Re: Just Baseball: Major League teams OTHER THAN the Tribe
Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:35 am
by TFIR
Bowden: Top candidates Steve Cohen and the Mets should pursue to lead baseball operations
Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein looks on during a spring training baseball workout Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, in Mesa, Ariz. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
By Jim Bowden 39m ago 10
The Mets’ top priority this offseason must be to hire a new leader of baseball operations, and owner Steve Cohen must be prepared to make whomever he appoints the highest-paid executive in Major League Baseball history. In my view, he should pursue three candidates: Theo Epstein, Erik Neander and Derek Falvey. Landing a top candidate will be key if Cohen truly wants world championship-caliber teams on a perennial basis.
The Mets have failed miserably with their past two general manager hires. Jared Porter was fired in January just 37 days into his tenure, then suspended through at least the end of the 2022 season by MLB, the result of an ESPN story that revealed Porter had sent dozens of inappropriate text messages sexually harassing a female journalist. Acting GM Zack Scott, who replaced Porter, was arrested last Tuesday and charged with driving while intoxicated in White Plains, N.Y. He was found asleep at the wheel of his car at 4:17 a.m., refused to take a breathalyzer test and failed a field sobriety test, according to police. Scott pleaded not guilty to the DWI charge and has been put on administrative leave by the Mets. Regardless of the legal outcome of the case, the Mets are not expected to retain him after the season.
The Mets have been the laughingstock of baseball over the past few years with seemingly one mistake after another and a string of public relations blunders. They have systemic organizational issues and a serious credibility problem, which will not be solved just by making one good hire. Those issues extend beyond baseball operations, raising questions such as whether team president Sandy Alderson, who returned to the Mets with a respected track record after Cohen bought the team last September but has overseen the dysfunction that’s ensued since, should help shape the next revamp. Cohen will have to answer that one. That said, to reverse the franchise’s fortunes and change the club’s culture, hiring a successful leader for baseball operations is an important step in the right direction, so let’s discuss, in my view, the top three options.
Epstein, a consultant in the commissioner’s office, is the obvious choice. He won World Series with the Red Sox and Cubs, breaking the longtime curses that plagued those franchises, and one can envision him hitting the trifecta with the Mets on his way to the Hall of Fame. It might cost the Mets a 10-year contract and more than $100 million, but Epstein would be worth it. He’s a respected, strong leader who cares as much about low-level ballpark employees as he does an assistant GM. He’s a team builder who expects staffers to hold themselves to the highest of standards. He gives people room to do their jobs but demands excellence. He’s always learning, adapting and thinking outside the box.
He didn’t have particularly diverse front offices in Boston or Chicago, but Epstein has said both privately and publicly that he’ll make significant hiring changes aimed at greater diversity.
Epstein, 47, has always been willing to take huge risks in trades and free agency, hitting big on most moves but also having some swings-and-misses, including the eight-year, $184 million deal he gave Jason Heyward, and his crosstown trade of Eloy Jiménez and Dylan Cease to the White Sox for José Quintana. But every Hall of Fame executive has made mistakes. You have to take risks if you want to win. Your job as a leader of a baseball operations department is to win championships, not just trades, drafts or free-agent signings.
Epstein delivered his most recent world championship — 2016 with Chicago — by hiring Jed Hoyer as GM and Joe Maddon as manager, trading for Jake Arrieta, Anthony Rizzo, Aroldis Chapman and Kyle Hendricks, drafting Kris Bryant, and signing Jon Lester in free agency, among many other key moves. Epstein succeeded in every category: hiring, trading, free agency, drafting (amateur and international), even player development. It’s clear why he’s been considered at the pinnacle among baseball executives over the past couple of decades. Epstein is the no-brainer top choice for Cohen, who should do what it takes to try to land him, including giving him an ownership share and full autonomy in baseball ops, if necessary.
Neander should be second on Cohen’s list because he’s outperformed every executive in baseball since the Rays hired him as senior vice president and general manager in November 2016. His wins per revenue and wins per player payroll are the best in the sport, and it’s not even close. Heck, Wall Street should be hiring Neander, based on his results.
The Rays have become MLB’s model organization, so much so that big-market teams continue to tap their front office for key hires. Andrew Friedman left Tampa Bay to join the Dodgers in 2014, Chaim Bloom departed for the Red Sox in 2019, and James Click headed to the Astros in 2020. Neander could have followed his former Rays colleagues to Boston or Houston, but he wanted to stay put. He has a young family, loves the Tampa-St. Petersburg area and is comfortable with the organization. However, as was the case with Friedman, it’s hard to turn down an opportunity to become the highest paid front-office exec in the sport, and the Mets are in position to make that happen for Neander.
Neander built the Rays into a World Series team last year. He did it with pitching, defense and athleticism, and by prioritizing the hit tool over the power tool. Since last offseason, the Rays have lost their three top starting pitchers — via free agency (Charlie Morton), a money-saving trade (Blake Snell) and injury (Tyler Glasnow, Tommy John surgery) — yet they still have the American League’s best record this year. How difficult is that? Just ask the last-place Washington Nationals, who were world champions just 23 months ago.
Neander, 38, is on the cutting edge in technology, analytics, science and scouting. He hires bright, young baseball people and trains them to be next-generation executives. Maddon, who worked with Neander when he managed the Rays, said this about him:
“Erik was one of the strongest voices, even back then (when Friedman led Tampa Bay’s baseball operations, and Bloom and Click were in the front office). He was the guy I wanted to hear from. Erik would be the guy, to me, that would come up with different thoughts and ideas. He was the creative component of all of it. … I know firsthand what he did. … I’m happy for all the guys, but Erik doesn’t get enough credit, I don’t think.”
Well, it’s time Neander gets the credit. The Rays would have to let him leave if he’s presented with the opportunity to go to the Big Apple, just as they did when they let Friedman go to La La Land.
That brings us to Falvey. The Mets probably would have the most difficulty just getting permission to talk with Falvey, because he’s Minnesota’s president of baseball operations and this would be a lateral move. Falvey joined the Twins in October 2016, so he’s led their baseball ops for nearly five years. His track record, particularly for a leader in a small market, has been remarkable with first- or second-place finishes each year until this one, and three playoff appearances.
