Cleveland Sports Forum

I would like hear something definitive on Naylor; is he ready? close to ready? will he be ready? will he restricted to 1st base?

Drellich: How MLB players won, and why it also feels like they could have won more


By Evan Drellich Mar 11, 2022 145

NEW YORK — Across sports, players’ unions don’t start these fights anymore and they certainly don’t win them, so it makes what the baseball players just pulled off that much more impressive.

Prior to the lockout that ended Thursday, baseball had a 26-year lull without a work stoppage. During that time, every other men’s sport not only had owner lockouts, but lockouts motivated by the owners’ own attempts at change — to add, to claw back, to institute a salary cap. And every time, those owners succeeded, in full or in part.

For more than a quarter-century, players had never been the aggressors in a work stoppage. They’ve perpetually been stuck on defense, and sometimes, the results have been ugly. In a 1998 illustration that’s still famous in basketball circles, then-NBA commissioner David Stern was depicted riding a horse, trampling Patrick Ewing and the head of the basketball players’ union. Even the famous 1994-95 baseball strike was a defensive measure, at least in part. Bud Selig and company wanted a salary cap, which the players staved off, and all the owners got out of it were piddling things called the luxury tax and revenue sharing.

So it is pretty remarkable that in 2022, baseball players not only went on the offensive, but actually left a stoppage with more than they arrived with, not less. The $20 million increase in the competitive balance tax from 2021 to 2022, now starting at $230 million this season, is the largest increase ever. The $129,500 increase in the minimum salary, up to $700,000 for this year, is also the largest year-over-year jump. The pre-arbitration bonus pool amounts to $250 million in new money over the course of the deal alone.

Yet, it is telling that the union’s vote on the proposal they accepted Thursday afternoon was 26-12. That roughly a third of the executive board felt there was more to accomplish right now, in continued negotiations in 2022, not in the future.

It tells you where the sport is coming from, a reminder of how many areas players felt had gone askew in the last decade, if not longer. There was a lot that players set out to change, and had outlined publicly. Some got done here, some didn’t, some might in the future, and some might never.

“We went into negotiations this year with a pretty big list of things we felt needed to be addressed,” one veteran player who was in favor of the deal wrote to The Athletic on Thursday night. “Getting young players more closely compensated for the value they bring to the league was high on that list. Substantially raising minimums and creating a merit-based bonus pool both address that concern. We also knew it was our responsibility to keep incentivizing teams to be competitive rather than mediocre and happy.

“The competitive balance threshold lags far behind where we believe it should be based on team and league revenues. So the hope is that pushing these new thresholds up will take away the excuse for teams not acquiring the talent they need to win.

“Did all of our concerns get addressed in this agreement? No. And they will have to be dealt with in the future. But we feel good about the progress made today. And we get to play now, which is what we’ve always wanted.”

In the conference room where Rob Manfred gave his press conference on Thursday night, other MLB officials milled around, and you could see the sense of relief, the smiles. Manfred’s first words in addressing the public: “I have to say, I am genuinely thrilled…”

He’s not always a good salesman — how many deadlines were there in the last week and a half? — but he sold that sentiment. The commissioner should be ecstatic, as everyone in the sport should be, that baseball is back. But it was also a telling vibe: There was no detectable sense of regret among management for the language in the new deal, no sense that the owners had given too much, had bent too far. It may exist somewhere, but it’s not prevalent.

The player side reaction was more mixed, muted. Because two things, ultimately, are true about this 99-day lockout: the players achieved a lot, and they could imagine achieving more. The group of eight players who deal with the union leadership most intimately, the executive subcommittee, all voted to turn down the owners’ proposal. But the vast majority of player representatives to each team, some of them acting directly on the wishes of the teams they report to, felt, at the least, satisfied with what the owners offered. So those closest to the union’s process were more committed to extending it.

Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees and formerly a chief negotiator in baseball, likes to say that bargaining is incremental. That sentiment exists on the players’ side, too. It was Levine who oversaw the arrival of the luxury tax coming out of the 1994-95 strike. And over time, slowly but steadily, the owners worked that element increasingly in their favor. They played a long game, one that sped up in the last decade, to make gains. The players, if they want to continue to make strides, likely have to play the same game.

“I’ve never been surprised at the solidarity of the MLBPA,” Manfred said Thursday evening. “It may be one of the best unions in America. It has been historically, that’s for sure.”

In the last 100 days and in the last five years, the players took a step toward reaffirming that standing. A larger step could have been taken, but that shouldn’t obscure too much of the one that was.

It is noteworthy that the player-negotiators all voted no. But also proof that their union works democratically!

How will baseball’s new labor deal work? A look into the future: luxury tax, expanded playoffs, draft lottery, more


By Jayson Stark Mar 10, 2022 82
Unless you’re a lawyer, a negotiator or a serious labor wonk, we’re guessing you won’t be reading all 130 pages of baseball’s new labor deal. Trust us. It doesn’t exactly zip along like “Bossypants.”

So here’s the deal. Here at The Athletic, we do the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. We’ve dug deep into six of the most important new aspects of this labor agreement — and we’re happy to give you a preview of why they’re in there, how they’re supposed to work and whether they will accomplish their mission.

As always … you’re welcome!

1. Hey, let’s play all 162
WHAT’S THE POINT? Nine days after commissioner Rob Manfred said, into every microphone in his Florida press conference room, that it was no longer possible to play all 162 games, his sport finished off a deal Thursday in time to play — it’s a miracle — all 162 games. So nobody has to haggle about whether the players will get a full year’s pay or a full season of service time.

But does salvaging an entire season reel back all those fans who said last week they were done with baseball if a single game was lost? Maybe not. But whatever. Stay tuned.

