make (Versus the risk of not having a long enough to career to earn big). The league at the time didn’t understand this, and when the union proposed it thought it was a sweet deal, but Miller knew it was really a HUGE win for the players to have this kind of system in place, especially since the league thought they were getting it as a concession!
Mark, what do you mean? How is it better for the union for the teams to have 6ish years of control compared to 5 or 4?
I realize that this wasn’t directed at me, but I think I might be sufficiently qualified to answer.
Think of a teachers’ union. Most of the voting members in the union are older teachers with tenure. Their jobs are secure. When lay-offs are necessary, school districts are often (generally) contractually obligated to start with the teachers who have the lowest service time.
This is bad for the young teachers, but good for the larger/older majority.
With the MLBPA, the guys who are overpaid are almost never young players. It’s always guys who signed big deals as FAs. Money is basically being taken away from players with less than 7 years of service time and re-allocated to players on the other side of that barrier.
A good counter-example is the NFL. NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed, but some of the biggest contracts each year are signed by the top draft choices. In baseball, that money isn’t going to draft picks and young players.
The result is that the $/WAR quotient for FA-eligible players is actually higher than it would be if everyone was cut and available as a free agent. If teams had to pay their younger players market wages, there would be less money available for the older players. It isn’t really the supply of WAR that is being constrained, but rather teams don’t need to spend money on young and good players.
Like in a fantasy baseball dynasty league. All of the owners presumably “keep” players who offer surplus value over their salaries. Replacement level is independent of the salaries. So there is a fixed amount of “points above replacement” available. If owners keep, say, 25% of the overall points above replacement at, say 15% of the cost, then 85% of the remaining budgets are available to be spent on 75% of the remaing points above replacement.
Except, in real baseball, it isn’t all players offering surplus value, but rather the young/early career players.
Mark, 6 years was a concession by MLBPA. Originally Marvin Miller tried for 3-4 years I believe, and MLB wanted 10. They compromised at 6 years with arbitration after 3 years.
Technically, without the CBA, MLB only gets 1 year of control over players, and that’s their first contract year, after which every player would be a free agent.
Perhaps you do something like saying 7 calendar seasons of control. So if you call a guy up in late April, mid May, or Sept callup, it’s all the same.
But that simply encourages the MLB team to not call the player up… at all. Which doesn’t help either.
Set a fixed age? After your age 30(?) season, you can become a free agent. This would actually encourage teams to aggressively promote MLB-ready talent.
You could quibble about the age I guess. What is the average age of free agents nowadays? I’m thinking its around 30-31.
But if you set a fixed age, then teams will be more inclined to rush their prospects up so they can control them for a longer period of time which is also not good for future earnings.
The Heyward case is an interesting one. The Braves in 2010 made the playoffs as wild card by a single game, and it’s not inconceivable to imagine that that could have swung the other way if they’d kept Heyward down for a few weeks and made Jordan Schafer or whoever their Opening Day right fielder. (I suppose it depends on exactly how long they’d have had to leave him down to avoid trouble from the players’ union.) From a strict cost standpoint, the loss of Heyward’s fifth arb season almost certainly swamps their gate from two games of the 2010 NLDS, but I have to think that if they had it to do over again, they’d make the same decision.
Teams that know they’re going to compete make different calculations than teams like the Astros. The problem is, teams that are competitive don’t usually have open roster spots to hand to rookies. That’s what makes a guy like Heyward a rare exception.
I think the precise question is whether it is true that teams that know they are going to compete make different calculations, or whether cost simply trumps wins for many teams. Your assertion that competitive teams make decisions differently than the Astros will look obviously wrong to an A’s fan. Many of us A’s fans think Russell at short and Lowrie at second is the best way for the A’s to enter this season, and that Lowrie at short Sogard/Callaspo/Punto at second could indeed cost a win or two. Now, I admit that there is an argument that Russell will benefit from more time in the minors. The point is, I guarantee you 100% that with the A’s, the paramount issue is cost control on Russell over the next bunch of years, which means the decision has already been made on non-baseball grounds, and in a way that works against the interests of players, even though the A’s are going to be competitive and are on the bubble. The questions raised by this article are first, whether there is a system that could change the decision making process on Russell, and second, even if we could come up with such a system, whether the two sides could come to an agreement to do it.