Falvey, 38, previously was an executive with Cleveland, where he contributed to all aspects of professional and amateur player procurement and development. He’s a strong leader with a down-to-earth, loose approach. He’s very articulate. He knows how to build a winning culture. He has a special ability to blend analytics, scouting, makeup and science in player-evaluation decisions. He is exceptional at finding value free agents and trading for undervalued players, such as Joe Ryan, whom he landed from the Rays in the Nelson Cruz deal at the trade deadline.
The Mets missed out on George Springer and J.T. Realmuto, the top names in last year’s free-agent class. They traded for the wrong player — Javier Báez — at the deadline. Their last two GMs have flamed out. It’s time for the Mets to get it right, and a good start would be hiring Epstein, Neander or Falvey this offseason.
Re: Just Baseball: Major League teams OTHER THAN the Tribe
Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:36 am
by TFIR
The adventures of Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins:
Can Blue Jays make a real wild-card push? Can Yankees find consistency? Breaking down an important AL East series
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 06: Marcus Semien #10 of the Toronto Blue hits a home run during the first inning of a game against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on September 06, 2021 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
By Kaitlyn McGrath and Lindsey Adler Sep 6, 2021 16
This week, the Blue Jays and Yankees are playing a series for the first time since June, when New York swept Toronto in Buffalo. Both teams have seemingly lived a lifetime since then.
The Blue Jays arrived in New York coming off maybe their best series of the season, a sweep of the Oakland A’s in dramatic, offensively explosive fashion at home. The sweep helped the Blue Jays inch closer to a wild-card spot. Meanwhile, the Yankees are coming off a disappointing series loss to the Baltimore Orioles and seem to have regressed to the mean after their 13-game winning streak in August catapulted them into playoff contention.
After the Blue Jays’ 8-0 victory over the Yankees and the Rays’ extra-innings win over the Red Sox on Monday afternoon, Toronto sat three games behind Boston for the second wild-card spot and 3 1/2 games back of New York for the first wild-card spot. With three games left in this series, and to mark the occasion of meaningful September baseball between these division rivals, The Athletic’s Kaitlyn McGrath and Lindsey Adler tried to make sense of the AL wild-card race between the sides.
McGrath: Lindsey, I feel like you and I have had many similar experiences covering our teams this season. Although the Blue Jays’ and Yankees’ particular issues are different — for Toronto, it’s been a leaky bullpen for much of the season. and for the Yankees, it’s largely been an inconsistent offence — neither has followed a straight path. Both teams are a little confounding. For instance, the Blue Jays have a plus-136 run differential and yet they’re fourth in the AL East.
But the vibes around Blue Jays coming into New York were already good, and the series couldn’t have started much better for them, with Marcus Semien and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hitting back-to-back home runs off Jameson Taillon in the first inning Monday. (It was Guerrero’s 40th home run of the season.) I’m wondering where are the Yankees at right now?
Adler: The 2021 Yankees are doing what the 2021 Yankees do: showing baffling inconsistency in all facets of their game.
I feel like I’ve spent my entire summer trying to explain the New York Yankees to people who do not have the privilege of watching them every night, and I guess the biggest theme is that they’re continually playing in tight games. It doesn’t really matter what the situation is that day: The pitching could be good and the offense will be sluggish, or the offense will have a good day and the pitching falters and keeps it a close game. In my life, I’ve seen individual humans have a psychological addiction to drama (hi), but it’s rare to see a baseball team trend toward anxiety the way the Yankees have this year.
The pitching has been what’s kept the Yankees in contention, but the situation is looking a bit iffy in September. Reliever Jonathan Loaisiga is on the injured list with a shoulder strain, Zack Britton is out for the season, and Aroldis Chapman hasn’t exactly been reliable all season. They’re getting great results from Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery, but Taillon looked shaky in recent starts after a great couple of months on the mound. Monday’s game looked like it could head that way for Taillon, but after giving up those first-inning home runs, he settled in to work around some hard contact and fielding errors to give the Yankees seven innings of three-run baseball. Not much he could do about the fact that he got no run support.
As for the Jays, are they good? Has the bullpen improved? Are they going to make a real wild-card push?
McGrath: These Blue Jays are never boring. They have an offence that’s capable of blowing out a lot of teams, but when they’re not scoring at least six or seven runs, things can get dicey. They are 54-14 when they score five or more runs and 14-38 when they score three runs or fewer. They’re also 13-15 in one-run games, so basically they are the anti-Mariners.
Yes, the bullpen is better than what it was in May and June, but it still has its warts. Essentially, Charlie Montoyo has four guys he trusts in high-leverage moments: Adam Cimber, Trevor Richards, Tim Mayza and closer Jordan Romano. The situation, however, is a little more interesting in September. The hard-throwing Nate Pearson is up in the pen now, and so far he’s had a so-so outing and a good one. But if Pearson can command the ball, his power arm can be a huge plus. Also, the enigma that is Julian Merryweather — whom Yankees fans might remember from his lights-out appearances in the opening series — is here in New York. He’s been out with an oblique strain since April and the Blue Jays are going to be very cautious with him, but he said Monday that his velocity on his fastball is where he wants it and his curveball and slider have been sharp in his rehab outings.
What’s really been key for the Blue Jays lately, though, is the starting pitching. Robbie Ray is a bona fide ace, and the rest of the rotation has been feeding off his dominance. In the second half, the Blue Jays starters own a collective 3.29 ERA, which is third in the majors, just ahead of the Yankees, who have a 3.30 ERA.
Hyun Jin Ryu, who started Monday, has lately been in the middle of the pack among Toronto’s starters, allowing 10 earned runs over his past two starts (9 1/3 IP). He’s had a few ups and downs this year, but he was fooling Yankees batters Monday, allowing just three hits over six scoreless innings with six strikeouts. After only 80 pitches, it was a bit of a short hook, especially given the bullpen’s volatility, but Ryu said afterward that his forearm felt tight after throwing his slider more than he usually does, so he felt like he was done for the day. Neither Ryu nor Montoyo appeared concerned about his arm.
