MLBPA blasts Jays Organization

[hst420]

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24601004/mlbpa-says-toronto-blue-jays-failure-call-vladimir-guerrero-jr-bad-industry

Money decision, or justified?

[sule]

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24601004/mlbpa-says-toronto-blue-jays-failure-call-vladimir-guerrero-jr-bad-industry

Money decision, or justified?

It's obviously a money decision. It's clear manipulation of his service time.

[-MetA4-]

Its a clear manipulation of his service time that was INCENTIVIZED by the freaking MLBPA who is now mad that someone is rightfully choosing to exercise that option (LOL). Sorry dips*its, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If the MLBPA cares so much, they can vote the practice out of the next CBA, which we all know wont happen because their whole shtick is railroading amateur players and rookies so that established veterans (ie: the strongest class in the players association) can have their nice bloated mega-contracts that run into their late late 30's at the expense of the teams.

The fact that Shapiro or Atkins are getting flack for this is absurd. They are making the OBVIOUS decision as per the rules that are presented to them. They didn't write the CBA, nor are they responsible for acting as some sort of white-knights to bring "justice" to **** that the MLBPA could have solved themselves if they really wanted to, but didn't.

[Lukeem]

Jays should be blasted for this bs... by the fans, by vlad himself, by his agent by anyone that really cares about the team

But not by the mlbpa unless they want to take a long hard look at themselves and how older players almost never live up to their contracts

[SharoneWright]

What was the amount of his signing bonus??? Pretty good if I remember correctly...

[dagger]

Its a clear manipulation of his service time that was INCENTIVIZED by the freaking MLBPA who is now mad that someone is rightfully choosing to exercise that option (LOL). Sorry dips*its, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If the MLBPA cares so much, they can vote the practice out of the next CBA, which we all know wont happen because their whole shtick is railroading amateur players and rookies so that established veterans (ie: the strongest class in the players association) can have their nice bloated mega-contracts that run into their late late 30's at the expense of the teams.

The fact that Shapiro or Atkins are getting flack for this is absurd. They are making the OBVIOUS decision as per the rules that are presented to them. They didn't write the CBA, nor are they responsible for acting as some sort of white-knights to bring "justice" to **** that the MLBPA could have solved themselves if they really wanted to, but didn't.

The Jays are doing exactly what the White Sox are doing with Eloy Jimenez, what the Braves did with Ronald Acuna, what the Red Sox did with Yoan Moncada before they traded him for Chris Sale. The Yankees avoided the situation because Gleyber Torres had a legit serious injury in his last season in the minors that delayed his rise to the ML roster. It is bad for the game, but so is paying aging veterans of which the Jays have several to underperform huge contracts. If the union is concerned, as Met-A4 says, let the union fix both issues, let them incentivize rather than punish a team for elevating star prospects. The other issue, overpaying aging vets, is gradually fixing itself, so the union has no reason to perpetuate the status quo. Now, don't get me wrong, the owners get a cheap ride off good players when they get to the majors. I'm all for a new deal which pays players closer for performance in their primes, and maybe the answer is a stretch-out of arbitration, starting a year sooner and running a year long, i.e. up to arb 6, and aligning the terms closer to actual performance, so a young player who turns into a superstar at age 22 or 23 receives an arbitrated contract that better reflects that level of achievement.

[The_Hater]

They’re acting like this is the first time we’ve seen an organization manipulate service time. These are the rules the players agreed upon so don’t act surprised when teams use it to their advantage.

[The_Hater]

Jays should be blasted for this bs... by the fans, by vlad himself, by his agent by anyone that really cares about the team

But not by the mlbpa unless they want to take a long hard look at themselves and how older players almost never live up to their contracts

If you’re a true Jays fan, you would realize that the management did this not only for the good of the organization but ultimately for the good of the fans too.

Would you rather watch vlade hit for 30 extra days in 2018 or 6 extra months in 2024? Those are the options that were being weighed. Thankfully we have a front office that took the long term approach here.

[Skin Blues]

They’re acting like this is the first time we’ve seen an organization manipulate service time. These are the rules the players agreed upon so don’t act surprised when teams use it to their advantage.