Your point is well taken. I will amend my statement to say that every team makes their own calculation. I think that wins is definitely a consideration for the As and the Rays as well, even with their financial situation. But Russell is not Heyward, or even Springer for that matter. Russell hit .277/.377/.508 at high A last year. Obviously that’s very good, and it’s even better considering his age and the fact that he’s a SS. But scouts say that the hardest jump to make in the minors is from A ball to AA. I think a cautious person, money aside, would argue he needs half a season at AA, a mid season promotion to AAA and then he can contribute as a September call up. And currently the projection systems seem to regard Callaspo and Sogard as similar if not better hitters than Russell at the MLB level right now.
Heyward on the other hand had hit .352/.446/.611 after his promotion to AA, he took walks, had great contact rates, and hit for huge power while being a plus defender. There was no rationale baseball reason to return him to AAA. And in the Braves evaluation Heyward was a player they probably envisioned signing long term. So the extra year of control meant less to them.
Great article! Is there any provision in the CBA that specifically addresses holding a player down for the purpose of manipulating service time?
I understand there’s a plent credible case to made that Springer needs extra time in the minors, but let’s just say that we had some emails from Astros management that said “Springer is our best outfielder, but we’re sending him down to gain an extra year of service time.” What CBA provision, if any, could that violate?
Thanks again!
They aren’t allowed to explicitly do that for service time reasons or a grievance can be filed. However, the team can easily argue it is for development and other reasons that are vague enough that it is hard to prove the team’s sole intent is service time manipulation. It would literally turn into an argument about who decides when a player is ready for the major leagues and that is something that is simply not black and white enough for a legal resolution against the team. Thus, the team can easily squash any grievance as it is currently constructed.
This is my understanding.
I wrote elsewhere about the distortions that arise in team strategy from this silliness.
Take my Pirates for example.
If the service time rule was a clear 7 years of control AND the team was sold on Polanco and Taillon as major league ready then.
1. They likely do not tender Snider – and save that money OR they try to move Snider to 1st base – a better option
than Lambo
2. They likely do not sign Volquez – and save that money.
3. They do not do a bunch of bottom feeding and gather up the Ishikawas, Deckers, Mcguinesses etc.
Fans would see a starting lineup that is probably 2 WAR better than what will now be on the field.
Some astute GM will figure out that going through all this crap to get an extra year of control on 2 prospects – one or both of whom could fail BTW is not strategically sound.
Giving Polanco 50 or so ST at bats to “get ready” for his MLB debut and working Taillon a couple of more times would also have been a better use of limited coaching and playing time IMHO.
Concur 100%. Polanco clearly is the best RF option offensively and defensively right now. Taillon is clearly superior to Volquez. But they will both toil in Indianapolis while we watch Jose Tabata and Edinson Volquez at PNC. Go Bucs!
The Bucs are not exactly a lock for the post-season. It seems silly to risk a shot at the playoffs based on absurd calcuations about service time. But this is the result of the preposterous service-time rules.
Important rule of economics: Rational decisions are made at the margin. What does that mean here? Let’s assume Polanco is a 3-WAR player right now and is a 4-5 WAR player at his peak (really aggressive but plausible)
Option A: Start Polanco opening day. Get 6 years, 3 of which (2017-19) are arbitrated
Option B: Start Polanco May 1. Get 7 (really ~6.83 years), 4 of which are arbitrated (2017-20)
Option C: Start Polanco June 15, get 7 (really ~6.58 years), 3 of which are arbitrated (2018-20)
Going from A to B involves a marginal cost of 0.5 2014 wins. It saves probably 2m/yr 2017-2019 from the arbitration process (will be a lower vintage bucket). It also ensures control in 2020, which will probably come at a $5m or more discount to his open-market value. Total received value is $11m, $7.4m NPV if you discount at 7%. Implied price at which you are “selling” wins = $14.8m/WAR
Going from B to C- marginal cost: 0.75 2014 wins. Marginal savings: probably $4m in 2017 (avoiding arb) and probably $2m 2018-2020. Total savings $10m, $7.1m NPV discounted at 7%. Implied price at which you are ‘selling’ wins = $9.4m/WAR
Combining the two adds up to selling 1.25 wins for $14.5m (NPV, actual cash deferred), implied price $11.3m/WAR.