Finally, to your question about the Blue Jays’ postseason chances, they still don’t have an easy path, with FanGraphs placing their odds around 24 percent. They still need to make up three games to pull even with the Red Sox and 3 1/2 against the Yankees with a month to go. The key for them, not unlike the Yankees, will be all aspects of the roster — offence, starting pitching and the bullpen — firing at once. On Monday, the Blue Jays did just that. If they keep playing this way, they will be dangerous — but it’s going to be about maintaining that level all month long.
Adler: The Yankees just dropped a series to the Orioles, and the Red Sox have rebounded after hitting a skid in August. Losing this game to the Blue Jays — a game in which Taillon gave them a good chance to win — is going to upset a lot of Yankees fans, and understandably so.
The Yankees don’t really need to be the hottest team in baseball in September to make it into the postseason, but they need to steer out of whatever regression they’re dealing with now after their 13-game win streak in August.
This Blue Jays-Yankees series is the perfect example of why timing is everything in baseball. The Red Sox and Rays are playing each other this week, which means the AL East could get slightly closer for the Yankees or their grip on the Red Sox could bolster their own wild-card positioning. The Yankees don’t totally control their own destiny here, but they do preach that they try to “control what we can control.” They’ve looked to be in control of very little control over the past week or so, and the semi-chaotic Blue Jays are already making life more difficult for them.
McGrath: There was a question about whether the Blue Jays offence, after scoring 29 runs against the A’s over the weekend, could stay hot on the road … and it seemed to answer that with an emphatic “yes” on Monday, including a ninth-inning Semien grand slam that served as the exclamation point on the win. After a sluggish period for the offence in August, the Blue Jays have turned it around so far in September. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has played a role in the turnaround, batting in 13 runs in his past five games and hitting .361/.418/.611 over his past 22 games. Although he is a streaky hitter and tears like this are not uncommon, he makes the lineup that much scarier when he does hit a hot streak. Semien said a key has been hitting better with runners in scoring position, which was a trouble spot last month.
“We’re starting to get a good feel for how teams are attacking us, especially with runners in scoring position,” said Semien, who pushed his career high for homers in a season to 37 after picking up two Monday. “We’ll have to pay more attention to that. And I think Lourdes getting hot and doing what he’s been doing has been big for our lineup. Teoscar as well, just because it makes us that much more deep. And you even look at the bottom of the order, the catchers are hot right now. And things are just going well right now.”
Perhaps the only thing not going well might be the health of George Springer. In the eighth inning, he fouled a ball off his already-not-100-percent left knee, precisely where he’s not wearing protection, and looked to be in a lot of pain when he struck out swinging. For now, the team is calling it a left knee contusion. Montoyo said Springer is day-to-day and that resting him over the next few days is on the table. Springer’s bat is the key to the top of the lineup, but he’s clearly hurting, so if the entire lineup can keep up the recent momentum, the Blue Jays could likely weather a few games without him, even these important ones against the Yankees.
This is a pivotal — and potentially season-defining — stretch for the Blue Jays as they look to build on a five-game winning streak. To make the postseason, they still need the Red Sox and/or the Yankees to falter, but they can have a hand in that this week in New York.
“(The) sweep that we had at home, and we come into Yankee Stadium, first game, 8-0. I think that’ll give you some confidence,” Semien said.
Re: Just Baseball: Major League teams OTHER THAN the Tribe
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:21 pm
by TFIR
Assembling a starting pitching factory: Are the Kansas City Royals trying to emulate the Cleveland Indians?
CLEVELAND, OH - SEPTEMBER 20: Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Brady Singer (51) delivers a pitch to the plate during the first inning of game one of the the Major League Baseball doubleheader between the Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Indians on September 20, 2021, at Progressive Field in Cleveland, OH. (Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By Zack Meisel and Alec Lewis 5h ago 7
CLEVELAND — As summer arrived, Cleveland’s starting rotation was in tatters.
A club reeking of desperation shifted Cal Quantrill from a relief role to a starting gig. They asked him to pitch on short rest. And serve as the de facto ace. J.C. Mejia, Sam Hentges and Eli Morgan, the other members of the band of misfits, were making their first forays into major-league action.
The results were unsightly, especially relative to the production Cleveland’s starting pitching had delivered in years prior. The Indians’ starting pitching factory was built on the backs of Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco and Mike Clevinger and Trevor Bauer, but those players were all traded in the last two years. This summer, questions were raised about whether the factory had stopped functioning.
So as the 2021 season winds down, why does Cleveland’s front office insist the club is well-positioned to contend next year? It starts with, well, the starters.
The rotation has a different composition now. Quantrill and Triston McKenzie (despite a rough outing against the Royals on Monday) have blossomed to form a strong quintet with Shane Bieber, Aaron Civale and Zach Plesac. Four of those five hail from the 2016 MLB Draft, with McKenzie, the youngest of the bunch and the lone high school pick, a 2015 selection.
After the early season growing pains, the pitching factory is operating again at full capacity. But the Indians are no longer the only AL Central club emphasizing such an organizational assembly.
It seems as though every pitcher the Royals trot out to the mound belongs to their 2018 draft class. Is this a matter of copyright infringement? Have the Royals consciously attempted to emulate what the Indians are doing?
Alec Lewis, Royals beat writer: What’s interesting is, last year, when Cleveland was in Kansas City, I asked multiple Royals officials about Cleveland’s pitching development: What do you think of this? How do they do it?
Beyond applauding the job Cleveland has done, the responses didn’t reference some magic bullet but rather a belief.
“Pitching is really fragile,” one Royals staffer said. “And when you put together a group like that in the same cycle, so to speak, you’re going to benefit greatly.”
Basic, maybe, but profound. The takeaway, at least for me, was: Don’t underestimate the benefit of having multiple guys of similar ages and competitiveness, driving each other.
Now, to answer your questions directly, I don’t think we need to call the copyright cops on the Royals here. If current Royals owner and former Cleveland minority owner John Sherman had been in Kansas City prior to the 2018 draft, maybe there would be grounds for some side eyes. But this all happened before he arrived.