HOW IT WILL WORK: We await the details of the re-engineered schedule. But you know those two series that were “canceled” a week ago? They’ve been magically un-canceled. Or at least those games will be made up in some way, shape or form. We conferred with people familiar with scheduling. And it turns out it is possible to do all of this:

• Play the full 162.

• Add one three-game series to the back end of the season.

• Cram in the remaining games somewhere along the way — through mutual off days, doubleheaders and other magic tricks.

• Expand the playoffs.

• But not change the dates of the World Series — by playing the postseason inside a tighter window, with some tricks we’ll describe later.

YEAH, BUT WILL IT WORK? Let’s wait for all the details. It’s still possible that to get to 162, all teams in a division won’t play the same schedule. So that’s a potential issue guaranteed to provide hours of enjoyable sports talk show programming. But otherwise, this was the best possible solution, and one that wouldn’t have been possible without a deal this week.

One more thing! With the season no longer ending on a Sunday this year, that also gives us a potentially epic grand finale of the regular season — in prime time, on a non-NFL weeknight. What’s the downside?

2. It’s tax season!
WHAT’S THE POINT? For weeks, luxury tax thresholds represented the single peskiest problem the two sides had to solve to push this deal over the goal line. They finally figured it out this week, when MLB agreed to bump the first tax threshold to $230 million. That’s well above where owners had set that bar in previous proposals. MLB also agreed to keep tax rates the same as in the previous labor agreement, after pushing for weeks for much higher penalties.

The only major wrinkle was a brand new fourth tier that’s already being called the “Steve Cohen Tax” — set at $60 million above the initial threshold (i.e., $290 million this year). How do you discourage certain mega-billionaires from pushing into a portion of the payroll stratosphere never before orbited by Mets-kind? That’s how!

HOW IT WILL WORK: The thresholds will increase gradually over the five-year term of the deal, from $230 million in year one to $244 million in year five. That also means that, at least initially, the second tier of tax penalties, with steeper rates, don’t kick in until $250 million — a level reached by only two teams in history. Guess who? The Yankees and Dodgers, of course. But Cohen’s Mets are a lock to join that club in a few weeks.

One development of note, which reappeared in the final version of the deal: Teams still will be able to reset their tax rates by dipping under the first threshold every few seasons. MLB had once proposed doing away with that feature, when it was discussing lower thresholds and stiffer penalties.

YEAH, BUT WILL IT WORK? After all the talk from players that they didn’t want a tax that had the same impact as a salary cap, guess what? MLB officials we surveyed weren’t so sure they accomplished that.

The good news for players: They did negotiate a huge jump in the threshold – from $210 million in the old deal to $230 million in year one of this deal. The bad news? Tax rates remain the same once teams pole-vault over those thresholds. So the only dramatic change is the Steve Cohen Tax, which even Steve Cohen isn’t likely to pay for long.

Now here’s what that figures to mean: You know those seven teams that came within $8 million of going over the threshold last year? They’re likely to do that same thing this year — other than the Mets, who are already well north of it. But if all those teams spend another $20 million or so apiece, that’s a notch in the win column for players, except for one thing:

It’s hard to see how that puts the “competitive balance” in the competitive balance tax, because teams that weren’t spending money before still have no incentive to spend now.

“All this does is just increase payroll disparity,” said one longtime club official. “Just because the Phillies go up $10 million doesn’t mean a team like the Marlins goes up $10 million.”

3. The playoffs: Cheaper by the dozen?
WHAT’S THE POINT? A 12-team playoff field is coming to an October Madness flat screen near you. Would it shock you to hear that money is the point? It almost always is, right? The New York Post’s Andrew Marchand has reported that MLB will scoop up an extra $85 million a year from ESPN by adding a third wild-card team in each league and expanding the wild-card round of the postseason from two games to as many as 12.

At a time like this, that money does a lot more than merely talk. It will sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” if you want it to.

HOW IT WILL WORK: Heads up. The squeeze play is on. Because Opening Day is delayed, the pressure is on MLB to fit the postseason schedule into a window as tight as possible. But even in future years, you can say goodbye to those tiebreaker Game 163s and to first-round travel days. They’re history. All deadlocks now will be settled with NFL-style tiebreaker formulas (starting with head-to-head records). Bucky Dent does not approve!

The wild-card round now works like this: First-place teams with the two best records in each league get a bye. The remaining division winner, plus the wild card with the best record, will host a best-of-three series. And all three games are at the site of the top seed. Despite all the talk of “ghost wins” to give division winners a greater advantage, they’re not part of this format.

One more thing! What are the odds that teams with losing records will regularly start making the playoffs now? Well, those odds are a lot longer with a 12-team field than they would have been with 14 teams, as the owners originally proposed. We did that math.

First, let’s toss out the 60-game pandemic season of 2020. In the eight full seasons since the dawn of the wild-card game in 2013, there would have been only one instance of a sub-.500 team (the 80-82 Angels, Rays, or Royals of 2017) sneaking into a 12-team tournament. And the extra wild-card teams in that time would have averaged 87 wins. So despite this expansion, the baseball playoffs will still be the most difficult to make among the four major professional sports.

YEAH, BUT WILL IT WORK? Here’s the important part. There’s a lot more going on here than just 10 extra playoff games in 72 hours during the first week of October. Expanding the playoff field could also potentially make all of this happen:

• Brace yourself for a very different kind of trading deadline. More buyers. Fewer sellers. Less incentive for teams hovering near contention in July to hold those depressing closeout sales — which doesn’t mean a team like the 2021 Cubs wouldn’t have held one anyway.