The other way to look at it is in reverse: Should the Pirates be buying 0.75 wins for $9.4m? Should they be buying 0.5 wins for $14.8m? Considering they thought they couldn’t afford to pay $14.1m for a full season of AJ Burnett they absolutely shouldn’t be paying those prices for partial years for Polanco, and those prices assume he’s a 3-win player from day 1. If he’s anything less those prices look way worse. If the Pirates were in a ‘closing window’ situation they could plausibly be justified, but with the amount of young talent they have that is not the case, quite the opposite in fact. Given their budget constraints they are really going to want those extra $ the are saving, esp in 2017-18
Suppose the MLBPA agrees that teams receive seven years of control in return for the following:
1) Fractional years are rounded up. If a player has six years and one day of service time in the majors at the end of a season then he becomes a free agent.
2) Players become arbitration eligible after their three year anniversary of being in the majors instead of after having three years service time. Naturally, a player with one year service time would receive less money than one with three years service time (just like it works now).
3) Due to the extended roster, games in September don’t count towards service time. If a prospect was called up for the first time in September then he’d have zero service time at the end of the year despite being in the majors.
What does the union get out of this? It sounds like it all favors the league. I also don’t understand #2. How is that doing anything? You’re not going to do arbitration cases in season–there’s no much back and forth and the team has to criticize the player to win it’s case.
An interesting thought might be seven years of team control, with fractions rounded up, and four years of arbitration (so essentially every player becomes a Super 2). The teams get the seventh year without having to worry about service time manipulation, but they have to pay an extra year of arbitration, so players who would have otherwise been “delayed” instead get paid better. This would actually incentivize teams to call up prospects on opening day to maximize the return on investment. The arbitration system might need some time to stabilize though to adjust for the extra year.
I suspect that scenario would be considered too player friendly, but it’s actually reasonably fair. The other problem is that it would de-incentivize teams to call up prospects later in the season. So if a guy is killing it in Tripe-A on a non-contender, he’s not getting called up. This would especially hurt pitchers on innings limits, as the only scenario a big pitching prospect might get called up midseason is for a team that’s legitimately competing for a spot. Teams that are running away with their race and don’t intend to use the prospect in the playoffs anyway won’t call him up, and teams out of their race wouldn’t either. Only the team that needs the upside of an extra regular season win or two would have reason to sacrifice a year of service later for the present.
Look at a player like Chris Tillman. His debut was July 2009 but because he was ineffective for the first three years of his career he still isn’t arbitration eligible. #2 means he would be arbitration eligible in 2013 instead of in 2015. Fully agree that you’d do arbitration at the end of the year and not in the middle.
A player that starts the season and doesn’t ever get optioned would indeed have four years of arbitration. A player that is optioned many times may have five or six years of arbitration.
Agree that it would de-incentivize calling up players in the middle of the year on non-competitive teams. I don’t think it’s a big loss because those players get minimal benefit from being called up as is. And they would get a chance to show their stuff in September.
The problem with the six-years-and-a-day concept is that it would likely kill the idea of a September cup-of-coffee for a top prospect.
Some might argue that’s a good thing because it doesn’t make sense to play one month with different roster rules anyway, but it’s pretty established and I’m not sure they’d want to eliminate it.
I have long believed that Major League Baseball has too many years of team control. With effectively 7 years of team control, even a solid prospect that breaks into the league at age 22 won’t get his first year of free agency until he is 29, at which point he is already entering the downside of his physical prime. I feel it has contributes greatly to the current broken dynamic, i.e. teams that rely on massively underpaying young players for their production vs. players that that are massively over-payed for their decline years.
Except the team has already spent tremendous resources on cultivating and coaching that talent to get them to the point where they can contribute.
Of course, the team reaps a windfall when a young player comes up through the system and is a superstar. Nobody questions that. Similarly, teams incur tremendous expense when they pay, coach, feed, and transport hundreds of players through the minors that will never sniff at the major leagues.
Teams will be less vested in their young talent if they lose the incentive to leverage that talent for 6-7 years at reasonable costs.
Actually, how does that work exactly? Most AAA affiliates are extremely profitable due to their low operating cost (The Iowa Cubs actually have a negative operating cost due to stadium naming rights) I can’t pull the numbers for AA affiliates, but I would imagine that they mostly break even as well. The minor league players rights are owned by the Major League club. So, who picks up the tab for his salary as a minor league player? What costs do the affiliates cover and what costs does the major league club squad cover. How are the profits devided? If fangraphs or someone else has already run an article on how the major leagu Club and the minor league affiliates financial relationships works could someone point me to it?
The Major league affiliate pays the players salary (not sure who pays the per diem) leaving operating costs and a few employees as the Minor league teams expenses.