The Royals didn’t expect Brady Singer to fall to them at No. 18 in the 2018 draft. They didn’t think Jackson Kowar, Daniel Lynch and Kris Bubic would be available with their next three picks after that. Sure, they knew college pitching was the strength of that draft, but they didn’t plan to take a college arm with every top pick.
They did, though. They put together a group in the same cycle. And now, three years later, a bevy of those guys, including others such as Jonathan Heasley and Carlos Hernández, are in the big leagues, shouldering great responsibility as this club attempts to pull itself out of a rebuild.
Before I keep going about the present, though, I am curious, Zack, about comparing and contrasting the scouting and development of Cleveland’s arms: When scouts and officials talk about what they saw in Plesac, Bieber and the like, what do they say?
Zack Meisel, Cleveland beat writer: The Indians have a type. They pluck starting pitchers out of college who demonstrate proficient command on the mound and are motivated to work diligently off of it. Their scouts devote a ton of time to learning about players’ makeup. If pitchers boast those two traits, the development team can work with them to tack on some velocity and add the necessary secondary pitches to create an effective arsenal. Bauer and Clevinger used to tease Bieber about throwing an upper-80s fastball when he entered the system. No one’s laughing at his endless supply of plus pitches now.
The organization eliminated certain natural barriers between their scouting and development departments early in manager Terry Francona’s tenure in Cleveland. Scouts can identify which pitchers might thrive in Cleveland’s system. You have to have the proper people and the right system in place, though. And once some pitchers prosper, it allows the organization to pinpoint what works and it arms them with examples of success stories to share with newcomers who join the fold.
Bieber, Plesac and Civale were never high-end prospects. When the club traded for Kluber, he wasn’t listed among San Diego’s top 30 prospects. Clevinger was a reclamation project.
But take Bieber as an example. His velocity increased as he moved through the system. The pitching team helped him craft a changeup to equip him with another out pitch to deploy against lefties, even though he was having little trouble outwitting minor-league hitters. Quantrill has adjusted his repertoire this season and emerged as a vital rotation piece. (An aside: Quantrill owns a 1.76 ERA in 13 starts since the All-Star break, and he’s limited opponents to zero or one earned run in 10 of those starts.)
The key with those guys, and with Civale and Plesac: They possess great command. Their walk rates in college and the minors were microscopic. So, they can learn new pitches or tweak old ones, but they can usually throw them precisely where they want. That’s hard to teach.
Lewis: It’d be interesting to see the looks on Royals fans’ faces after reading that last paragraph because, well, the one issue with every young Royals starter this year has been … command.
And the only way to understand it is to go back to the scouting and drafting, as you did. The Royals, similar to Cleveland, focus heavily on makeup. Will the pitcher want to put in the work after they receive a signing bonus? Do they have the presence that a frontline starter needs? These are questions the Royals scouts ask.
Then there’s their actual pitching ability. And this is where, it seems, the copyright infringement discussion loses steam. The Royals seem to identify big-bodied, long-limbed pitchers who already have “stuff.” Take Singer, Kowar, Lynch and Bubic, for example. All are taller than 6-foot-3. All entered the Royals system with a plus pitch. Bubic is the only one who doesn’t have mid-90s velocity, yet the Royals selected him at No. 40 in the 2018 draft because of the effectiveness of his changeup.
That draft guide has continued in recent years. In 2020, the Royals drafted Asa Lacy, whose stuff was out of this world but whose command certainly was not. That year, they also selected Will Klein, a converted catcher, who threw 100 mph but hadn’t pitched many innings. Even this year’s college selections highlight the strategy. They selected Eric Cerantola, who is 6-foot-5 and throws 100 mph but walked so many batters Mississippi State left him off its College World Series roster.
This draft strategy, in effect, means the onus has been on the Royals to improve command, which they’ve actually done by shortening the movements of Hernández and reliever Domingo Tapia.
Some of these youngsters, however, have continued to struggle to throw strikes.
Meisel: Let the record show, the Indians aren’t beholden to drafting one specific model of pitcher. They snagged Daniel Espino, for instance, in the first round in 2019. His fastball sits in the upper-90s. Command and durability will dictate where he winds up in a couple of years. But their preferred pitching profile often comes with guys who don’t receive first-round grades. Bieber was a college walk-on-turned-fourth-round-pick. They scooped up Plesac in the 12th round. They have converted unheralded trade acquisitions into award-winning starters.
Lewis: You know, it’s funny. When asking the Royals staffers about Cleveland, one mentioned scouting Plesac in college and then said: “Is it talent? Yeah, it’s talent. Is it being able to command and locate? Yep. That’s what you see with these guys. They just keep pounding the bottom of the zone and elevate when they need to.”
We’ve talked about scouting, though, so now I’m curious about development.
You mentioned adjusting repertoires. The Royals’ pitching development staff improved Lynch’s changeup in 2020. Triple-A pitching coach Dane Johnson also shifted Kowar’s slider this year. Rarely, though, have the Royals done this at the big-league level. Things seem to stay pretty stagnant once the pitchers arrive in the majors after going through the development system.
Does that sound familiar at all? Or no?
Meisel: This is where Cleveland benefits from its pitching culture. Bauer studied Kluber’s breaking ball one winter and then attempted to replicate it in a lab. Bieber developed a cutter and then, lo and behold, Clevinger experimented with one of his own. Bieber helped Plesac tinker with his curveball earlier this year. Just last week, Logan Allen explained that he altered the grip on his curveball after conversing with Bieber. And, obviously, the major-league coaches and front-office analysts are involved in the process. (By the way, there’s another left-handed Logan Allen — Logan T. Allen — who fits the mold of a command-first rapid riser through the system. Cleveland drafted him last summer. He could debut next year.)
The Indians have fostered that sort of information-sharing climate. For that to materialize, it requires pitchers who are driven to improve, which ties back to the scouting element of the operation, as well as instructors who can translate the wealth of data into terms the pitchers can easily digest and understand. It’s one thing to tell Bieber he needs to add a changeup. It’s another to illustrate exactly how that pitch will make his other offerings more effective. Ruben Niebla, the team’s assistant pitching coach, has been the mastermind behind Bieber, Plesac and Civale all shortening their throwing motions. That degree of delivery overhaul isn’t something a coach simply tells a pitcher to complete. Civale and Niebla spent all last offseason working through the mechanical changes so Civale understood the benefits.
