MLBTR Originals

So if you’re monitoring compliance with various agreements, what are some examples of the kinds of things you’re monitoring?

One of the elements of that is facilities. So, are [teams] providing the elements that they’re required to for the Major League organization? They are responsible for certain things related to clubhouses. Certain things related to, just an example, batting cages. There are also rules — I’ll use doubleheaders as an example. You cannot play two consecutive [doubleheaders], or three in a seven-day period. So if we have postponements, we’re monitoring where clubs are going to place those makeup games, because we have this obligation to Major League Baseball that they can only come in a certain range. There are rules related to game times when travel is in play. So [if there’s] a night game tonight in Charlotte, and then if Charlotte is coming to Columbus, Columbus can’t play a one o’clock game tomorrow.

It seems like there is still — and maybe this is more the lower levels than the International League — that there are still a lot of differences between stadiums, even among teams in the same league.

At one point, I would agree with you. I can’t speak for the lower classifications. [But] these facility standards I referenced came into play in the early nineties, and those are what really added fuel to the fire of new ballparks around the country. So in the agreement with the Major Leagues, these facility standards went into place, so now all of a sudden, communities throughout the country have got to either upgrade, or you lose your club. I think those have brought everything much closer together. Now, particularly in this league, we’re very fortunate. The oldest ballpark in this league — the oldest “new” ballpark, if you will — is in Buffalo, built in 1988. The ballpark in Pawtucket is older than that, [but] it’s undergone major renovations since then. We’re fortunate here that most of our ballparks are more like Columbus’ is than back in the bush-league days.

What role does the International League play in facilitating affiliation changes?

Very little, actually. That is almost entirely between the team and the Major League affiliate. That’s another area where we’re very fortunate. We went through a long period with no changes at all. We’ve had a few in recent years, with the Nationals coming into existence, and they’ve bounced around a little bit. Baltimore leaving Rochester back when the Twins came in there. The Mets leaving Norfolk. But, as an example, those changes can occur only every two years. We’re on a cycle with Major League Baseball where you have a minimum of two-year agreements. You can extend in periods of two beyond that. This coming fall is one of those periods, but right now, in this league, we only have two teams that are not extended beyond this current expiration date.

What are those teams?

Rochester [Twins] and Toledo [Tigers]. And I think it’s probably just a matter of time at some point this summer that, in all likelihood, they’ll extend their agreements.

What factors lead to a stable affiliate relationship?

That’s a good question, and it’s one that’s frequently asked because, in recent times, it has gotten much more geographically dictated. Detroit, Toledo. Boston, Pawtucket. Cleveland, Columbus. Cincinnati, Louisville. My opinion is always that relationship trumps geography. Geography has become important, but you can be close together — if you don’t get along, it doesn’t work. The best example of relationship trumping geography in this league is Rochester and Minnesota. The New York Mets’ affiliate is in Las Vegas. They would love to be in this league. If they had their druthers, they’d certainly like to see themselves in Rochester. But the relationship between the Twins and the Red Wings is as good as it gets. They just work very, very well together. They respect each other entirely. So that trumps that geography element.

Obviously, player transactions are dictated by parent organizations, but what role does the International League have in facilitating them?

We really don’t facilitate the transactions. What we do with that is best described as monitoring. You’re monitoring roster limits. You’re monitoring players placed on the disabled list, making sure their time has expired before they’re activated. Those are simply reported to this office.

I notice, though, that the first place many transactions turn up is on MiLB.com. Is that something that has to do with you, or no?

It’s not. The Major League clubs file their — I’ll call it paperwork, even though it’s done electronically. That goes to the commissioner’s office. And MiLB.com, or MLB Advanced Media, which oversees that, picks all that up.

How do you feel about September callups? How do they affect your league, and the construction of playoff teams in your league? 

The effect is obvious. You can have a certain team on the last day of August, [and] on September 1st, you can have an entirely different team. That’s just one of the elements we deal with. Sometimes that’s painful, but it’s just the way it is. So we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about that. Sometimes it’s difficult for fans to accept what they see happening if their team is going into the Governor’s Cup playoffs, and now all of a sudden it’s a different team.

The example I like to use is, way back in the day, when the Mets were in fact in this league, that’s when Dwight Gooden first appeared in the International League. He was a callup to this level to replace guys that had gone to the big leagues. So we simply hope that the Major Leagues replace those guys that are going to the big leagues with the best they have from down below. And usually that’s what happens. For those who are really watching it, there’s an opportunity to see players that you’re likely to see as some of the Triple-A mainstays that next year. Along those lines, I can remember when Russell Branyan came into this league. It was the same way. He made his first appearance in the International League postseason before being back here the following year.

