NL Notes: Wainwright, Dodgers, Phillies
A 2022 season shortened by the lockout would have a statistical impact on every player, particularly veteran names like Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals veteran is looking forward to one final season with retiring longtime teammate Yadier Molina, and if the duo joins forces for 20 more Wainwright starts, they’ll set a new record for most games started by a battery (breaking the Mickey Lolich/Bill Freehan mark of 324 starts). “Any time you can say you had the most all-time ‘anything’ in baseball is a real accomplishment,” Wainwright told Rick Hummel of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I just look so much forward to having an opportunity to break that record with my buddy, Yadi. I hope we get enough starts to make that happen. We just need the season to start.”
To this end, Wainwright is hopeful of a good result in labor talks between the league and players, but feels “these owners are going to have to come around, though. They’re kind of crazy with their asks. I guess when you own the company, you want to see how far you can stretch it. The game of baseball is a very lucrative thing for players and owners. The ones that get left out of that are always the fans, unfortunately. Baseball sometimes just needs to get out of its own way and realize we could be the only show going.”
Though a delay to the start of Spring Training seems inevitable, Wainwright is continuing to work out as usual as he prepares for his 17th big league campaign. This work was temporarily delayed by a recent bout of COVID-19, though Wainwright said his symptoms were relatively mild.
More from around the National League….
- “The Dodgers seem to be positioning themselves to have a young wave of pitching ready in the second half of next season,” The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya writes, citing Dustin May‘s return from Tommy John rehab and the impending big league debut of prospect Ryan Pepiot. Los Angeles hasn’t been shy about immediately putting its young arms into key roles in the rotation or bullpen, so Ardaya believes the Dodgers will look to acquire a veteran “stopgap” kind of starter to cover some innings before the youngsters arrive. Clayton Kershaw‘s free agency also continues to loom over the L.A. offseason, yet Ardaya feels the Dodgers would “likely” still try to land that second-tier arm even if Kershaw also re-signs with the team. Such moves would give the Dodgers six starters on paper (with Kershaw and the stopgap joining Walker Buehler, Julio Urias, Andrew Heaney, and Tony Gonsolin) before even considering the likes of May or Pepiot, though having a surplus would be a welcome problem for a Dodgers team that had its depth thinned by injuries in 2021.
- The Phillies hired Chris Fonnesbeck as the top analyst in their research and development department earlier this offseason, The Athletic’s Matt Gelb reports. Fonnesbeck worked in the Yankees’ analytics department from 2019-21, and also spent the 2018 season working as a consulting analyst for the Brewers. The Phils have put a new focus on their analytics team this winter, hiring Arirudh Kilambi as the team’s new assistant GM and putting him in charge of R&D.
Nationals Hire Jon Weil For Special Assistant Role
The Nationals have hired Jon Weil as a special assistant to president of baseball operations/GM Mike Rizzo, Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post reports (Twitter link). Weil’s “primary responsibilities” will include professional scouting, according to Matt Weyrich of NBC Sports Washington.
Weil joins the Nats after a long stint in Colorado, working in various capacities in the Rockies’ front office from 2005 until he departed the organization last summer. Weil had been working as the Rockies’ assistant GM since 2014, and was considered a possible candidate for the interim GM role that eventually went to Bill Schmidt (later formally hired as the full-time general manager) when Jeff Bridich resigned in April.
Weil began his baseball career with four seasons as an area scouting supervisor with the Royals and also spent seven years working in pro scouting with the Rockies, so he’ll bring plenty of experience to Washington’s front office. One of Rizzo’s chief goals this offseason has been a major overhaul of the Nationals’ player development and scouting departments, and Weil’s hiring represents yet another change in their organizational ranks.
Matt Magill Announces Retirement
Right-hander Matt Magill has announced his retirement, as per his personal Twitter account. The 32-year-old is calling it a career after 13 professional seasons in total, and parts of five MLB seasons.
It was quite a nice run for a 31st-round draft pick, as Magill was selected out of high school by the Dodgers in 2008. Magill made his Major League debut in the Dodger Blue in 2013, tossing 27 2/3 innings for the club before returning to Triple-A for the entirety of the 2014 season. That winter saw Magill dealt to the Reds in exchange for Chris Heisey, but Magill’s Cincinnati tenure was marked by a Tommy John surgery that wiped out almost all of his 2015-16 seasons.
Magill finally gained a foothold in the big leagues in 2018, appearing in 90 games and pitching 107 1/3 innings with the Twins and Mariners over the course of the 2018-19 seasons. While his Statcast numbers weren’t pretty, Magill outpitched his metrics by rather a stunning amount, posting a 3.94 ERA over those two seasons despite some of the league’s worst hard-contact and xwOBA totals. Magill also allowed an above-average number of home runs, but struck out batters at a solid 25.1% rate.
The abbreviated 2020 season saw Magill post a perfect 0.00 ERA over his first eight outings before he ran into some serious struggles, quite possibly due to a shoulder injury that eventually brought an early end to his campaign. The Mariners released Magill and then quickly re-signed him at the end of last year’s Spring Training, but the righty didn’t see any action at either the MLB or minor league levels in 2021. Magill ends his career with a 4.63 ERA and 23.2% strikeout rate over 149 2/3 innings in the bigs.