Cleveland’s pitching factory emerged about five years ago, around the same time the club’s starting pitchers began watching each others’ bullpen sessions every afternoon. That practice has continued, even as the faces in the rotation have changed. It certainly helps that coaches could point to Bieber as an example for Civale and Plesac, and Civale and Plesac as examples for McKenzie, and now McKenzie as an example for the next wave.
Are the Royals on their way to building that sort of environment?
Lewis: That’s certainly their hope. Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred have deployed the every-pitcher-watches-every-bullpen-session strategy, too. What’s missing, it appears, are the examples for these youngsters to lean on, or the direct information that can illustrate how to enhance an arsenal.
For example, the Royals have asked Singer to throw a changeup all season. He hasn’t, in part because his is not a stellar pitch. That may be where more experienced pitchers could step in. Granted, the Royals signed Mike Minor in the offseason. Experienced youngster Brad Keller also could serve in that role. But maybe the Royals would benefit most by Singer, Lynch or Kowar taking another step, especially by the time prospects such as Alec Marsh and Lacy arrive.
If that can happen, the Royals will be well-suited for the future, given they selected three high schoolers at the top of this year’s draft (Frank Mozzicato, Ben Kudrna and Shane Panzini). The club’s ultimate hope would be that they arrive in time to learn from the guys who found a way to remain at the big-league level and have success the way Bauer, Clevinger and Bieber did, which then continued with Civale, Plesac, McKenzie and Quantrill.
Meisel: The Indians had 21 picks in the 2021 draft. They selected 19 pitchers. Eighteen of them were college pitchers. So, the factory will have plenty of material to work with in the coming years.
Clearly, the Royals are paying attention. And the Indians can appreciate that.
“It’s a huge compliment,” Cleveland pitching coach Carl Willis said. “That has to speak volumes to not just what we’re doing here, but to our amateur scouting department, our player development staff, the caliber of talent we’re able to identify and acquire in the draft, and then to be able to continue to stress their strengths and maybe give them a little nugget, whether it’s a different pitch or a small adjustment with a pitch, to allow them to progress and be equipped to come to the major leagues.”
Re: Just Baseball: Major League teams OTHER THAN the Tribe
Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2021 5:59 pm
by TFIR
How we got here: The decisions and changes of the last decade that brought players and owners to a looming labor fight
By Evan Drellich Sep 23, 2021 62
For five years now, a narrative has persisted inside baseball: that when Major League Baseball and the Players Association last agreed to a collective bargaining agreement, in 2016, the union was too focused on creature comforts, on luxury bus rides. That the players lost sight of the most important part of bargaining, the core economics.
“These guys were talking about travel getaway days and more meal money, and the union leadership was afraid to talk to them,” one team source said.
But like most matters of labor relations and economics inside baseball, the reality is more complicated. Although there is a camp that maintains the players’ primary shortcoming was a focus on quality-of-life issues, another says that is false.
“Literally before the ink was dry on the 2016 (CBA), I can remember reading the two-seats-on-the-bus narrative,” another industry source said. “That’s total bullshit. It’s total bullshit.”
For those who say the narrative is off, the strongest argument probably lies in the proposals the union actually made to the league in 2016. Among them:
• The elimination of teams surrendering draft picks when signing free agents, which was intended to incentivize teams to bid on players.
• A considerably higher competitive balance tax (or CBT) threshold, which would have raised the amount of money a team can spend on payroll before being penalized.
• A new formula to determine draft order. Rather than the current system, which is based entirely on win-loss record the year before and rewards the worst team with the best pick, draft position would have been calculated with a 60-40 formula: 60 percent based on record, and 40 percent on other factors, including a club’s market size. This was aimed at reducing tanking.
• Doubling the percentage of players eligible for arbitration after two years of service time — the number of Super Two players. This was a way to get more money to younger players.
• In the same vein, the union also proposed standard bonuses for most players prior to arbitration, and changes to how service time is credited.
• Changes to revenue sharing, meant to address tanking.
A union that had truly lost sight of core economics, one could argue, would not have made those proposals. Yet, at the same time, few of these elements actually made it into the final deal. The CBT was raised, but not as much as the union proposed.
“I look at the result. What was the result?” one player agent said.
As the 2016 CBA nears its conclusion on Dec. 1, the industry consensus remains that players fell short in the last go-around. That the league firmly won the last round of bargaining, and perhaps the prior round as well. Today, the players’ dissatisfaction with the status quo is well established, headlined by down free-agent classes in some recent years.
Mistakes were indeed likely made by the players, but a desire for better bus rides doesn’t fully explain them. How baseball got here — what exactly has happened inside the sport not only in the last five years, but the last decade and beyond — is a contested story. Knowledgable voices in the industry, almost all of whom would speak only anonymously, have different views, sometimes reflecting their own self-interest. Some believe that the answer doesn’t even lie primarily with the CBA: That a sharp change in club behavior is most responsible.
The 2011 CBA
“To do a representative story,” one player agent suggested, “you have to include four CBAs, not two.”
Bud Selig was commissioner for more than two decades, through 2014. His background, as an owner of a smaller-market team Milwaukee Brewers, is said to have greatly influenced what he pursued in bargaining with the players.
“Although he tried to mask it, he was about getting a benefit for the small-market teams,” one executive said. “That’s really what he was about.”
Baseball’s last work stoppage was the 1994-95 strike. In the first labor deal the players and owners reached afterward, two important elements were introduced: revenue sharing between teams, and a luxury tax on payroll spending, known as the competitive balance tax. The league framed its desire for those mechanisms around improving competitiveness and parity.
“How it was sold to the players was that revenue sharing money was going to be used for competitive balance,” the executive said. “Luxury tax was going to be a drag on spending, not a cap on spending. And that would equal competitive balance. And as a result, you know, there was good faith that teams would honor that concept.
“What happened is, it worked. … That wasn’t good enough for Bud.”