It’s like that pitcher that’s got a no-hitter going into the seventh inning, and now he comes out because of a pitch count. That’s tough for everybody. But that’s where, in our relationship with Major League Baseball, winning at this level and player development butt heads a little bit. And in exchange for that, one of the things we offer fans at this level is, you can be watching that guy in the Triple-A city tonight, and tomorrow he’s on ESPN. You’ve got that immediacy.

Do you feel that the number of September callups teams make is appropriate?

That’s a subject that gets discussed from a lot of angles — on the effect it has on Major League games for clubs that are in contention at the Major League level. If you’ve got two clubs that are coming down the home stretch, [and] one’s playing another team that is in contention and one’s playing teams that are out of the race and they’re playing a lot of guys that have been in the minor leagues all year, is that fair? You hear that every year. The number of players that are taken, sometimes that can be a head-scratcher for us, because you’ll see that happen and they won’t play. What that usually leads to is the justification that, “Well, we want them to get accustomed to what goes on at the Major League level, because we anticipate that they’re going to be here next year.” Okay. I’ve never worked in player development directly, so I don’t totally grasp that factor. But again, they’re [the parent organizations’] players.

What are the challenges of marketing the International League and its teams with so much player movement?

You can’t rely on marketing the players, because the one season you’re anticipating somebody being with your club who’s the Baseball America top prospect in the minor leagues, now all of a sudden he makes the big-league club. Or [his parent organization has] signed a couple of minor-league free agents, and he’s going to start off at Double-A. You can’t risk that. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to promote [him] while he’s there.

So in combination with the ballpark revolution, I’ll call it, our bread and butter now is simply good baseball, in modern, safe facilities where you can take your family at an affordable price. While I don’t think we can ever lose sight of the fact that baseball is our primary reason for being, the entertainment, the overall experience part of it, is more prominent than the individual players.

At the same time, you sometimes do get players who stay with one team for an extended period of time. I think of someone like Mike Hessman …

The hometown heroes. Mike Hessman’s a great example. It’s not this way anymore, but there was a time when the [International League] teams would control a couple roster spots. You would sign your own players, and that allowed you to control, a little bit more, that hometown hero. This wasn’t the case with them, but here in Columbus, they had a couple of guys, Marshall Brant and Steve Balboni, a couple of big home-run-hitter guys that the fans were really able to identify with for [several] years consecutively. So there is a place for that, but that minor-league team can no longer control that. That has to come through the Major League organizations. Their concerns, obviously, are, are they going to want to take a roster spot with that player? Can that player contribute enough? Obviously Mike Hessman could. There’s certainly some of that that still happens.

Is winning important in individual markets?

I think it is. Fans have to believe that when they come out there, that you’ve got a chance to win. So a team that has a .500 record, I think that fulfills most of the fans’ expectations to see a competitive activity. If your team is losing seven or eight out of every ten games, I think that has a significant detrimental effect, especially if it happens over a period of years. Now, if you have a bad year, or a couple bad consecutive years, if you have built up enough equity with the experience you’re providing the fan at the ballpark, I think you get by with that. But oftentimes that’s where we see affiliation changes, where you get into a pattern of seeing, year after year, where your team is getting their brains beat out. On the other extreme, I don’t think you have to win 75% of your games every year to be successful.

With that in mind, how do you feel rosters should be balanced in terms of Triple-A veterans versus prospects?

It’s always fun when you can see those young prospects, but I think the baseball fan has changed in the last few decades, in that I don’t think there are as many diehard fans that follow it on a day-to-day basis — you know, that read the box scores. I think we have more casual fans, because I think there are people that would consider themselves fans that are fans of the activity, fans of going to the ballpark. They enjoy the atmosphere that we’re creating. But even as fans of that type, I don’t know that they’re necessarily honed in too closely on who the prospects are or who the veterans are.

Has the value of Triple-A franchises increased parallel to the value of MLB franchises in recent years?

Yeah, it’s been very positive, and a lot of it goes back to the facilities, and the increased attendance that has come along with that. To give you an example, Columbus had Triple-A baseball, and then after the 1970 season, because of the deteriorating ballpark, baseball left Columbus. When Mr. Cooper and his colleagues brought baseball back in 1977, they paid $50K for the franchise.