• On the other hand, this very well might alter the team-building philosophy of loaded big-market behemoths like the Dodgers. If they pretty much know in January they’re good enough to be in contention in July, do they spend less money to load up over the winter, knowing they can just put their final pieces in place at the deadline? That’s a topic of major debate in the industry.

• But what about small-market teams like the Rays, who believe they have a real chance to win — and could also host a wild-card round series? If one of those teams reaches the World Series, it could potentially play (ready for this?) 22 postseason games — and host as many as 14. Imagine the windfall. Imagine the club Christmas party. Sounds like a reason for teams like that to spend, and go for it at the deadline. “If I find myself in that position, I’m all in,” said one longtime small-market exec. “We’d get to the deadline, and we’re adding.”

4. Feel a draft? Welcome to the lottery
WHAT’S THE POINT? Gather up your ping-pong balls. It’s time to play the baseball lottery. And it’s all because the players decided they wanted to stop serving “Tanks”-giving dinner.

The union set out to discourage teams from tanking, but not this way, at least initially. Originally, the union proposed a complicated mathematical formula — not wholly based on won-lost record — to determine draft order. But owners responded with a draft lottery. And the union quickly accepted that premise. After that, it took three months for them to thrash around these two important topics:

1) How many teams should get tossed into the lottery pool?

2) How many years in a row should any team be allowed to be part of the lottery?

The answers are coming right up!

HOW IT WILL WORK: The owners’ first proposal was for a three-team lottery. The union’s initial response was eight teams. In the end, they settled on six. It’s hard to know exactly how that will play out. But you know what we’ll never see again? A team like the 2012-15 Astros picking first or second overall in four drafts in a row. Here is how the new system will prevent that:

A big-market team (one that pays into the revenue-sharing pool) can’t get a lottery pick more than one season in a row. A small-market club (one that receives money from the revenue-sharing pool) can’t be part of the lottery more than two years in a row. The highest those teams can pick once they’re bounced out of the pool is 10th.

So the draft will never be the same. The question is: Will tanking be the same?

YEAH, BUT WILL IT WORK? So will this be enough to end tanking forever? C’mon. Are you familiar with the NBA? Of course it won’t. A minimum payroll, or a reverse luxury tax on teams below a minimum threshold, would be a more effective anti-tanking idea. But can a lottery alone make a dent?

We surveyed longtime executives from every market size. They were unanimous in saying teams don’t tank just to get the top picks in the draft. And in a sport with no LeBrons, players who can walk in the door and change everything overnight, that makes sense.

Nevertheless, these draft rules will definitely leave their mark. For a December story on how to stop tanking, we looked at first-round picks in the 2010-18 drafts and measured their impact by Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement computations. Let’s revisit that study, this time using the first, second, third, sixth, seventh and 10th picks.

Draft pick values, 2010-18 drafts
No. 1
117.1
Bryce Harper (40.1)
No. 2
81.4
Kris Bryant (28.7)
No. 3
74.6
Manny Machado (45.2)
No. 6
32.4
Anthony Rendon (32.2)
No. 7
63.8
Aaron Nola (24.2)
No. 10
17.8
Michael Conforto (15.7)
(Source: Baseball-Reference)

So based on WAR, there was an incredible 100-win difference between the total value of the first pick and the 10th — the spot where bad teams would get placed after being ejected from the lottery. And there was still an 85-win difference between the top pick and the final pick in the lottery (No. 6). Which tells us this lottery will make an impact of some sort. But does that mean tanking will disappear faster than memories of Bartolo Colon’s homer? Don’t bet your CBT spreadsheet on it.

“I don’t see any teams changing anything because they may only get the fifth pick instead of the first,” one executive said. “There’s nothing I see in this deal that is going to end rebuilds or tanking. Other than the lottery, I don’t see anything else that specifically addresses tanking.”

5. Thank you for your service
WHAT’S THE POINT? The ghost of Kris Bryant hung over these negotiations from day one because addressing service-time manipulation was such a critical goal of the players. The result was one of their most important accomplishments: a provision that would seem to provide incentive for teams to elevate a transcendent, Wander Franco-type talent onto the Opening Day roster instead of keeping him in the minors.

HOW IT WILL WORK: Since we dropped Bryant’s name, let’s use him as an example. In 2015, the Cubs kept Bryant in the minors for the first 12 days of the season, in order to delay his eligibility for free agency until after the 2021 season, instead of 2020. It worked out well — for the Cubs. He went on to be the National League rookie of the year, and the Cubs got to keep him around for an extra season.

But that’s not what would happen if the next Kris Bryant follows that same scenario. Under the new service-time reward system, any player who finishes first or second in rookie of the year voting would get a full year of service time even if he doesn’t start that season in the major leagues. So if your team employs a young star and understands exactly how impressive he is, the thinking is, it might as well bring him north and have him around all year. Right? Hmmm.

YEAH, BUT WILL IT WORK? OK, here comes the tricky part. Will clubs honor the spirit of this rule? Or will they still be willing to gamble that a player like that won’t be a rookie of the year contender if they still play the service-time game and send him to the minors? (Remember, there are also extra draft-pick inducements for clubs who place players like Bryant on their Opening Day roster.)

“No, this will work — for four guys,” said one of the execs quoted earlier. “And from their standpoint, at least that’s better than none.”

But one longtime small-market executive had his doubts.

“Would this change when we’d call up a player, based on the possibility he’d get a full year of service? No,” that exec said. “If our plan was to keep him down there until June, the odds are that a guy who comes up in June would not be the rookie of the year, right? And what if we’re wrong, and he gets that year of service? Hey, that’s just the cost of doing business.”