Over time, the league sought and gained further changes to both revenue sharing and the luxury-tax system. But some in the industry suggest the result has not been what Selig and the owners said it would be. That what the changes have stifled player salaries relative to revenues. As one agent put it: “You told us shit in ’96, in 2002, in 2012 and ’16, and none of it’s true. You’re just taking the money and pocketing it. That’s it.”
Entering negotiations for the last CBA under Selig’s tenure in 2011, small-market teams trained their sights on one area in particular, the amateur draft.
Prior to 2011, teams could spend what they wanted in the draft. The commissioner’s office made recommendations as to each pick’s worth, but teams were free to exceed them, and big-market teams often did.
The large-market teams had another draft-related weapon, too. Clubs who lost players in free agency often received compensation draft picks. The departing player didn’t have to be a superstar, either — even more middle-of-the-pack players made a team eligible to receive a pick. So a deep-pocketed club like the Red Sox not only had an increased ability to sign players who had high-bonus demands in the draft. The compensation system also allowed the Sox to sign or trade for players whom they knew they could someday let walk, and gain a draft pick for in the process.
It’s a strong example of how, even prior to this decade, front offices used the CBA to their advantage. But by 2011, the small-market teams were fed up.
The union in 2011 agreed to allow the draft to be capped. Each team would have a fixed pool of money for signing players, and to greatly exceed that pool would bring penalties so onerous that no team would be likely to do so. A new system for free-agent compensation arrived as well: the introduction of the “qualifying offer,” which was not so liberal in granting draft picks when players signed with a new team.
“Those deals were really set up to placate the pretty powerful small-market lobby,” one large-market executive said. “Even if you let a free agent walk, you get like the 80th pick as opposed to the 30th pick. When we read the ’11 CBA, we were weeping. In every possible way, it was an attack on large markets that are trying to win in different ways.”
Drafted players have always been immensely valuable. Steve Cohen, the Mets’ owner, tweeted this year that “baseball draft picks are worth up to five times their slot value to clubs. I never shy away from investments that can make me that type of return.” A first overall draft pick might be worth upwards of $100 million, other team executives have said, particularly when accounting for opportunity cost.
But one agent in particular, Scott Boras, believes that over the last decade, the change in the draft system has had a profound effect on free agency. Prior to 2011, a top pick could set a price to sign for and hold out for it. That’s much harder to do now, because team spending is capped.
“Because of the draft, club behavior has changed dramatically,” Boras said. “Where before you had to pay ($15.1 million) for Stephen Strasburg, now you only had to pay $6 million. And the key thing is you’re assured of signing him. … When you have the No. 1 pick now, you’re going to get the best player. Before, the No. 1 pick didn’t ensure you’re getting the best player, because you couldn’t afford to sign him.”
The draft, in other words, provided more certainty than before for any team that wanted to get cheap, young talent. And because draft order had always been tied to win-loss record, the only way to guarantee high draft picks became losing. And when a team doesn’t mind losing, it’s probably not going to spend much in the free-agent market.
“The surety of the draft structure allowed an overhaul of how and why teams started tanking,” Boras said. “Because those draft picks were that valuable.”
Yet, not everyone agrees with that assessment.
“Draft picks became more valuable to some degree because of the price,” one industry source said. “I think at the same time, the rise of analytics in the running of baseball teams coincides with — I’m not saying exactly — the changes in the draft. So it wasn’t just price that made draft picks more valuable. It’s the fact that draft picks are young. And young talent, the teams finally realized, was more valuable than older talent.
“I think that the decline in the free-agent market was because the teams finally figured out that, ‘We’re not going to continue to pay for what players did for us yesterday. We’re going to pay for the guys who we think are going to help us tomorrow.’”
On the players’ side, the 2011 CBA was led by Michael Weiner, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 51. Weiner was widely respected for his acumen and approach, and remains a beloved figure among those who knew him. But, at least in hindsight, some question the strength of the 2011 deal.
“That 2011 deal was really the first one where players first started to kind of give things back,” an industry source said. “I would probably say 2011 certainly emboldened the clubs as it related to 2016.”
The 2016 CBA
The next CBA, in 2016, is still in force today. It’s often referred to as a “status-quo” deal, because it didn’t drastically change from the previous iteration. That opens a small debate: if the ’16 deal is similar to the ’11 deal, is the ’11 deal, then, where the union really went wrong?
“The biggest thing about ’16 was the act of omission, like not significantly raising the CBT,” one club-side source said.
But considering that the union did, in fact, make proposals to swing the economics in the players’ direction in ’16, the bigger question is: Why didn’t most of those proposals go anywhere?
The answer seems to be twofold. The first is that the union didn’t fully appreciate what was coming in the sport. It didn’t believe that the issues, both as they understood them at the time and as they saw them developing in the future, required a massive push. Not that the union was totally ignorant to what was going on — as the two-seats-on-the-bus theory suggests — but that the players didn’t grasp the importance of immediate change.
“Despite all the gnashing of teeth and that kind of thing, everybody was doing well,” one person involved in bargaining said. “The industry was doing well in 2016.”
Whether the players should have made a different assessment is a fair question. Gene Orza, a former top official at the Players Association, said in 2018 that the resource the union may have lacked most was institutional recall. Weiner had passed away, and Tony Clark was in his first negotiation as the MLBPA’s executive director. Orza had retired years earlier. Don Fehr, the MLBPA’s longtime director before Weiner, was leading the NHL’s union.
On the other side, Rob Manfred was in his first negotiation as commissioner, but he had been involved in the sport’s labor scene since the 1980s. He had an experienced lieutenant, Dan Halem, as well.
“We had tremendous archival capability,” Orza said in 2018. “That has changed. Rob has been around now for 20 years. Tony’s been around for one negotiation. The staff is composed of people who had very little negotiating experience.”
But others reject that assertion as waxing poetic about the past.
“Everybody talks about the Marvin Miller and the Don Fehr days, but they were shooting fish in a barrel at that point,” one industry source said. “That’s how dumb the other side was.”