In 1993, we had the expansion that took Major League Baseball from 26 to 28 teams. Triple-A baseball also expanded. We charged $5MM for expansion franchises. Five years later, [with] the second expansion in 1998, the franchise fee was $7.5MM. The most recent Triple-A franchise now sold for above $30MM. That doesn’t mean they would all go for that — that’s at the high end. [But] those values have obviously increased significantly.

With that comes a different type of ownership. There’s good and bad to all this. You have people that have gotten in the game [as owners] in recent years as franchise values increased where they believe it has become a good investment. Buy it, sell it. From a stability standpoint, from a league-president standpoint, that’s not always great. On the other hand, those folks probably have more zeroes in their bank accounts than owners did previously, so they can do some different things with that. It’s just very different than it was. In the eighties and before, you could probably classify some of our operations as mom-and-pop operations. It was the bush leagues. But we have long since elevated ourselves, and it’s hard to call anything in the minor leagues anymore bush leagues.

The Triple-A All-Star Game is in Charlotte this year. How do the International League, the PCL and the host city divide responsibility for making sure that goes well?

The host league takes a forefront position. We have a document that was developed by the two leagues. When that first [Triple-A All-Star] game was played in 1988 in Buffalo, the two leagues had gotten together — we have a joint marketing committee consisting of members from both leagues — and developed a document that has evolved over the years. And that sets out the guidelines as to how that game is going to be operated. What events you’re going to have. It limits clubs on how much you can charge for events, and so forth. We have rotated that back and forth over the years. Each league, when it’s their year, will nominate a team [from] the other league — you know, “Here’s where we think it should be,” and in most cases the other league is rubber-stamping that, and that becomes the selectee. We’ve certainly tried to take advantage of new ballparks over the years and highlighting those. I’ll be going to Charlotte here in about ten days for another All-Star Game meeting, just to get brought up to speed on where things are at this point.

How much traveling do you do for this job?

Somebody who travels for a living wouldn’t think that what I do is a lot. It probably averages about a week a month. I’ll go to Charlotte, and then drive up to Durham, where I’m going to — their former manager, Charlie Montoyo, is one of our [International League] Hall Of Fame inductees this year, so we’ll be having that ceremony on the 19th. Last year, I did a lot of traveling the first month [or] five weeks of the season because we were implementing the pitch clocks, so I went to most of the ballparks and actually sat during the game with the person operating those clocks, trying to make sure they were on the right track. But I don’t try to get to every stadium every season. I’ll try to get to about half and then make sure I get to the other half the next year.

How did the implementation of pitch clocks go?

It went very well. It’s an interesting story. During the 2014 season, we found that in ten seasons, our game times had increased 20 minutes. They had gone up every year. There was no indication that it was going to stop unless we did something. So during the 2014 season, we developed what we called the “Move It Along” plan, and this was going to involve limiting the amount of time between innings. Oftentimes, between innings, pitchers weren’t coming out of the dugout for a minute or a minute and a half even to begin their warmups. Part of that is because teams were taking a long time with promotions. We had this all prepared and adopted by our directors at the 2014 Winter Meetings. Later in those same meetings — Sandy Alderson with the Mets chairs the official playing rules committee, and invited me to a meeting. That fall, MLB had been testing these clocks in the Arizona Fall League, and they had decided they wanted to put those in all Triple-A and Double-A ballparks for the 2015 season. So we were able to marry elements of our “Move It Along” plan with the implementation of these clocks. We cut 16 minutes off of the average game time, and it was simply being more efficient. It didn’t affect the game.

Thanks to Wilbur Miller for his advice on the questions for this interview.

Eliminating Suspensions and New Team Disincentives

The fifty game suspension has proven relatively weak, at least in some circumstances. The salary hit can be substantial, but it is hardly earth-shattering and could be imposed without the loss of playing time. And the Peralta deal seems to show that, at least if you aren’t otherwise viewed as a problem child, clubs are not discounting heavily what they’re willing to pay PED users.

But, suspension does at least hold the promise of providing disincentives to teams as well as players. And after all, shouldn’t clubs bear some responsibility for ensuring a clean slate of players, or at least for not willingly supporting PED use? Of course, at least to some extent. But the current system hardly makes sense.

As any parent knows, timing and context are critical in how you dole out punishments to your kids. Ryan Braun recently admitted that he took PEDs in late 2011, potentially boosting an MVP season that fueled the Brewers’ division title. On the other hand, he served his suspension at the back end of a lost season for a bottom-dwelling club, and did not even see much of a financial hit since his nine-figure extension has yet to kick in.