They're acting like it's a pattern that they want to stop, even though they aren't willing to make the concessions that would stop it. And to be clear, what the owners are doing by manipulating the service time is a violation of the CBA, even if it's impossible to prove. Maybe that's not an important distinction for some, though.

What I read the other day as a way to solve this, is to go to an NHL-style ELC where as soon as you play X amount of games in season Y, your free agency date is set for the offseason of year Y+6. The owners would probably prefer Y+7 since that's what it effectively is right now, but maybe they'd settle for reducing arb years from 3 to 2 to offset the lost service time. If they keep the expanded rosters rule for September (what are the odds they'd patch two glaringly obvious pitfalls of the CBA at the same time?) they could even make September games exempt, to allow "free" cups of coffee. Vladdy and Eloy are up September 1st, 2018 instead of April 16th, 2019. It's not perfect, but it'd be damn hard to manipulate it to any significant degree. You still don't see Vladdy pre-September in 2018 even though he was ready, but no method would be perfect.

Another option: every player becomes a free agent the offseason after their 28th birthday. Removes service time manipulation altogether. This would benefit the mediocre guys who took a while to develop, and end up costing the superstars like Vlad, so it's a bit unfair in that regard. I like the simplicity of it but it might piss off both the owners and players enough that it never happens. And it would be hilarious to see how fast the kids who lie about their age to get signed would come out and admit they're actually a few years older. "Oh did I say I was only 17? Sorry, I meant to say I was 22."

[Schad]

The best solution would simply be to make the first few years of a player's career more expensive, something that the MLBPA really ought to be pursuing given that it's starting to skew the marketplace against older players, and consequently lowering overall remuneration. If the first three years weren't dirt cheap, and arbitration didn't underpay players by such a massive margin relative to production, there would be far less incentive to behave in this fashion.

Allow the first year to be $500k, so that there's still some incentive to give AAAA guys a shot, then have it increase from there, with some sort of built-in escalators based on performance (ROY/MVP voting, All-Star team, whatever) for pre-arb. Have that escalation factor into the arbitration years calculations, and increase arb figures overall. Voila, teams no longer have a compelling reason to **** with service time, and much more incentive to agree to early big-money deals that buy out free agency as well, and the financial picture ceases to be skewed toward players that are already in their decline phase.

[Fairview4Life]

What if we just got rid of all of the rules and tripled down on revenue sharing?

[Skin Blues]

The best solution would simply be to make the first few years of a player's career more expensive, something that the MLBPA really ought to be pursuing given that it's starting to skew the marketplace against older players, and consequently lowering overall remuneration. If the first three years weren't dirt cheap, and arbitration didn't underpay players by such a massive margin relative to production, there would be far less incentive to behave in this fashion.

Allow the first year to be $500k, so that there's still some incentive to give AAAA guys a shot, then have it increase from there, with some sort of built-in escalators based on performance (ROY/MVP voting, All-Star team, whatever) for pre-arb. Have that escalation factor into the arbitration years calculations, and increase arb figures overall. Voila, teams no longer have a compelling reason to **** with service time, and much more incentive to agree to early big-money deals that buy out free agency as well, and the financial picture ceases to be skewed toward players that are already in their decline phase.

In theory it's a good idea, but as MetA4 said, the MLBPA is mostly composed of players who have already accrued lots of service time, and they have no interest in shifting money to young players that have been in the union less than 3 years. The owners also have little interest in this, because they like the newly emerged status quo of paying peanuts to guys for 6-7 years and then paying peanuts to 90% of the guys in free agency. It's not like there's a lot of money to be shifted from aging veterans to the younger generation anymore; they finally decided this past offseason to shift that money into their own pockets instead.

[Schad]

In theory it's a good idea, but as MetA4 said, the MLBPA is mostly composed of players who have already accrued lots of service time, and they have no interest in shifting money to young players that have been in the union less than 3 years. The owners also have little interest in this, because they like the newly emerged status quo of paying peanuts to guys for 6-7 years and then paying peanuts to 90% of the guys in free agency. It's not like there's a lot of money to be shifted from aging veterans to the younger generation anymore; they finally decided this past offseason to shift that money into their own pockets instead.

I'm well aware that their concern is the veteran players, but the fact that teams have now opted to shift money from the vets to the owners' pockets is something that should change their incentives: if it's too beneficial to employ a team of cost-controlled youngsters, all but a small number of vets will have difficulty getting paid, which will also (and has) slow the overall compensation of the players.

