Dodgers, Astros Interested In Liam Hendriks

Aaron, great reply. You articulated the problem very well and I agree with you. My vision is more of an out of the box approach to equality. IF baseball is the industry and the product then the idea of franchises needs to be contained under the Industry umbrella not independent owners. Owners would all make money but the change would be for the good of the sport not the good or bad of any specific person or franchise. The Yankees and Cubs have television revenues that most teams don’t have. Rather than that being an advantage for the franchise it needs to be an advantage for the industry and MLB needs to work to improve revenues by adding more YES and WGN contracts in other cities.

With all the new streaming of games, this is the perfect time to encapsulate the industry as the profit center not the franchises. The bigger the profit pot, the bigger the bonuses to successful team owners, front offices, managers, coaches and players. If the industry net profit grows by 20% then everyone’s take home grows by 20%. If the profits fall, everyone’s compensation is impacted. Defining an exact amount of money for each team to spend each year is even more fair than the salary cap situations that have existed in other sports. The playing field becomes leveled and the talents of an organization will tend to dictate the success and the rewards of that organization. If a Friedman is a genius or DD is a genius at their jobs it will show by a higher success rate from their talents not payroll advantages.

I recognize my suggestion is more than most fans or owners can handle when it comes to change but something needs to be done because I’m sure the last 20 years has really made baseball vulnerable because the core fans that simply love the game are watching the rules change in ways to satisfy the modern fair weather fans. Entertainment used to come from watching the sport not changing the sport to improve action, hit more home runs or throw/hit the ball faster than any time in the past. If the only way to grow the profits is to have juiced baseballs and to cater to the huge market teams on all media facilities like ESPN and MLB channel, then the industry greed will consume the game at some point leaving fans to ask how we got so far away from the original sport and question whether it’s worth supporting going forward with so many other better alternatives out there.

Long term, if people are to stay with baseball as their sport they need to see competitive balance. The irony of the situation is that big markets like NY and LA need to count on their outlying areas to maintain baseball fans since the inner cities are moving to basketball, football and even soccer. Where does that leave all the territory outside the physical areas of the major cities with respect to baseball growth? Fading interest at best. Rural America and small city America needs competitive balance to give a glimmer of hope to EVERYONE. Each team needs to have a chance to win a ring. Without competitive teams, the industry will continue to be about a couple of huge markets and a half dozen large markets and a bunch of other teams who are meaningless.

A new direction is needed to pull us out of the downward spiral that has led to the major baseball networks to only focusing on what free agent will move to which big market team and what velocity a ball is hit or thrown. So much of the fundamentals of the game have been diverted by the media to grab sensational headlines based on launch angle, exit velocity and spin rate. Concepts like team, playing with integrity, and enjoying the journey for the player have all been superseded by discussions of WAR and the corresponding value of a player based on a complex series of averages that may or may not truly apply. Modern metrics is now driving the baseball discussions rather than the game itself. It’s like talking about revolutions per second of a car engine rather than the ride, handling, safety or durability of the car. We jumped the fan base to include more numbers people but how much of that gain was off set by the loss of hardcore fans? Yes, the hardcore fans always stay but they won’t generate the next generation of hardcore fans like they have in the past. In the meantime, we have yet to see if the new “numbers” fans will generate loyalty to the sport like the real baseball fans have in the past.

For now, all we can do is hope more Davids come out of the small market teams and compete against either of the Goliaths from NY and LA.

Aaron, your steroid reference suggests we may have a fun discussion in the future about whether steroids actually impacted anything. I believe the variances in the ball have created all the dramatic fluctuations HRs over time. I have charts showing results from 1871 through 2019 that indicate the ball is directly responsible for home run fluctuations and that no abnormal fluctuations were a result of steroids. It was a weak commissioner’s excuse for why home runs were growing and he used it to hang out players of the era and win a spot in the HOF. Selig screwed an entire generation of players by misdirecting the focus from the erratic manufacturing process of the baseballs to taking steroids. There is no data that supports his premise if you normalize HRs based on the changes in the baseball from year to year.