Indeed, the suspension/loss of pay system can easily have an ambiguous impact on the team. For instance: Alex Rodriguez is the Yankees’ highest-paid player. At one point, at least, that reflected that the team thought he was its best player. So, suspension is bad for the team, right? But, of course, we all now know, subjectively, that A-Rod is but a shell of his former self, and the suspension will save the Yanks a lot of dough. On the other hand, perhaps with mixed motivations, GM Brian Cashman says he’d rather pay Rodriguez and have him on the field.

And ultimately, it may not be appropriate to punish teams if there is no tie between their actions and that of the player. No public information has suggested that the Tigers were in any way involved in Peralta’s violation, yet they lost him down the stretch while pursuing a division title. In many cases, players will reach the point of suspension with a team other than that for which they played when they actually used the banned substance.

In designing those elements of a new system targeted at teams, there are any number of mechanisms to create major disincentives that are not specifically tied to an individual player’s contract or game availability. Loss of draft picks (along with pool allocation), sacrifice of international spending money, even caps on free agent spending are but a few ideas that come to mind. All make more sense as team deterrents than a suspension. In the alternative — or, in addition — teams could be stripped of titles or face substantial fines if found to have encouraged PED use for competitive benefit.

That still leaves the unresolved question of when teams should face punishment. Some have suggested an automatic punishment for clubs whose players are caught, which I find problematic at first glance. That would make teams the de facto PED guardians, and may not adequately reflect the extent to which players act entirely outside of their organization in obtaining substances. Surely, if the league can obtain evidence of a player’s use, it can dig up information showing whether a team played any role in it, punishing any specific team employees as well as the team itself.

Of course, per se team penalties are arguably necessary to overcome systemic hesitation to pursue the entities that together make up the league and employ its leadership. But if players are as serious about getting PEDs out of the game as they say, then perhaps anonymous or otherwise incentivized information reporting could overcome fears of reprisal.

Service Time and Contract Status

Turning to suggestions for a replacement system, it seems to me that one major problem with the current setup is its single set of punishments. While perfectly tailored disincentives are an impossibility — after all, every player is a different person with different wants and needs — it seems possible to make some adjustments that reflect the very different roster and contract situations that players are in.

As an initial matter, it would be necessary to decide whether to slot punishment based upon a player’s status at the time that they are deemed to have violated the agreement or at the time that the punishment is levied. While the former is appealing, it carries the added difficulty of pinpointing violation timetables and may provide a weaker deterrent, since players generally reach greater earning capacity as they accrue service time.

Further, as already hinted at, it is preferable to limit as much as possible the number of scenarios that carry separate punishments, which will aid implementation and help keep things clear. My preliminary suggestion, based upon my proposed punitive system, would be to separate out classes of players based upon service time accrued as of the date of punishment.

Separation based upon service time would at least allow a rough generalization of the incentives at play for players at that stage of their career, which in turns makes it easier to craft disincentives to shift the equation against PED use. (Remember, we are only talking here about players that have achieved 40-man roster status and are therefore subject to the JDA.) And it allows more flexibility for tailoring disincentives without getting overly complicated.

So, what disincentives should be employed?

Effective Financial Disincentives That Do Not Skew Competition Or The Market

As Ziegler hinted, the key may be to hit offending players’ pocketbooks in a way that makes getting caught a significant threat, not just a cost of doing business. Non-financial possibilities exist as well, such as adding minor league options, delaying free agency, or limiting the length or size of a deal that a free agent can sign. But each of those options would have a real effect on baseball’s player market: the first two, for instance, would clearly benefit the player’s team, and the latter would drastically skew the open market signing process.

Instead, I believe that it makes the most to target player earnings directly. There are three key elements that, I think, combine to best align the competing considerations here:

1. By keeping such “taxed” amounts on teams’ payrolls, but out of players’ pockets, the market-distorting effects can be minimized.
2. By employing an incremental tax rate system to player earnings, it would be possible to hit higher-salary players hard enough to create a real deterrent.
3. Providing a longer term over which the “tax” applies for players with less service time would give the system bite for younger players who might otherwise not see sufficient downside.

Starting with the first point, my suggestion is that players receiving PED punishment would nevertheless continue to accrue service time and negotiate salaries exactly as before. Artificial limitations on earnings would have a massive and hard-to-predict impact in all sorts of situations. If, say, an arb-eligible player lost his eligibility for a year when he’d be a possible non-tender, his current team could enjoy an advantage in retaining him at league minimum. Or, if a free agent was only allowed to sign a predetermined, one-year contract, an attractive suitor might be able to take him away from other clubs who would be willing to spend more.