We at MLB Trade Rumors congratulate Magill on his career, and we wish him the best in retirement.
Red Sox Hire Anthony Iapoce As Senior Hitting Coordinator
The Red Sox announced their minor league coaching staffs and some changes in player development this afternoon. Most notably, the club has brought aboard Anthony Iapoce as senior hitting coordinator.
Iapoce has spent the past six years as a big league hitting coach. He worked in that capacity with the Rangers from 2016-18 before assuming the same role with the Cubs. The 48-year-old spent the next three seasons on Chicago’s North Side, but his contract was not renewed at the end of last season.
The Cubs had a middle-of-the-pack offense during Iapoce’s tenure. Chicago’s 101 team wRC+ between 2019-21 (excluding pitchers) checked in 16th of the league’s 30 clubs. They were 18th in that category (98 wRC+) last season, although Iapoce and the rest of the coaching staff obviously had to navigate the trade deadline departures of a few of the franchise’s most recognizable and productive players.
Boston also announced the hiring of longtime big league infielder Chad Tracy as the manager of their Triple-A affiliate in Worcester. The 41-year-old had spent the past seven seasons with the Angels, working both as a skipper in the low minors and as the club’s minor league field coordinator.
The Reds Should Trade Or Extend Jesse Winker This Offseason
These days, when baseball fans talk about the Reds, the general topic seems to be trying to pin down which, if any, of their three reportedly available starting pitchers will be traded following the transactions freeze. It’s hardly a secret that the Reds at least entertained talks involving Sonny Gray, Luis Castillo and Tyler Mahle prior to the lockout. They also placed Wade Miley on waivers and traded Tucker Barnhart. Both looked to be financially driven moves, and GM Nick Krall erased any doubt that was the case when publicly declaring a need to “align payroll to our resources” early in the offseason.
Trade chatter on each of Gray, Castillo and Mahle followed — understandably so. All three are only controlled another two seasons. If ownership is mandating a payroll reduction even for just the 2022 season, there’s an argument to be made that the best course of action is to turn one or more of those highly coveted arms into some young talent who’ll help in 2023 and beyond. Gray is set to earn $10MM in 2022 and has a highly affordable $12MM club option for the 2023 season. Castillo and Mahle are arbitration-eligible and projected to earn $7.6MM and $5.6MM in 2022, respectively, by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz.
If the Reds are open to dealing any of those three quality starters who are controlled through the 2023 season, however, why isn’t there more talk of Cincinnati listening to offers on left fielder Jesse Winker? Like that trio of arms, Winker is controlled only through the 2023 season and figures to see his price tag rise substantially. He’s projected to earn $6.8MM in 2022 and, if he continues hitting at his recent pace, he’ll likely see that figure rise beyond $10MM in 2023.
First and foremost, let’s get one thing straight: Winker’s offensive proficiency hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. A former No. 49 overall draft pick (2012) and consensus top-100 prospect from 2015 to 2017, Winker has hit from the moment he got to the big leagues. That’s not an exaggeration; he slashed .298/.375/.529 in 137 plate appearances as a rookie back in 2017, and the only time he’s posted a wRC+ under 127 was in 2019, when he was “only” 11 percent better than league average (111 wRC+).
From 2017-19, Winker batted a combined .285/.379/.466 with 30 home runs, an 11.9% walk rate and just a 15.2% strikeout rate in 855 plate appearances — and yet his efforts went largely unnoticed. Even the Reds themselves signed not one but two free-agent outfielders to lucrative multi-year deals after that stretch, bringing Nick Castellanos and Shogo Akiyama into the fold. It’s true that the left-handed-hitting Winker has some notable platoon splits and isn’t regarded as a great defender, but production like that should’ve seemingly entrenched him in the outfield mix — not left him fighting for at-bats alongside Aristides Aquino, Nick Senzel and others.
Good as Winker was from ’17-’19, it was the 2020 season where things really took off. Winker struck out more than in the past, causing his batting average to dip to .255, but his walk rate spiked to 15.3% and his power went through the roof. He slugged a dozen homers and hit seven doubles in just 184 plate appearances — all while posting a .289 ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average). In 2021, Winker not only sustained much of that power surge but managed to drop his strikeout rate from the 25.1% he showed in 2020 back down to a 15.5% clip that falls in line with his 2017-19 numbers. Essentially, that 2020 spike in punchouts looks like a small-sample blip at this point. He’s never whiffed at even an 18% clip in any of his four other big league campaigns.
Over the past two seasons, Winker has appeared in a total of 164 games and tallied 668 plate appearances. He’s slugged 36 homers, connected on 39 doubles and posted a mammoth .292/.392/.552 batting line in that time. Great American Ball Park is a friendly place for hitters, to be sure, but park-neutral metrics like wRC+ (147) and OPS+ (140) suggest he’s still been anywhere from 40 to 47 percent better than a league-average hitter.