Most minor leaguers make 5-10K per year. Only those on the 40 man roster make any real money, and that’s only 50-120K. Coaches and scouts are not paid well either. The biggest cost is probably the bonuses paid and whatever the costs for affiliations are. Travel, meal, housing and medical benefits are not huge either I don’t think relative to MLb salaries.
And the Cardinals have been saving money through drafting collegiate seniors, moving them slowly through the minors, and reaping salary savings by controlling an entire player’s prime. See Allen Craig, Matt Carpenter, and David Freese, who all debuted at age 25. Obviously Freese was deemed expendable, but the Cards basically got his entire prime for very little money. Craig and Carpenter signed very team-friendly deals rather than going year-to-year in arbitration, but will likely be in their decline phases as soon as those expire and they hit free agency.
I realize the Cards didn’t draft Freese, but forgot to specify that.
What about just using age? All players become FAs after their seasonal age-27 seasons.
Seems like that would significantly affect the desirability of college vs. prep and international draftees. (Sorry for the double post; meant to do this as a reply.)
Maybe… 16YOs generally spend a lot more time in the minors than 22YOs. I don’t have any actual number handy, though could be solved with a tiered system…?
Maybe a player drafted or signed as a 22 year old would become a FA at age 29 [seven years], a 16 year old at age 26 [ten years] and something in between for the ages in between…
Would it really? How many 18,19,20 year olds are there in MLB? I would say make it age 28 season. This model would essentially place an incentive on getting kids to the bigs sooner to maximize production. For most players being drafted at 18 or 21 woudl make little difference since they both reach the bigs at about 23. Thhen go 6 years and the hit free agency at 29, similar to the current system, but without the forced AAA time.
Wouldn’t this hurt the players that are the root of the issue right now? Elite players like Trout, Harper, etc, would get screwed. Decent players that make the big leagues at 25, they’d come out way ahead.
Seems like that would significantly affect the desirability of college vs. high-school and international draftees.
I don’t think it’s that easy to get away from the 6 year/7 year argument. The only legitimate way to do so that I can think of would be to do away with the service clock entirely. But doing so would do a lot of harm to teams who want to call up players in September, because no team is going to do away with a full year of a player’s service time in order to have him sit the bench for three weeks.
The other end to consider is arbitration eligibility. My least favorite thing in baseball is Super Two status because teams use it as their guideline for when they bring players up in the summer. I totally understand sending a player to the minors because you think he needs more seasoning, but hearing, “He’ll come up after two more starts,” always sets me off.
I think an easy trade off would be for MLBPA to give up that 7th season with the language along the lines of “any player who has appeared in a Major League game in 7 separate seasons” (excuse my lack of legal jargon) in return for giving players arbitration eligibility after a player appears in two such seasons, provided they did not only appear in the Majors in September.
Basically, the effect of that would be that teams would burn a service-year by calling up a player in September while not starting their arbitration clock. This would heavily incentivize teams to bring up players as early as possible. Also, it would give players an opportunity at going through arbitration 5 times.
Making the cutoff 6.01 service years would accomplish exactly what you suggest- remove the service time incentive to stach players at AAA on opening day without changing the fundamental reality of 7 years of team control. Super-2 issues would still remain, but this would be the simplest solution with the fewest unintended consequences
I don’t really care about making it easier for guys in their 20’s to make a lot more than the $.5M they are making (or whether they have to play an extra 2 weeks or 2 months in the minors so the team can make more money).
I am just amazed that a mediocre prospect would turn down a guaranteed $23M for any amount of time, even if it were for the rest of his life.
Kid, that much money is more than enough to buy anything you want that is not totally ridiculous.
In my day, we played for the love of the game! And respected our elders! And did things the right way! And if someone offered us $2,000 per season by god WE TOOK IT!
And then had a dangerous logging job in the offseason. But still.
“And if someone offered us $2,000 per season by god WE TOOK IT!”
Right? I hate the presumptuousness of telling people what contract offers they should and should not accept, how much money is enough for them, how much is “too much”, etc etc.
Take care of your own house. A player wants to bet on himself and play for a better offer? Totally his right; more power to him.
If somebody wants to tell me that Wal-Mart makes too much money, because they are exploiting their workers to increase their profit margins, I’m willing to listen. But a baseball player is an employee, and taking less just means that the billionaire owner gets to keep more. I can’t imagine a good argument for that. And no lower player salaries don’t mean that ticket and concession prices would be lower, because those prices are dictated by supply and demand, not team costs.