Instead, my tax concept would allow the player and team(s) to negotiate as before, with the caveat that the player would lose a certain percentage of his actual take-home pay. By taking a percentage (at an escalating rate based on pay level), the player would still have the same incentives to maximize dollars, whether through arbitration, extension, or free agency. By prescribing a specific term of years over which the tax would apply and phase out (even if it extended over multiple contracts), the player would still have the same incentives to maximize years.

As for what happens with the “taxed” sums, it seems that many appropriate options might exist. From the fund of lost PED earnings, the league could set up educational initiatives, provide benefits to retired players, support charities, develop league-wide initiatives, or employ some mix of the above.

Turning to the incremental rate, my proposal would work like much like the tax code, with a greater chunk of salary being taken as the annual value goes up. To illustrate with some wholly arbitrary numbers, the league-minimum level might get a 30% rake while a $10MM salary might be hit at 70%. If a player’s annual salary were to rise during the time period during which they are subject to the tax, their rate would rise with it.

At the same time, a phase-out process would reduce the tax over the prescribed term. So, for example, if a certain player faced a 50% tax based on his salary, but was in a 25% phase-out year, the player would sacrifice three-eighths of his salary for that season. In situations where the salary structure of multi-year deals (whether preexisting, as with Braun, or prospective) could benefit the player, it would be relatively easy to average out the value for purposes of assessing the tax. (Indeed, the CBA already provides such calculations for luxury tax and related purposes.)

While my system would require a good deal of reassessment as players enter new deals, and would make for a specific loss of salary that is far from determined at the point at which the punishment is fixed, it should be possible to craft the details in a workable manner. Players are advised by sophisticated agents who can well explain the significance of these measures. And the overall lesson will be clear: getting caught at an opportune time will not lessen the blow. In many ways this system would function by trying to take away much of the upside of PED use.

But is greater salary loss for better-paid players the right approach? In many ways, the incentives are greater for PED use by younger, more marginal players. But given the greater educational, public relations, and exemplary harm caused by violations by more prominent players, there is ample justification for hitting them hardest. And as supposed by the competitive fairness principle I espoused above, the key is in finding appropriate deterrents for players of different contract classes, not whether they are necessarily equal as between those classes.

The last point, then, relates to the length of time that the tax would have effect. By hitting players with less service time with a longer-running term, the prospect of a serious hit to future earnings would enhance the deterrent effect while avoiding a potentially unfair (or, in other cases, ineffective) hit to early-career, lower-level earnings. On the other hand, players that have already reached free agency are in most cases already at or past their peak earning capacity, and would instead receive a steeper, more immediate blow to their income that would phase out in a relatively shorter time period.

While I won’t get into specifics here, it might make sense for, say, a pre-arb player to receive a six-year tax period with phase-out reductions dependent upon their service class each year. Meanwhile, a six-plus-year veteran might get a three-year ramp-down period.

Additional Measures and Repeat Offenders

In addition to docking salary, a new system could also consider conditioning continued pursuit of a baseball playing career on participation in relatively demanding treatment, education, and/or public service programs. Much like the terms of probation, failure to meet certain requirements could result in a reversion to more severe punishment. Rather than allowing players caught with PED use simply to utilize a self-prescribed PR campaign to return to the game’s good graces, this would require actual, concrete steps to restore their status.

One other way to ensure continuing impact is by addressing the issue of repeat offenders. For instance, the CBA and JDA could contemplate a stock contract clause that applies to players who have been found to have previously violated the JDA, which would be added to current contracts and/or included in future contracts on either a mandatory or a negotiated basis. In addition to enhancing/extending the financial penalties discussed above, inclusion of such a clause could convert guaranteed years to club option years if the player is caught a second time.

As Max Scherzer has argued with respect to Braun: “He still has his contract and he’s still financially gaining from this. You gotta start cutting out contracts. I’m for that.” This would build off of that idea. Of course, it would also re-introduce the problem of having competitive and market impact.

Perhaps more importantly, it would largely work by enhancing financial disincentives that failed to work the first time around. There are diminishing returns, at some point, to going after pocketbooks. Depending upon the tax rates applied, offending players might not have much left to go after. And it is at least worth asking whether, if financial disincentives failed once, other kinds of disincentives are necessary.

For that reason, I think that a better repeat offender provision would be essentially different in kind: a second time violating the JDA would result in a lifetime ban. Matt Holliday is among the players to have advocated this result. The current iteration of the JDA already provides a ban on a called third strike, so the players and league are already prepared for it. Perhaps it is time to make the threat of a lost career a realistic threat for those players who have proven unable or unwilling to abide by a baseline rule of the game.