[dagger]

The owners also have little interest in this, because they like the newly emerged status quo of paying peanuts to guys for 6-7 years and then paying peanuts to 90% of the guys in free agency. It's not like there's a lot of money to be shifted from aging veterans to the younger generation anymore; they finally decided this past offseason to shift that money into their own pockets instead.

Well, there is money if the union wants to go to the mat for it.

[VanWest82]

Everyone knows what's going on. It's the lies and games front offices play with fans that ruffles my feathers. How about you just come out and say we're holding Vlad back for service time? Instead they send Buck and Shulmann out there to tow the company line about how it's really because Vladdy isn't ready and needs to work on his defense. It's disingenuous, and insulting to the fans who are paying their bills.

[Schad]

Everyone knows what's going on. It's the lies and games front offices play with fans that ruffles my feathers. How about you just come out and say we're holding Vlad back for service time? Instead they send Buck and Shulmann out there to tow the company line about how it's really because Vladdy isn't ready and needs to work on his defense. It's disingenuous, and insulting to the fans who are paying their bills.

It is disingenuous, but it's also how they avoid an MLBPA grievance. We all know what's happening, yet at the same time they can easily build enough of a justification to ensure that the union has not the hope in hell of doing anything about it...unless they come out and say it.

[VanWest82]

Everyone knows what's going on. It's the lies and games front offices play with fans that ruffles my feathers. How about you just come out and say we're holding Vlad back for service time? Instead they send Buck and Shulmann out there to tow the company line about how it's really because Vladdy isn't ready and needs to work on his defense. It's disingenuous, and insulting to the fans who are paying their bills.

It is disingenuous, but it's also how they avoid an MLBPA grievance. We all know what's happening, yet at the same time they can easily build enough of a justification to ensure that the union has not the hope in hell of doing anything about it...unless they come out and say it.

Yeah it's a messed up system. It would be nice to see MLB and MLBPA agree to markers which would allow for automatic promotion of superstar MiLB players, perhaps with an exception of an added roster spot so no one has to be sent down. You'd probably have teams playing games to discourage guys from hitting those markers but at least we'd have a shot at avoiding this nonsense.

As an aside, and even with consideration to the large signing bonus, I have to believe Vladdy won't soon forget how the team willfully and knowingly held him back. It'll be brought up in negotiations when he's arb eligible, and it'll be considered when he eventually becomes a FA.

This is all to say nothing of the fact that Jays might be wasting some of his best prime years. We all develop differently, and maybe the absolute best baseball version of Vlad is 18-20 yr old Vlad. Feels like we're just throwing all our eggs into future low cost service time over every other consideration. I would have promoted him to start the year. If Jays were really trying to win, how can you justify not doing that?

[Schad]

Yeah it's a messed up system. It would be nice to see MLB and MLBPA agree to markers which would allow for automatic promotion of superstar MiLB players, perhaps with an exception of an added roster spot so no one has to be sent down. You'd probably have teams playing games to discourage guys from hitting those markers but at least we'd have a shot at avoiding this nonsense.

As an aside, and even with consideration to the large signing bonus, I have to believe Vladdy won't soon forget how the team willfully and knowingly held him back. It'll be brought up in negotiations when he's arb eligible, and it'll be considered when he eventually becomes a FA.

This is all to say nothing of the fact that Jays might be wasting some of his best prime years. We all develop differently, and maybe the absolute best baseball version of Vlad is 18-20 yr old Vlad. Feels like we're just throwing all our eggs into future low cost service time over every other consideration. I would have promoted him to start the year. If Jays were really trying to win, how can you justify not doing that?

I don't think that Vlad minds as much as many prospects would in that circumstances. The biggest cheerleader for the slow-promotion track have been his uncle Wilton, who trained him. He said at least twice this season that he hoped that the Jays were patient with him in the minors so that he could improve at the non-clubbing-of-baseballs bits. They seem like a fairly grounded group, and frankly they know that Vlad's going to get paid (keeping him down doesn't really harm his money-making in the first six years, as he'll be Super 2 eligible, it just delays his first free agent payday until the ripe old age of 26).