That may seem cold, and 100 percent opposed to the spirit of this rule. But as cold-hearted front-office honchos have been proving for years, any system based on counting days is a system that can be manipulated. So why do we suspect we could be back in this same, uncomfortable place in five years, trying to remind the powers that be again that there’s something wrong with a sport that rewards teams for not putting its best players on the field.

6. The pool is open
WHAT’S THE POINT? Did you know Vlad Guerrero Jr. was worth $53.5 million to the Blue Jays last year? At least he was, according to FanGraphs’ valuation formula. But who said baseball was fair? So naturally, of course, his actual salary (of $605,400) fell slightly short of that — by nearly $53 million.

Now let’s spin this forward. If Guerrero had had that exact same season this year, he would have come at least a little closer to earning what he was worth, thanks to the new labor deal. Of all of the players’ gains in this agreement, none may be more impactful than the new $50 million bonus pool that will be paid out annually to the 100 best young players who don’t qualify for arbitration.

So how would that have worked in Vlad’s case? Well, his salary would have been higher for one thing, thanks to hikes in the minimum salary that kick in with this agreement. But most importantly, the bonus pool would have tacked on an extra $1.75 million — an amount he would have earned by finishing second to Shohei Ohtani in American League MVP voting.

Guerrero was just the latest, greatest reminder that young stars have never been paid their true worth in baseball. And this pool addresses those inequities in a way no previous system ever has in this sport.

HOW IT WILL WORK: The $50 million pool will be divided into two groups. The biggest dollars will go to players who have Vladdy-like seasons, based on award voting. Then the remaining dollars will be paid out based on a Wins Above Replacement formula that is still being crafted. Here’s the breakdown.

• $2.5 million to MVPs or Cy Young winners who aren’t eligible for arbitration.

• $1.75 million to MVP/Cy Young runners-up.

• $1.5 million to MVP/Cy Young third-place finishers.

• $1 million to MVP/Cy Young fourth/fifth-place finishers.

• $750,000 to rookies of the year.

• $500,000 to rookie of the year runners-up.

• $1 million to all-MLB first teamers, or $500,000 to all-MLB second teamers.

Then whatever money is left over gets divided among the top 100 pre-arbitration players, in a sliding scale based on a WAR formula that will be agreed on by July 1. You should know that there are people in the game who have side issues with attaching this much money to both award voting and WAR computations. But we’ll leave those side issues for some other time.

YEAH, BUT WILL IT WORK? Sorry to report there’s no pool, no system, not even any Powerball tickets in the works that would ever reward Guerrero’s 2021 season by paying him his “true” $53.5 million worth. But this is a start. And when you consider that the union convinced MLB to create this pool, despite zero precedent for anything quite like it in baseball, it represents an impressive achievement.

Plus, the cost of funding it breaks down to just $1.67 million per team per year. So it should have minimal impact on team-building or payrolls, even for the smallest markets. But …

That doesn’t mean the folks we surveyed didn’t have at least slight reservations.

“I liked this idea a lot in concept,” said one source on the players’ side. “I don’t like what it turned out to be, just because dividing the pool among 100 players wasn’t the intention. The whole concept was to reward the great young players in the game who were providing surplus value to their clubs but were not getting paid. But if you’re dividing it among 100 players, it means you’re all the way down to 1.0-win players, when the idea was to reward a guy for being a star.”

Nevertheless, these are players who have never been rewarded before. And the union no doubt hopes there’s still enough money in this for the stars that some of them won’t feel the need to jump to sign below-market extensions. So the unanimous verdict of the people we surveyed: A clear “WIN” for the players.

And now one last sentiment that appears to be unanimous. You know the best thing to come out of this lockout? It’s over!

How MLB’s new CBA impacts the Cleveland Guardians — in the present and future: Meisel’s Musings



CLEVELAND, OH - JULY 28: Cleveland Indians right fielder Franmil Reyes (32) celebrates as he rounds the bases after hitting his second home run of the game during the third inning of the Major League Baseball interleague game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Cleveland Indians on July 28, 2021, at Progressive Field in Cleveland, OH. (Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

By Zack Meisel 4h ago 4
The Cleveland Guardians’ complex in Goodyear, Ariz., is officially open for big-league business. Players will filter in throughout the weekend, with Sunday marking the official, mandatory report day.

A group of players — Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac, Triston McKenzie, José Ramírez, Logan Allen, Josh Naylor, Cal Quantrill, Sam Hentges, Justin Garza, Richie Palacios and Carlos Vargas — arrived at the facility Friday morning for physicals and some casual outdoor work.

Players were prohibited from communicating with the organization during the lockout, so there will be plenty of catching up to do over the next few days. Manager Terry Francona will meet with players. Hitting coach Chris Valaika will introduce himself to his new batch of hitters. The pitching group will gain a sense of how stretched out each hurler is. The training staff will learn more about the recovery process for players coming off injuries such as Naylor, Nolan Jones and Tyler Freeman.

The club’s Cactus League opener is in a week. Opening Day is less than four weeks away, April 7, in Kansas City. The home opener is April 15, against the Giants. There’s no time to waste.

Let the madness begin
One source said to expect the next week or so to be “crazy.” Another advised to watch for a barrage of trades throughout the league. Free agency should unfold rapidly; players want to settle in at camp and teams need answers, so there shouldn’t be too much deliberation or many attempts to spark a bidding war.

Front offices can resume trade discussions that started before the lockout, with both parties knowing the other side is in a hurry. It might be difficult to craft new trade talks while lacking the time and focus necessary to convince the other side to cooperate. Because, you know, everybody followed the rules and kept to themselves for the last three months.