Regardless, there were signals that the waters would only grow colder for players. Right after the 2011 CBA was reached, two clubs notably embarked on tanking processes: the Cubs and the Astros. Houston’s rebuild was more extreme overall, stripping payroll down to its barebones. But both clubs benefited from high draft picks, and Luhnow worked hard in his time with the Astros to use free agency as a supplement, rather than rely on it for his roster. Even before those teams won championships, the Cubs in 2016 and the Astros in 2017, they were considered by many to be smart and successful. Baseball is a copy-cat industry.
Entering the 2016 negotiation, clubs and owners were generally moving in lockstep in one direction: value extraction. The release of “Moneyball,” the book by Michael Lewis about the 2002 Oakland A’s, had a profound effect on front offices and owners. It set many teams on a path to find new inefficiencies, to find ways to win at as low a cost as possible. Owners have always wanted to win as cheaply as they can, but by 2016, the effort to do so was growing fervent. Front-office executives were young, and often products of Ivy League schools or their ilk.
Teams developed and used analytics to assign dollar figures to players with more precision than they had 10 or even five years earlier. Clubs also seemed to be more commonly exploring various corners of the CBA to figure out what they could leverage — tanking and the draft being one example, a means of acquiring the best young, inexpensive players. Clubs also started acting more brazenly in holding players in the minor leagues to keep the player away from free agency longer.
All of that was already happening by 2016. But assessing the landscape was only half the union’s battle.
In labor negotiations, either side can ask for anything it wants. But if the other side says no, or makes counter-proposals your side sees as untenable, there’s really only one decision to be made: How many games, and paychecks, are you willing to miss to fight for a given change?
For example: In 2016, the league suggested to the union that it was ready for a battle over the international amateur system. In something of a parallel to the amateur draft, big-market teams had used their muscle to sign international players, and small-market teams didn’t like it. But the owners were willing, or at least telegraphed a willingness, to fight long and hard for change. The players conceded — not by giving the league what it wanted most, which was an international draft, but by allowing a cap on each team’s international spending.
Neither side makes concessions just for fun. They do so because they think it is their best choice, given the alternative.
So even if you identify the most obvious element the union should have fought for in 2016, what remains is a question of how far the players would have, or could have, taken that fight. And on that front, the answer is clear: The players were not ready for a lockout or a strike, and that might have been the biggest error of all.
“The mistake made in 2016 was not preparing the players for a work stoppage, for a war,” one industry source said. “I don’t think that those conversations took place in 2016. I don’t think they needed to take place in 2016, because we weren’t headed there.
“Ordinarily that would be a big part of it, is preparing your guys for a work stoppage. In spring training of 2016, in spring training 2015, players were told, ‘Save your money.’ The usual speech. It was never brought to: ‘We’re about to enter a war, and the only way that we can fight this war is if you, the players, have the money to fight it.'”
Club behavior
The players didn’t leave the 2016 deal entirely empty-handed. In 2011, the new qualifying-offer system had made it newly onerous for teams to sign free agents. This time, the union got that system modified in its favor, although still not without drawbacks.
More often when the 2016 deal is criticized, it’s because of the luxury tax. The CBT threshold grew only $6 million in the first year of the current deal, to $195 million. Not only that, the penalties became tiered, punishing teams more severely based on how far over the threshold they went. New, as well: Some teams that went over the CBT threshold could also incur penalties in both the amateur draft and their international spending pool, through what can be termed “non-monetary penalties.”
One industry source regretted that the players did not fight harder for a greater increase. The players, they said, also “never should have agreed to the non-monetary penalties within the CBT structure. Those kinds of non-cash penalties, added together, I think did have, does have, a downward pressure on markets.”
But just how impactful the CBT is remains debated. On one hand, major-market teams that have plenty of money to spend do seem to avoid the threshold — and are irrational in doing so, some would argue — because the penalty for going just a bit over the CBT isn’t large. But nonetheless, big-market owners often want their teams to stay below the first tier.
“When the CBT doesn’t go up, it automatically means you’re going to be spending less on players and pouring it more into other places,” a large-market executive said.
But some people say the CBT doesn’t matter much at all, usually for two reasons: A, some teams would never spend enough to reach the threshold anyway; and B, almost all teams have decided free agency is best used conservatively. That a groupthink has set in during the last decade, an outgrowth of “Moneyball” and analytics, where teams mostly value players the same way, and have settled on the value of youth.
“I think going over CBT thresholds made you a bad actor in the current ownership group,” one industry source said. “Which didn’t use to be the case. You also had a lot of the kind of old-school, big-market owners die off, or sell. Not having George Steinbrenner own the Yankees. Not having Mike Illitch own the Tigers. The places where you might get an owner’s kind of emotional buying of a player which would drive the market, it doesn’t really exist anymore. And those things … it wouldn’t matter what’s in the CBA.”
But would that groupthink really be divorced from the CBA, or entirely so?
“I think it’s really impossible to separate club behavior from the CBA,” an executive in the sport said. “Club behavior is always moving in certain directions — it’s always getting smarter, it’s always getting better informed, and it’s always going to be ruthless, and it’s always going to be self-interested. And yes, it’s changed a lot, because the information age has changed. Power’s been consolidated a bit in different circles, and so the types of things (front offices are) doing are different. They’re going to prioritize value and winning, and yes, that’s more so now because of the McKinsey effect. But that shouldn’t take anyone by surprise. It’s the CBA and the rules that enable certain behavior, tolerate certain behavior, allow certain behavior. Or in other cases, prevent it, or delay it. And so they’re sort of inextricably linked.”
It might be more accurate to suggest that the CBA was ripe for this particular type of groupthink to set in. Baseball players need six years of service to become free agents, and usually three years to hit arbitration. The wait until those paydays, then, is both long, and a long-entrenched feature. Teams have known for decades that young players were valuable, but until the last decade or so — until the advent of new and theoretically more precise ways to measure performance — teams did not see as large a gap between young players and many veteran free agents. In other words: the design of the CBA had some longstanding pores. And when clubs started to realize, largely through analytics, that there was even more value to be gleaned from young players, the system was easy to leverage.
A league win?
Should the story be only that the union has lost ground? Many people in the industry note that teams have grown savvier. That teams are still willing to pay for elite talent, but have learned they need not pay top dollar for mid-level talent, because cheaper, comparable players can be found readily.