Springer a) is not at all a mediocre prospect b) has the most highly rewarded skill (power) by arbitrators c) even if he turns out to be a ‘bust’ vs his hype ought to be a 2-win player on defense/power even if he only hits .225. Turning down the offer is a big risk and a big bet on himself, but it’s entirely possible his arb awards will become 10/14/18 given the inflation of overall salary levels. Just as possible that the Astros end up offering him twice as much money in 18 months.
Also, with him it’s not like the alternative to baseball is driving a truck. He’s a sharp guy whose dad is a big time lawyer in CT. If he washed out of baseball in 3 years he could probably just go to law school, join his dad’s practice, and be back to making 500k before he was 40
Right, because it is so much better for owners like Jeff Loria to continue pocketing as much of the multi-billion dollar industry profits as possible while strong-arming local governments to pay for his stadiums. I would much rather make it easy on those guys to get paid than the group of 20 somethings I’m actually paying to watch play.
The simplest solution would be to change it from:
any Player with 6 or more years
to
any Player with more than 6 years
It would only hurt a tiny number of players and it would be beneficial for many others in accruing service time.
Wow. You seriously don’t even understand basic constructions of the English language…
There is one HUGE point missing here… not all prospects when they come up, come up for good and stay.
Sure there are some sure fire guys that you can wait 20days in April (or whatever the # is) to get a 7th calendar year, but a lot of prospects are up and down so gaming the system up front doesn’t always work.
This analysis should really be done looking at SERVICE TIME years not calendar years. Are there a bunch of 6.999 guys hitting FA or is it a wide spectrum? (I don’t know what the rounding point is, it’s obviously not there – and I’m using the actual fraction not the traditional years.days format)
This analysis is based on an over simplistic model of holding a prospect out for a month calling him up and he’s up for good. How do you distinguish up front (in terms of new rules) who a “top prospect” is from a guy who might need to be sent down for a month or two somewhere along the way if he’s struggling?
Changing the rules will only change the way the system is gamed.
6 or more years presumably takes into account players who have signed extensions and also players who have been free agents after 6 years and say are free agents against in their 9th or whatever year.
By playing games with the service clock teams can keep players a couple of years longer than 6 years, but the service time is still 6 years plus an add number of days before a player becomes a free agent.
MLB wants to increase the age at which players first enter free agency as this helps suppress salaries. MLBPA should threaten to hold out until it is reduced to 4 years, or better yet, free agency for all after a players age 28 season. In return they can agree to longer PED suspensions.
(This is an edit of a previous post somewhere greener…)
The Player Association (union) gained so much power now, that it is enchanted by its own sense of control. For the good of baseball (business), fans, and players (development), the P.A. should relieve the club owners from the Curse of Arbitration, and go straight.
They and club owners complicated the rules to an extent of not doing what they wanted. The arbitration is good for players, who after 3 years of slavery can finally channel their disconcert via justice. But it’s not necessary, if only the rule made more sense.
Slavery means without the freedom of choice. Fans like me complained about the recent inflation of free agency price. What we never discussed is the false belief taught to younger athletes that they can put through the draft, enter a system owned by a ballclub that they might dislike, and ask more as they climb up the pro ladder. It rarely actually happened. Even the young men who excelled every stage of the system. They wasted their prime years without a voice because someone blocked, or the contract issue, as portrayed in the above article.
Illusions. These players have no choice whatsoever of their career path now that they are IN the system.
Things must start from the basics. If every player was free agent from start before entering the system, and we can offer a simpler system, then a balance towards athletes who choose big money and local loyalty (by lesser but not small monetary benefits) will help both small clubs and big clubs.
Right now, the system benefits the Marlins, with a management group (owner included) acting as parasites by spending and staying as doormats, in order to collect shared revenue via well-marketed clubs such as Red Sox and Yankees.
Do you think most casual and international viewers tune in to watch the Marlins and buy Marlins gears? No. They buy Red Sox, Dodgers, and Yankees, among other winning teams some years.
MLB had become ridiculous by encouraging the failures to profit, while the hard working and innovating leaders to give away a major portion of their earning.
No more draft. Plain free agency. The world will be a better place. Korea and Japan will follow. Maybe Kim Jong-un will invite Brian Wilson to party with him and Dennis Rodman, and the Crimea Territory will start five baseball academies.