Cleveland’s roster requires modifications. The club has only six relievers on its 40-man roster. The outfield needs an upgrade or two, and additions at first base and/or catcher aren’t off-limits, either. The 40-man roster includes 14 players with no major-league experience.

The Guardians’ payroll ranks ahead of only the eternally rebuilding Orioles and Pirates. The increase in the minimum salary should add at least $2 million to the total. Including projected salaries for the team’s seven arbitration-eligible players — Bieber, Quantrill, Naylor, Austin Hedges, Amed Rosario, Bradley Zimmer and Franmil Reyes — the payroll figures to sit at about $49 million, right in line with the Opening Day payroll from 2021 (and about one-third of the payroll from 2018).

The terms of the new collective bargaining agreement shouldn’t really influence Cleveland’s payroll much. There’s no salary floor or anything mandating that owner Paul Dolan changes his spending habits. And I suspect Cleveland won’t have to worry about the altered competitive balance tax.

As for arbitration, teams and players will exchange salary figures by March 22. Any unresolved cases could be settled during the regular season, which is a bit awkward.

No Rule 5 draft
Cleveland added 11 prospects to its 40-man roster in November to protect those young players from being plucked by another team in the Rule 5 draft. Now, that Rule 5 draft will not take place. It does prevent the organization from losing someone such as Joey Cantillo, a 22-year-old changeup specialist who owns brilliant minor-league numbers and has been throwing harder in minor-league camp. If the Guardians could have peered into the future in the fall, however, they surely wouldn’t have sapped themselves of so much roster flexibility.

It’s certainly understandable why they added players such as Jhonkensy Noel and Jose Tena to the roster — and blatantly obvious why they added top prospects such as George Valera and Brayan Rocchio — but now there are fewer candidates to shuffle. The 40-man roster is full and the Guardians have additions to make, but they won’t be severing ties with the prospects they just added. So, they’ll need to make a trade or two or three, or cut loose someone such as Zimmer, Oscar Mercado or Logan Allen.

As for the other draft, the amateur draft, new rules limit how often a team can hold one of the top picks. Big-market teams can’t earn a lottery pick in consecutive years. Small-market teams can’t earn a lottery pick more than two years in a row. Cleveland, though, hasn’t selected higher than 14th since 2013. The Guardians have the 16th pick this summer.

Schedule changes
Teams will play a more balanced schedule starting in 2023, rather than the traditional, division-heavy slate that forces the Guardians to face the Royals, Tigers, Twins and White Sox 19 times apiece each season. It should give us a more informed understanding of each team’s ability. It should also help MLB market stars better. Ordinarily, Fernando Tatis Jr. might visit Progressive Field once in his entire career. Now, Cleveland fans will be able to watch him in person every other season.

Look, I love Slow’s BBQ, but two trips to Detroit each year instead of three would suffice. Fans should enjoy, say, the Mets coming to town instead of the Royals for a third time in a season, not to mention the opportunity to see their team in more road cities each year. And it’s sensible to make this change now that the universal DH is in place.

Other items of note
• Six teams in each league will qualify for the postseason: three division winners and three wild cards. Those on the 2019 club sure wish that structure had been in place when Cleveland won 93 games but fell short of nabbing a ticket to October.

• MLB will reportedly host games in London, Paris, Asia, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in the coming years. Cleveland’s trip to Puerto Rico for a two-game set against Minnesota in 2018 was unforgettable, especially Francisco Lindor’s homecoming/”homerun-ning.” Ramírez and Reyes playing before their friends and family in Santo Domingo would be appointment viewing.

• Ramírez should greatly benefit from shift restrictions, which are expected to be instituted before the 2023 season. Opponents realigned their fielders on 96.4 percent of Ramírez’s left-handed plate appearances. That might offer extra incentive for Cleveland to secure him to a long-term extension.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Why is an international MLB draft so important?

Thursday 10 | 5:00 pm

Frederlin Castro | @fr3djcd

MLB and the MLBPA finally reached a consensus, agreeing to a July 25 deadline to set an international draft that would begin in 2024. The agreement appeared to remove a major hurdle in the CBA talks. This commitment also means that the international draft will continue to be a major talking point between union members and league officials for months to come.

How would it work?

Let's start with the basics: High school and college players from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico are subject to the traditional MLB draft held each summer. But there are a large number of amateur players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela , to a lesser extent Mexico and Colombia and several other regions who are not subject to a draft.

MLB wants to change that starting in 2024 by establishing a separate 20-round draft with hard slots starting at $5.51 million for the first overall pick (by comparison, the No. 1 overall pick in the traditional amateur draft signed for $6.5 million). dollars last year). The draft order would be unconventional, with teams randomly assigned to one of four groups that would rotate each year.

MLB would establish mandatory doping control and allow draft picks to be traded ; the hiring age would remain the same as in the current international system: 16 years. In an effort to grow the sport globally, teams would receive additional selections for recruiting players from previously underrepresented countries.

When it starts?

The two sides have reached a deal: a July 25 deadline for the union to decide if it wants an international draft by 2024. If the players approve, draft compensation will be eliminated. If they don't, these two issues will revert to the status quo: player selection compensation tied to certain free agents and no international draft.

Union members will likely spend the next four months debating the merits of a complicated system. Waiting until 2024 would give MLB more time to put the proper infrastructure in place, but others have suggested delaying the international draft even further, to 2025 or 2026, to give places like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela more time to prepare. for what a seismic shift would represent.

Meisel: It’s time for the Guardians to convince Cleveland fans they should be invested


By Zack Meisel Mar 12, 2022 85
By the middle of the week, the new script Guardians sign, a marquee measuring 81 feet wide and 28 feet high, will be fully installed atop the scoreboard at Progressive Field.

