Email a copy of 'Teams Wield Advance Consent Hammer' to a friend
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By Zachary Links | at
Email a copy of 'Teams Wield Advance Consent Hammer' to a friend
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DarthMurph
Very interesting and insightful read, thanks Zach.
Zachary Links
Thanks
daveineg
Guys like Wolf who had long term big money contracts in the past have a hard time accepting the reality as a bottom of the roster guy. Other guys jump at the chance to show teams they still have value. Wolf basically stole money from the Brewers his last year in Milwaukee. What goes around comes around.
Damon Bowman
While I’m sure most of us can understand the difficulty a veteran like Wolf has in not being treated like the upper-tier player he once was, I think there’s something else to take away from the whole advance consent form episode with Wolf. The Mariners still come across as a second-class organization. When you’re meeting with a player to tell him he’ll make the team and the starting rotation and turn around and ask him to sign off on the advance consent form is just in poor taste. Talk to the agent ahead of time and try to work something out so it doesn’t become something we’re all still reading & talking about two and three weeks later.
DarthMurph
Agreed, especially since it looks like they were doing it to get out of paying him when Iwamura gets back.
jamesa-2
This. This is why it looks so bad. It appears that the Mariners were blatantly trying to use the loophole in order to get a veteran presence to fill in for Iwakuma without actually paying for him. It was under-handed not in the fact that they were using the loophole, but in that they negotiated one deal with him and then backed out of it AFTER he had stopped marketing himself to other teams.
harperhill
Good for Randy for not accepting it. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
Karkat
Being “employee at will” is pretty common in a lot of fields, however.
johnsilver
Good point.. Temp’s are everywhere. Not going to get political, as it crosses both spectrum’s, but if a company, MLB even and it’s cheaper to have an employee on the payroll for 3-4 months, then rehire them for another 3-4 months, or just have Wolfie around for a month until Iwakuma gets back? Is it really any different?
jill
No kidding. In my occupation, I am hired from year to year. I work next to an incompetent buffoon that has protection. Twenty one years of doing a poor job and they can’t get rid of ’em!
The way many job classifications are handled is blatantly unfair. Randy Wolf felt what he was asked was unfair to him. Good for him not agreeing to it.
Huff's dog
Lol I have no idea what this is talking about.
kcstengelSr
I hope Wolf proves Seattle wrong, but we are dealing with TJ recovery with nothing guaranteed.
disadvantage 2
“…instead of a 24-hour feeling of licking a D-cell battery.”
Did he learn about this sensation playing along side Manny Ramirez?
$40129616
“The form, for the uninitiated, would have allowed the M’s to terminate the deal during that window for any reason except injury.”
So let me get this straight. He has a contract. He’s playing along. Suddenly, the team says, “sign this!” If he signs it, they can fire him for any reason except injury within 45 days of signing. If he doesn’t sign it, then…what? He’s released? It’s like an automatic “get out of contract free” card for the team? What am I missing here?
jb226 2
Unfortunately you’re not missing anything. It’s little more than a team piling on a guy with no leverage, who probably signed a cheap-as-dirt contract to begin with.
Karkat
The one piece was that the money in his contract was contingent on him making the team. The Mariners basically said they’d add him to the team if he signed the advance consent form. So the decision for Wolf became: 1. sign the form, accept a pro-rated portion of 1mil and hope he pitches well enough to stick/earn incentives, 2. accept a minor league assignment (and make a lot less), or 3. request release.
It’s a bit unsavory, but Seattle isn’t actually weaseling out of a contract guarantee. It’s more that they tacked on a less-than-friendly contingency to letting Wolf on the major league roster.
$40129616
“The one piece was that the money in his contract was contingent on him making the team. The Mariners basically said they’d add him to the team if he signed the advance consent form.”
Yeah, that’s what I was missing. It’s not that a team can pull this on any player; only on those with non-guaranteed contracts. Thank you.
Lance Pistachio
I think most would agree that the clause being used in this way is not fair. Hopefully this story is picked up by sportswriters/sports networks and some light is shed on it. ‘ve been coming to this site more often than I’d like to admit during the past 8 years and this might be the best piece that I’ve read.
jsack56
Most would NOT agree that this clause is being used in a way that is unfair to the player. Clubs are not “out to get” players by asking them to sign the advance consent form. They are simply protecting themselves from a full season contract guarantee for a player that hasn’t earned this type of commitment. Keep in mind that the only players that can be asked to sign this waiver are guys that have more than five full years of ML service and come to spring training on a minor league contract. This type of player is usually a veteran (like Wolf) that is either coming off injury, or coming off a season of poor performance to the point where they were taken off the 40-man roster. This is a specific pool of players that frankly don’t deserve a contract guarantee at the moment. Here is a small sample of the type of players that signed an advance consent waiver this year – Xavier Nady, Reed Johnson, Kevin Slowey, John Lannan, Chris Young (SEA), Jason Giambi, and more… Wolf would have been paid for every day that he was on the ML roster and if he had pitched well, would have stayed on the roster and in the ML’s. Wolf has his reasons, but it seems like the ego got the best of him. He made a ML club after not pitching in ML’s for a year and turned it down because they won’t guarantee the contract. His ego got in the way and now he’s pitching at AAA Reno while Chris Young makes what would have been Wolf’s starts in the big leagues. Not smart.
Lance Pistachio
Wow, you jumped to a few conclusions there from my comment. Didn’t say the clubs were “out to get” the player. All I said that in THIS situation that it is being used unfairly. As mentioned by others, it seems the Mariners are taking advantage of this rule to have Wolf as a stopgap until Iwakuma came back. Not exactly in the spirit of the rule.
Greg Murphy
The part about the form potentially working to a player’s favor is simply inaccurate. No player can be released due to injury without the team having to pay his contract. Under your scenario, if the player hadn’t signed the advance consent form the outcome would have been exactly the same.
Bobby Lipovsky
Clap,for the ‘Wolfman”……………