Exactly! FYI… the ball’s juice factor was never a discussion in the 80s when McGwire broke onto the scene and hit 49 home runs. Since Canseco declared himself and McGwire steroid users (not illegal at that time) the baseball world mistook the jump in HRs as steroid use rather than the true reason, an extremely juiced baseball. The ball’s juice factor can be measured by the HRS/GAME/YEAR. Going back to 1871 there have been three jumps in the plateau of HR production: 1 – in the 1920s when the ball was changed from the dead ball to the live ball, 2 – in the 1950s aka the Mays, Mantle and Aaron’s era which saw the greatest proliferation of HRs in the history of baseball. Yes, the players of the 1950s enjoyed a percentage growth in juice nearly double that of the 1990s!!

In fact, the ball dramatically changed in 1963 ending the great HR era of the 1950s. The peak year, 1961, was the year that Maris and Mantle took a run at Babe Ruth’s record and Maris beat it. No small coincidence that the juice in the ball was the greatest in history and was not surpassed until McGwire graduated to the MLB in 1987 and created the myth of the steroid era. HRS/GAME in 1961 peaked at 0.95 and in 1963 fell back to 0.84 more than a 10% decline. From 1963 to 1987 the ball fluctuated at a much lower plateau than the 50s with 1968 and 1981 being two lows (0.61 and 0.64) that had not existed since WWII years. Then, 1987 produced a year with juice at 1.06 and NOBODY thought it was the ball, they all thought steroids or they simply didn’t recognize the year to year jump in home runs of 16.5%. In 1988, when MLB resumed using a more similar manufacturing process to the early 80s the juice factor dropped to 0.76 in 1988 one year after the peak. Did everyone stop taking steroids? NOPE. The ball manufacturing processes reverted back to their previous steps and raw materials. Steroids got the credit for the jump but nobody noticed the huge fallback the next year!! For 6 years the ball was reasonably stable at 1960s like values then in 1994 (after Bonds had already won MVPs with the lower juice level ball) the juice factor jumped to 1.03 close to the 1987 peak.

Let’s interrupt the progression of the juice in the ball discussion for one quick anecdote. In 1992 an owner named Bud Selig who was found guilty of cheating the players out of $280M in free agency money along with Jerry Reinsdorf by Fay Vincent. Selig then lobbied to remove Fay Vincent and replace him as acting commissioner of baseball. This dirty owner got the job permanently in 1998 and clearly represented the interest of owners not players thus increasing the divide between owners and the Players Association.. As owner Selig was aware of the steroids and the even more prevalent problem in baseball, cocaine. Fay Vincent before being ousted by Selig and others proclaimed steroids banned from baseball but no vote was taken at that time meaning the rules had not changed with regard to steroids. Given the state of baseball in 1992 the new acting commissioner chose NOT to pursue enacting Fay Vincent declaration with owners and the players association and eventually saw a strike in 1994 thanks to the escalating animosity between the two parties.
The lost profits in 1994 may have driven the commissioner to selecting a ball manufacturing process that jumped the juice in the ball OR it may have been a freakishly lucky coincidence. You make your own call on this one. Knowing Selig’s lack of integrity, I think he intentionally juiced the ball to help baseball recover from the loses in 1994. Anyway, this same commissioner was the guy who threw Bonds, McGwire and Sosa under the bus and fabricated how the steroids were ruining the game when in fact they were simply ruining the long term health of players and had insignificant impact on the numbers.

OK back to the timeline. With Selig in charge of baseball the juice in the ball jumped in 1994 and then went on a 16 year run with the juice factor over 1.0 a plateau roughly 10% higher than prior to him being commissioner.

Everyone was suspicious of the impact of steroids since guys were hitting home runs at a new high. Nobody bothered to research the ball or if they did they weren’t allowed to leak it to the press to subvert Selig’s goal of being the savior of baseball. All the great sports journalists of the era never bothered to report on the juice in the ball, they only fulfilled Selg’s agenda of blaming the players.