A new era is officially upon us, with the lockout in the rearview, the name change completed and Opening Day around the corner.

The buzz is … nonexistent.

Before I joined a local radio station for a segment the other day, the hosts had spent the two previous segments questioning whether it was even worthwhile to talk baseball at the risk of alienating the listeners who prefer another day of Baker Mayfield debates.

Look, it’s a pressing issue for the sport; MLB has already struggled to keep up, from a national spotlight perspective, with the NFL and NBA. And a winter devoted to conversations about labor negotiations instead of free-agent bidding wars and blockbuster trades did baseball no favors.

Locally, it’s been a long time since Cleveland’s baseball outfit felt so irrelevant.

It’s incumbent on those in the organization to keep their fingers on the pulse, to acquire an objective grasp of fan sentiment. After all, that can drive the team’s bottom line, and this is an organization hellbent on securing every last cent.

Some fans were turned off by the contentious, suffocating, soul-sucking collective bargaining negotiations. Some are peeved about the name change. Hell, some are still irked about the CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee trades. Some are counting down the minutes until what they suspect is an inevitable José Ramírez trade, and then a Shane Bieber trade after that, because the operational pattern is so engrained in their minds that a disruption to the status quo seems implausible.

The Guardians are ushering in a new era with a new name, a new brand, new marketing schemes and, after a couple of years of widespread roster turnover, a new identity on the field. When a new store opens, the owners unfurl a “Grand Opening” banner and dedicate resources to alert people. They don’t simply flip on the lights, unlock the front door and pray folks will discover them. But there might as well be tumbleweeds fluttering along Ontario Street.

There’s still a chance to change the conversation, though. There’s still an opportunity to halt the belaboring of the team shop sign crashing to the concrete or the supply chain issues that have delayed sales of the new uniforms or the roller derby saga or the lack of suitable in-house candidates to surround Ramírez and Franmil Reyes in the lineup. There’s still time to erase the popularized fact that the club is headed to Opening Day with a paltry projected payroll of $49 million for the second consecutive year, which ranks above only the cellar-dwelling Orioles and Pirates.

At some point, an organization has to manufacture its own positive PR. It has to take action to flip the public perception, to galvanize an unenthused fan base and offer people a reason to flock to the team shop and to circle dates on the schedule for purchasing tickets.

It’s evident the Guardians need upgrades in the outfield (and maybe at first base, catcher and in the bullpen). The composition of the roster suggests the front office agrees. The puzzle pieces don’t fit at the moment, with 14 members of the 40-man roster lacking big-league experience, with far more starting pitchers than relievers and with more middle infielders than Sugardales sold on Dollar Dog Night. They’re positioned to execute a couple of trades.

That doesn’t have to be the only avenue for adding to the roster. Spending money just for the sake of spending money makes little sense, but so does running a payroll in 2022 equivalent to the team’s payroll from 2001. Team president Chris Antonetti and owner Paul Dolan insisted last summer and fall that the payroll would increase in 2022, though they never revealed by how much.

The team is more than a year removed from the pandemic-shortened season, which it claimed cost the organization “tens of millions” of dollars. No one on the team, aside from Ramírez and his bargain $12 million salary, is projected to earn more than $5 million this year, and there are no guaranteed contracts on the books beyond this year.

I was told last summer that a payroll of $90-110 million is the club’s sweet spot, based on attendance trends. That’s about double where the Guardians stand at the moment, and that’s before entertaining how a new minority owner might influence spending habits. When John Sherman was aboard from 2016-19, the team boasted its highest payrolls in franchise history. That’s also before considering the league has agreed to new TV deals with Apple and NBC, expanded the postseason, launched partnerships with gambling companies and plans to add advertisements to uniforms, all of which will flood each organization with new revenue streams in the next couple of years.

Whether it’s a Ramírez extension, a semi-splashy free-agent outfielder signing, a couple of trades that solidify the lineup and vault the club toward legitimate contention, there needs to be something.

Meeting Ramírez’s demands would be a step toward hushing the justified gripes about this team not retaining its stars and never affording fans a true opportunity to grow attached to a player. That would be the easiest way to maximize sales of Guardians gear.

It’s time to surround Ramírez with talent, time to hand Terry Francona a better batting order while he still resides in the manager’s office. No one ever won a title without taking a risk or two, and the risk is minimized because the payroll is so low, the farm system is so healthy and because David Blitzer can inherit any financial troubles that surface down the line, assuming he follows the path to majority ownership.

Ownership can’t be haunted by the ghosts of Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn, or be gun-shy because the Edwin Encarnación signing didn’t translate to October glory (though it did lead to an attendance bump).

This is an organization dying for people to buy a cap with a Diamond C logo and to stop fixating on falling signs and a plummeting payroll. This is a fan base begging for a reason to care.

Naylor hasn’t missed a beat (March 12)
Sight: The memory of outfielder Josh Naylor flailing on the ground at Target Field after suffering multiple fibula fractures and ligament tears while trying to make a diving catch in right field is still fresh in plenty of Cleveland fans’ minds. He still has tape wrapped around his lower right leg in two places, but his bat doesn’t seem to be affected by the recovery.

Naylor put on a show in his BP session on Saturday afternoon, as a few more Guardians players reported early to camp. The team hasn’t officially started formal workouts, but Naylor has already made a strong impression. He launched homer after homer on just a handful of pitches, showing that, if nothing else, his bat is ready for Opening Day.