And promoting him at the start of the year wouldn't have made much sense; before Donaldson's calf became A Huge Deal, we didn't really have room for Vlad on the defensive side, and turning him into a 19 year old DH (with Morales going to the bench, I guess?) wouldn't have been a sensible choice. Nor would it have really made any difference to our season.

[VanWest82]

I don't think that Vlad minds as much as many prospects would in that circumstances. The biggest cheerleader for the slow-promotion track have been his uncle Wilton, who trained him. He said at least twice this season that he hoped that the Jays were patient with him in the minors so that he could improve at the non-clubbing-of-baseballs bits. They seem like a fairly grounded group, and frankly they know that Vlad's going to get paid (keeping him down doesn't really harm his money-making in the first six years, as he'll be Super 2 eligible, it just delays his first free agent payday until the ripe old age of 26).

And promoting him at the start of the year wouldn't have made much sense; before Donaldson's calf became A Huge Deal, we didn't really have room for Vlad on the defensive side, and turning him into a 19 year old DH (with Morales going to the bench, I guess?) wouldn't have been a sensible choice. Nor would it have really made any difference to our season.

I think Jays could have alternated VG and JD at 3rd. JD might not have been thrilled going into a contract year but it would have been warranted given the recurring calf issues pre 2018 IMO. Morales is just a sunk cost as far as I'm concerned although his resurgence in the second half has been unexpected to say the least. Presumably there could have been a solution with him and Smoak (though I'm not fond of the idea of Morales manning first either).

It's easy to say it wouldn't have made a difference with hindsight, but again, Jays's stated goal at the outset of the season was to make the playoffs. Hard to do that when one of your (maybe the) best players on your team isn't actually on your team! Also, it's highly unlikely we'll make the playoffs next year, so based on that logic Jays should punt on any Vlad promotion until at least 2020, no? I just don't think that's a great way of looking at it.

But again, my biggest point of contention is the glass ceiling stuff (and not so much the money side). That's great to hear re his camp. I'm not sure I buy the 'Vlad is just fine with it' argument though. It would seem counter to the way most 19-20 year olds typically think these days. In my experience, there's more risk to that than potentially having a frustrated or bitter employee. It can actually mess with their development too, especially if they're younger. These are people after all. I'm just surprised more lip service doesn't get paid to that side of it. Makes me think his defense must be really bad, or maybe he's not emotionally ready for the show. At least I could buy that.

[Schad]

I think Jays could have alternated VG and JD at 3rd. JD might not have been thrilled going into a contract year but it would have been warranted given the recurring calf issues pre 2018 IMO. Morales is just a sunk cost as far as I'm concerned although his resurgence in the second half has been unexpected to say the least. Presumably there could have been a solution with him and Smoak (though I'm not fond of the idea of Morales manning first either).

For one thing, he was a kid straight out of A-ball who'd just turned 19 at the start of the year. Even the most ardent proponents wouldn't have wanted him in the majors straightaway, and certainly not as a platoon 3B/DH. By the time it was clear that he was absurdly good, our season was basically over anyway.

It's easy to say it wouldn't have made a difference with hindsight, but again, Jays's stated goal at the outset of the season was to make the playoffs. Hard to do that when one of your (maybe the) best players on your team isn't actually on your team! Also, it's highly unlikely we'll make the playoffs next year, so based on that logic Jays should punt on any Vlad promotion until at least 2020, no? I just don't think that's a great way of looking at it.[/quote]

I mean, it absolutely wouldn't have made a difference. We could have Trout and Mookie Betts and it's still questionable as to we'd make the playoffs. We're so, so far from being competitive that it's comical, and this is a particularly hard year to compete.

But again, my biggest point of contention is the glass ceiling stuff (and not so much the money side). That's great to hear re his camp. I'm not sure I buy the 'Vlad is just fine with it' argument though. It would seem counter to the way most 19-20 year olds typically think these days. In my experience, there's more risk to that than potentially having a frustrated or bitter employee. It can actually mess with their development too, especially if they're younger. These are people after all. I'm just surprised more lip service doesn't get paid to that side of it. Makes me think his defense must be really bad, or maybe he's not emotionally ready for the show. At least I could buy that.

It won't mess with his development in the slightest. He got a couple months in AAA at 19 rather than a couple months in the majors. There's no harm there.