Remember, the problem with arguing the jump in HRs is from steroids is that growth in steroids should produce an upward trending slope but it didn’t! Players weren’t taking steroids one year and cutting back the next, the ball was fluctuating just like it had since 1871. There was no upward trend line which would have validated the steroid argument. Instead, a higher plateau was achieved with an identical pattern of fluctuation from year to year that had existed since 1871. From 1994 until 2009 the juice factor was greater than 1.0 and no more than 1.17 every year despite steroid penalties and Selig declaring he cleaned up the game? There was no cleaning up of the game from a HR perspective, the plateau was maintained just like in the 20s and 50s when new plateaus were reached. Steroids should have produced an upward trend then a downward trend after the stringent guidelines were imposed on the players. That didn’t happen. The plateau took on the exact same behavior as the prior plateaus and steroids were insignificant in the pattern of HRs in baseball. FYI…. 2010 was the first year since 1993 that the juice dropped below 1.0 and it was short lived. Only 2011, 2013 and 2014 have seen sub 1.0 juice factors this century. In 2015, another significant change to the manufacturing process jumped the juice factor from 0.86 to 1.01. That growth percentage was greater than the one seen in 1987 when out of nowhere the ball significantly changed. Since then the ball keeps jumping in juice. 2017 and 2019 saw the juice factor hit new highs of 1.26!! Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001 when the juice factor was 1.12, now the ball is 10% more juiced than when he set the record so fans can now realize how special Bonds and the players of that era were. Steroids didn’t aid their HR accomplishments the ball did. If players today were close to their level they would be breaking those records based on the juice in the ball and they aren’t.

Selig destroyed a generation of hitters that may have been the best in history or at least the best since the days of Ruth. Ruth hit the majority of his HRs with a ball having roughly 0.50 juice factor. I believe he was the greatest HR hitter of all time and his peers were some of the greatest of all time too despite the huge differences in the game from then until now. The Aaron era should have gotten more scrutiny with respect to the baseball because the jump in HRs was so prolific but nobody thought to question the manufacturing process, the distribution process and the storage process of the balls used daily in games. They just assumed the players were getting better at hitting home runs. Heck, the same might have happened in the 90s had it not been for Canseco and the drug busts that gave the public an excuse for the rise. Nobody is questioning the players today about what they are doing to their bodies when HRS per game are at an all-time high. Why? Because we now know about how badly the ball varies from year to year and we simply blame the jump on the juice. We finally got to the right conclusion but it cost an entire generation of players a chance at the HOF thanks to Bud Selig, the single most corrupt figure in baseball history. Fay Vincent deserved better as does Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and the entire generation of players who used a juiced ball to reach new highs in home runs.

One last FYI… steroids were officially declared illegal in baseball in 2005 not 1992. The idea that players were cheating is a media creation by guys like Tom Verducci. The were legal in Bonds time and Clemens time and there is no evidence that supports any significant impact of the use of steroids on home runs. Steroid use became a modern day witch trial thanks to the disgruntled fans who contacted Congress about their heroes records falling, Bud Selig the man who would be king, and the media looking to sensationalize everything possible to increase viewership. It’s a travesty each year when Bonds and Clemens don’t make the HOF and people call them cheaters. That classification should be maintained for people like Cora, Hinch, Beltran and the other Astros who participated in true cheating. Or the Red Sox ownership, Cora, his coaches and the players who participated in yet another cheating scandal. Steroids were not banned nor did they impact the home run numbers as reported by the media and provided to the misinformed committee of congressmen evaluating steroids for the people of America.

Let’s hope the baseball writers finally educate themselves to the real story of steroids and lift the ban on the HOF. Until then, the HOF remains a stained organization that doesn’t represent baseball as it should. Selig in and Bonds out is enough for me to call it a joke. I feel sorry for all those enshrined that got there by being great players because they are impacted by this incredible injustice. Their memory isn’t tarnished by being a member, the HOF’s reputation is the only thing tarnished by the poor choices made over the last 20 years. Educate the voters so they fully understand what Selig did to once again hurt the players union just as Fay Vincent pointed out nearly 30 years ago before being ousted by Selig and his fellow owners..