Whether he’ll be cleared before the start of the season is unknown. The outfielder is slated to speak with media in the coming days, and he will likely give a better idea of where he stands in his recovery and what his path forward looks like. But we don’t need to hear from him to know that he has had no problem rediscovering his swing after taking some time off to heal.

Sound: Naylor had Richie Palacios and Daniel Johnson in his hitting group, and neither could refrain from making comments as soon as Naylor stepped in the cage. After just one or two pitches, Naylor smacked a homer to deep left-center field, prompting Johnson to say to Palacios, “Oh, I thought he was going to start slow.”

Just a few pitches later, Naylor destroyed another one, and Johnson yelled, “Oh, that’s gone, gone.” The two other hitters couldn’t help but become eager spectators each time Naylor stepped back in the cage.

Jason Lloyd Retweeted
Ken Rosenthal
@Ken_Rosenthal
·
2h


Guardians a team to watch. Deep farm system (No. 8 in
@keithlaw
’s rankings), as well as some financial flexibility. Exploring high-end and mid-level bats (OF, 1B) as well as bullpen help, with preference for multi-year control. Among teams in mix for Athletics 1B Matt Olson.

Yeah he looks pretty good; LH hitter 39 homers 111 rbi 88 walks 113 K in 518 AB; 371 OBP 540 SLG

I would offer various young infielders; do we have enough depth to deal Plesac or Civale? what else do we have they would want... Rosario?

Gone to Atlanta. Their farm system is deeper.

Mark Whiten, who spent five seasons with Cleveland, made major-league history in a strange way back in 1998.

Cleveland baseball trivia: The only position player to ever strike out the side

by Darren Klein 3 days ago Follow @Grunttalksmlb

Mark Whiten may not be a household name or even a name most fans of baseball today have even heard of. Whiten was a solid professional baseball player with eleven seasons in The Show, more than most players could ever dream about.

In those eleven years he posted 804 career hits, a .259 average, 105 home runs, 423 RBIs and 465 runs scored. Not exactly the eye-popping numbers that would be in a featured story. However, this is not about what Whiten did at the dish during his big-league career; it’s about what he did on the mound.

On July 31st, 1998, Whiten found himself on the road and on the rubber against the Oakland Athletics in a blowout, which the then-Indians ultimately lost 12-2. The first batter he faced walked, followed by a Jason Giambi double into the gap. Immediately after he plunked Scott Spiezio, and just like that the bases were loaded with no one out.

Mike Blowers ran the count full and Whiten struck him out with what I would call a nasty splitter. Next to bat was Oakland’s All-Star shortstop Miguel Tejada, who followed Blowers by striking out looking (about four inches outside). Rookie A.J. Hinch was next and walked on almost the identical pitch that Tejada was called out for. At this point, Whiten has two strikeouts, two walks, one HBP and a double, resulting in only one earned run. Mike Neill was the only batter in his way of striking out the side.

Whiten already used a very good split finger to record his first strikeout, and to strike out the side Whiten spun an absolutely beautiful curveball to record his third and final strikeout, making him the only position player to ever strike out the side.

On a separate note, Mark Whiten has a few other oddities associated with his career. In 1993, while a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, Whiten had a four-homer game, the most interesting thing in my opinion other than striking out the side. The1992 Topps set made an error while producing his baseball card as well. His hand that holds the bat is actually over the border that Topps wanted to keep the photos within. Online this card sells for around $100 upgraded. Topps quickly caught this mistake which has only left so many left or currently In circulation.

https://youtu.be/tlEHUVfUdOg

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I remember that game.

Lloyd: Getting Guardians pitchers ready, Terry Francona’s health, Josh Naylor’s positive attitude and more


By Jason Lloyd 1h ago 8
GOODYEAR, Ariz. — News, notes and observations as the Guardians prepare for their first full-squad workout on Tuesday.

1. Baseball has faced plenty of challenges the last couple of years — many self-inflicted — and this spring is no different. Teams across Arizona and Florida are trying to design the best plan for cramming six weeks of traditional spring training into the three weeks they have been given following the lockout.

2. Between navigating the easing COVID-19 protocols and resuming league business on a condensed timeline, one member of the Guardians organization likened this spring to flying a plane while still trying to build it. It was a perfect analogy.

3. Rosters could still expand. The extra-inning rules from the past two years could still be resurrected. With the first pitch that counts a little more than three weeks away, the league is still establishing its rules of engagement.

4. The biggest challenge facing teams might be getting the pitchers ready. Terry Francona cautioned they’re going slow with their starters and warned it could be a few days before they appear in games. He believes the starters will likely only get about three turns in Cactus League games. Compare that to last year, when Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale each made at least five starts in Arizona.

5. Add it all up and Francona believes pitchers will likely only get built up to about 65 pitches, on average, by the time Opening Day arrives April 7 in Kansas City.

6. “There’s a difference in how high we can get them (in pitch counts) and how high we should,” Francona said. “Like Carl (Willis) said, just because you can do something doesn’t make it right. … Everybody will be a little different. Some guys will be quicker and some guys slower. But I bet ya (65 pitches) is going to be pretty close.”

7. Francona and Willis discuss daily the best way to approach the April games before pitchers are built up to their normal workload. Nothing has been determined yet. They could piggyback starters on the same day to get through six innings before turning the game over to the bullpen. They could use an opener. They could let the starter burn through his allotment and then run through a conga line of relievers. One of the determining factors might be roster size.

8. As of now, teams must carry 26 players on the Opening Day roster and no more than 13 pitchers. Francona believes that will have to change for teams to survive under these circumstances.

9. “I hope they give us 30 pitchers,” he joked.