One theory goes that Manfred and his top negotiator, MLB COO Dan Halem, have successfully guided a vision for club behavior. The commissioner’s office, and its labor relations department in particular, have become something of a breeding ground for club front offices. David Stearns of the Milwaukee Brewers worked at the LRD. Chris Young of the Rangers was a top league executive. A.J. Preller worked for the league, as did several others who work for clubs.
“Rob has always been one to try to convince owners why the way they were running their businesses didn’t make sense,” an industry source said. “‘You don’t have to spend this much money.’ And I think he was able, over a long period of time, to populate a lot of clubs with people who came through the commissioner’s office … To me, that’s how it happens. You know, people refer to this kind of ‘groupthink,’ and I think there’s an aspect of that, and certainly it’s a major copycat-type of industry. If you want to call that vision, then you can call it vision.”
At the bargaining table, Halem’s experience is said to have directly paid dividends.
“I heard Halem basically outmuscled them,” an executive said of the 2016 negotiations. “It was a matter of endurance and pulling all-nighters. Halem was able to think straight and get the issues right and in the end, the union was like, so divided, so fragmented.”
But there’s also an opposing view: That the league actually screwed up in 2016 by agreeing to a deal some viewed as too far in the league’s favor.
“Rob made the mistake, and I think he made a very bad mistake. Same with Dan,” an industry source said. “They knew this was such a lopsided agreement, they knew in effect it would act as a cap, they knew in effect all through these years, that these small-market teams, despite grievances (filed by the union) and everything, were not spending money on players or player development or anything. They were putting it into their pocket.
“I knew people were going to wake up, that these were going to be the consequences: that free agents weren’t going to get signed if you were in the middle. Older players weren’t going to get signed. And it was going to lead to a lot of bad blood. In other words, everything about labor was incremental. This was way over the fucking line.”
But the notion that either side would ever back away from a deal because it was too good might be pie in the collective-bargaining sky.
In 2018, the MLBPA ran its own free-agent camp during spring training because there were so many unsigned veterans. Later in the year, the union hired a new lawyer to guide collective bargaining behind Clark, Bruce Meyer. Rick Shapiro, a central figure in the 2011 and 2016 negotiations, then was fired by the union in 2019.
MLB and the union briefly held midterm bargaining talks, in 2019, while the current deal was ongoing, but those fizzled out quickly. Last year, the two sides fought bitterly and publicly as the sport was restarting during the pandemic, and a grievance filed by the union following that showdown is still pending.
Where are we now?
The question now is whether the players will achieve changes that bring the system closer to their liking, and how painful the process will be either way. The union believes that through a combination of incentivizing competition and removing restraints on the free-agent market, the players will do better. It also believes there are ways for players to be better compensated prior to free agency.
“When the revenues increase in totality, the players’ salaries should increase,” Boras said. “The rights of the game that were identified in the collective bargaining agreement need to be returned to the players for free agency without the onerous taxation and prohibitions via the draft that disincentivize teams from pursuing the best players available. And baseball’s a beautiful game, because we all know that particularly in a playoff setting, that teams that are projected to win often don’t win. Because that’s the nature of the game. There’s many ways to win in our game. One is through major-market dynamics. One is through building and development. Another one is through trade intellect. But we must stop tanking.”
Compared to the last go-around, players and the union are more conscious of readying for a fight. It’s not uncommon to hear people in the industry suggest that a work stoppage is coming prior to the 2022 season.
“One hundred percent convinced there’ll be a lockout,” said an industry source who has experience in bargaining.
That doesn’t mean there will actually be one, because no one at this point knows, or could know. Too much still can and will happen between now and the expiration of the 2016 deal, on Dec. 1.
If a deal is not agreed to by then, the owners could shut out the players, pausing the standard player transactions of the offseason. But a lockout doesn’t necessarily mean any games will be canceled: It would depend on how long the stand-off lasted. Wrap up a new deal in January, for example, and spring training can still start on time.
Sorting out the core economics might well wait until the last minute, as it did in both 2011 and 2016. To this point, both sides have made one proposal each on those economics. Neither side liked the other’s, but that probably shouldn’t be surprising.
“Historically, the initial proposals by both sides have been a wish list,” one industry source said.
Said another: “It’s normal course not only for baseball but for every labor negotiation, for first proposals not to go anywhere.”
The complete details of either proposal are not known. But the union has proposed that players become eligible for arbitration after two years, instead of three. It also has again proposed a change to draft order, increases in the minimum salary, raises in the CBT, changes to revenue sharing, changes to the way service time is calculated, and bonuses for players who have yet to reach arbitration. Under certain circumstances, some players would be able to reach free agency sooner than six years, as well.
The league proposed to effectively send the luxury-tax threshold in the other direction, to $180 million; to increase the penalties for exceeding it as well; but to also implement a soft floor, a penalty for teams who do not spend at least $100 million. The league also proposed to eliminate salary arbitration in favor of a predetermined pool of money to be distributed to players. Under MLB’s proposal, players would become free agents once they hit age 29 1/2, which might help some players who would otherwise have become free agents later, but hurt the best players who presumably would, under the current system, become free agents younger. (Players would also be walking out into a market where teams might be less inclined to spend than they are now, because the CBT threshold would be lower and the penalties for exceeding it would be higher.) The league this year also proposed that a team could not pick in the top five of the draft three years in a row, and has again has proposed an international draft.
Some details of the league’s initial proposal were first reported by The Athletic, others by the New York Post.
Back in 2011, MLB also proposed a stiffer CBT system in conjunction with something of a floor — although the mechanism was different than what the league has proposed this go-around. The union was uninterested, and talks did not pick up steam again right away. A lull may be in the offing again now, too.
“Every negotiation is different,” one industry source said. “There could be a significant amount of back and forth, or the whole thing essentially could just get put on hold until the very end. And they’ll negotiate on some ancillary type of issues to try to check off as many boxes, or reaches as many agreements, as they possibly can, and leave the big economic issues to the very end. Then you could be in a world where each side is making four or five different proposals a day. So it’s impossible to put any timeline on when the next economic proposals will be made.”
When those next proposals do arrive, the discussion will be about everything but bus rides.