10. Francona likes the relievers already on the roster, but there is room for more. Colleague Ken Rosenthal noted this week the Guardians are active both in the high-end batting department (he included them on the list of teams pursuing Matt Olson before Olson was traded Monday to the Braves) and relievers.

11. Collin McHugh would slot in well in this bullpen as a converted starter who can provide multiple innings and who rejuvenated his career last year with the Rays. McHugh is one of the most sought-after relievers on the market.

12. For now, the Guardians will spend the next three weeks stretching out relievers to help ease the burden on the starters.

13. “We feel it would be beneficial to stretch a number of pitchers out because if our starters aren’t in a position to go very deep in the games, we’re going to have to absorb those innings with the bullpen,” team president Chris Antonetti said. “So, the more pitchers that are capable of pitching multiple innings, the better. Pitchers that have a history of starting demonstrated a track record of kind of holding more innings, so we could look at some of those guys who have been historically starters as relief options.”

14. Francona was in terrific spirits Monday and moving around well as he welcomed guys back to the facility this week following the long pause due to the lockout. His toe is healed, he is out of the walking boot, he is past all of his medical procedures and he’s looking forward to getting back on the field for all 162 games.

15. “I got two shoes on, so right off the bat, I’m better than I was last year,” he said. “It’s been a hard couple of years, there’s no getting around it. And I don’t want to act like a big baby because I know there’s people that have had way worse bouts than I had. But it’s not been easy.”

16. Francona needed only a week following hip surgery in August before he was up and moving around again. He had a couple more procedures for his stomach problems, he said, although he and the team kept those quiet. But the toe was the worst.

17. “It’s the hardest surgery I’ve ever had,” he said. “And I’m a really good authority on surgeries.”

18. Francona always knew he wanted to keep managing, but he wasn’t sure if his body would allow it. He finally told Antonetti and general manager Mike Chernoff around the holidays that he was going to return for another season.

19. “Once I told them that, I knew I had better be OK because I didn’t want to leave them hanging, either,” he said. “So I worked pretty hard. There’s only so much you can do with a toe. It’s not like you can do push-ups. You can’t go jogging. So it’s kind of hard.”

20. Josh Naylor continues to work his way back from a gruesome ankle injury and feels nearly 100 percent. He has kept his calf taped while he takes batting practice this week as a precaution, but Naylor sat with the media for nearly 30 minutes Monday and spoke in great detail about his injury, recovery and attitude in one of the most remarkable interviews I’ve sat through in more than 20 years of doing this. I’ll have more on Naylor’s story soon.

21. For now, Naylor continues to work at first base and in the outfield and it doesn’t sound as if any decision has been made on where he’ll play. That will likely be determined by what, if anything, the Guardians get done either through trades or free agency.

22. “I feel as close to 100 percent as I think I can get,” he said.

23. Naylor hasn’t seen the replay from the injury when he collided with Ernie Clement. He doesn’t need to. He replays it in his head every day. The pain in his right leg was so horrific that he felt it in his throat.

24. Naylor might be the most positive, optimistic and encouraging player not just on the Guardians roster but in the league. The way he talks about paying it forward and being an encouragement to others is genuine. He might be the easiest guy on this team to root for, particularly after everything he endured in the last nine months.

25. “It was the coolest offseason I’ve ever had,” he said after suffering the worst injury of his career. “I don’t know why, but it was just awesome.”

26. Yeah, this one is built differently.

27. Monday marked an important day. For the first time in two years, baseball media across Florida and Arizona were allowed back in major-league clubhouses. All of the opportunities to build relationships and trust with the players and staff vanished during the pandemic, relegating everyone to soul-sucking Zoom calls that no one enjoyed.

28. Bravo to the league office and players’ union for seeing the value in having reporters in the locker room and opening their doors again, much like the NHL has already done. It’s time. It’s also time now for the NBA and NFL to follow suit.

Chris Antonetti Says Guardians Are In Position To Add Payroll

By Brendan Gulick | Last updated 3/15/22

The first few days back from Major League Baseball's lockout have featured such a flurry of news and rumors that it's hard to keep up with all of it.

And that's only what's actually reported or floated around on social media. Imagine how many more conversations are had that never actually make it out into the public space.

No doubt, Chris Antonetti, Mike Chernoff and the Cleveland Guardians front office have a lot of work to do as they try to construct what they hope will be a championship-caliber team. And they don't have much time to do it.

"What used to take days now we have to do in hours," Antonetti said Monday afternoon.

The 2022 Cleveland Guardians are in an intriguing spot because they have a number of really attractive pieces on the current roster - proven all-stars like Jose Ramirez and Shane Bieber - that can be franchise, cornerstone players.

But as Spring Training officially launches with the first full-squad workout today, the team's payroll remains where you would have expected to see it 25 years ago.

Antonetti reiterated Monday that they are in a position where they are looking to add pieces and increase payroll, but they are trying to be cognizant of not taking away opportunities from the players they are really excited about at the top of their farm system.

"Yes," Antonetti said when directly asked about being in a position to add to the team's payroll. "But I think the greater challenge for us is that we feel we have a really exciting group at the Major League level, a really healthy farm system. We think we are going to be capable of building really good teams moving forward. We want to make sure that any decisions we make now not only help us in the short term, but at a minimum, we don't want them to adversely affect us in the long term. So that's the balance we have."

"I don't think that how much we have to spend in 2022 dollars is going to be the limiting factor."

The team has been linked to lots of names, some of which have been reported by credible sources and others seem more like rumors. But I think it's fair to assume that the team is at least kicking the tires on most of the free agent options out there. MLB Network's Jon Morosi says the team is interested in Joc Pederson, which would certainly excite fans if he wound up in Cleveland.