There’s little sense in trying to sugar coat Winker’s numbers against lefties. They are, quite simply, bad. He’s hit .199/.314/.338 (78 wRC+) against southpaws over the past two seasons, which is actually an improvement over his early-career woes. He still takes his walks (12.4%), but he’s fanned in 21.2% of his plate appearances compared to just 15.1% against righties. Winker’s 52.8% ground-ball rate against lefties is also vastly higher than his 43.6% mark against righties. And beyond that, 14% of the fly-balls Winker hits against lefties have been infield flies, compared to just 6% against righties. The walk rate at least lets Winker post a passable OBP against southpaws, but the damage he does comes when holding the platoon advantage.
Even if Winker is “only” a platoon player, however, he’s a platoon player who is not just productive against righties — he’s one of the best hitters in baseball against righties. From 2020-21, the only two players in all of MLB who have outproduced Winker against righties (by measure of wRC+) are Juan Soto (185) and Bryce Harper (179). Winker’s mark of 169 leads stars like Freddie Freeman, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Statcast generally supports his production, too; he was in the 74th percentile or better this past season in terms of strikeout rate, walk rate, average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, barrel rate, chase rate, expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected wOBA.
Excellent as Winker’s rate production has been, detractors might point out that he’s yet to reach 500 plate appearances in a given season. He’s had stints on the injured list in four of his five MLB campaigns, only staying healthy for the entirety of the shortened 2020 schedule. None of his issues seems to have been recurring; his career IL stints have come on account of a 2017 left hip flexor strain, a 2018 right shoulder subluxation, a 2019 cervical strain in his neck and an intercostal strain that ended his 2021 campaign. Winker is expected to be full-go for the start of Spring Training, but he has yet to put together a full 162-game season.
Still, plenty of clubs around the league would look past that injury history based on Winker’s career track record at the plate. As for the glove, Winker isn’t a great left fielder, but the likely implementation of a DH in the National League helps to quiet any such concerns. Furthermore, it’s not as though he’s unplayable on the grass. He posted a minus-5 mark in Defensive Runs Saved through 831 innings in left this past season (in addition to -1.9 UZR and -8 Outs Above Average) but is only minus-7 in 1669 career innings.
Winker is generally regarded as a better defender than either Castellanos or Kyle Schwarber, and most pundits expect both those players to command weighty contracts in free agency. Winker has been a better defender and better hitter than both over the past two seasons. There are surely teams that would rather part with prospects to acquire two years of Winker than pay annual salaries near (or in excess of) $20MM for Schwarber and Castellanos.
Frankly, any team that needs a left-handed bat and/or a boost in the outfield ought to be pounding on the Reds’ door in an effort to pry Winker away once the lockout lifts. He’s not without his flaws, but he’s an elite bat against right-handed pitching who can at least post a passable OBP against lefties. Winker won’t turn 29 until August, and while we can’t know his exact salary over the next two seasons, he’ll clock in at less than $20MM total.
All of that leads to the other side of the equation for the Reds. If they’re not going to trade Winker, now’s the time they should be mulling a multi-year extension with an eye toward making him a focal point of the lineup for years beyond his current slate of club control. By the time next spring rolls around, he’ll only be a year from free agency and may not be as amenable to negotiations — particularly not if he’s punched his ticket to another hefty arbitration raise with a strong 2022 season.
So, what might an extension cost? In terms of recent comparables, there haven’t been many outfielders to sign long-term deals when they’re sitting between four and five years of Major League service time. Randal Grichuk notched another four years and $47MM on top of what would’ve been a $5MM salary for his second arbitration year early in the 2019 season, but Winker has been a vastly more productive player. Adam Jones‘ six-year, $85.5MM deal is a decade old at this point.
Winker should command something in the $15-18MM range for his remaining two arbitration seasons. Tacking on three years beyond that would seem a reasonable target for the Reds, though given his age, Winker’s reps might advocate for a longer deal over one that sends him back to the market as a 33-year-old. Mid-range corner outfielders like Josh Reddick and Avisail Garcia have reached/topped $13MM annual salaries on four-year deals in recent years. Castellanos received a $16MM annual salary on his first deal with the Reds — the same AAV the Astros gave to a much older but nonetheless productive bat-first player, Michael Brantley. Winker’s production should put him closer to Castellanos territory than Reddick/Garcia territory.
These are all generalities, of course, but a five- or six-year deal that values Winker’s free-agent seasons in the $16MM vicinity doesn’t seem outlandish. After all, were he to go year-to-year and continue at his current pace, he’d hit the market in advance of his age-30 season and could justifiably seek an annual salary more in line with whatever Schwarber and Castellanos land post-lockout.
Ultimately, the Reds could opt for the conservative route, holding onto their left fielder and going year-to-year with Winker through the remainder of his arbitration eligibility. If they’re truly willing to listen to offers on their top three starters, though, there’s little sense in not doing the same with Winker — unless an extension is expected down the line. Based on the team’s spending habits since the close of the 2020 season, an extension would register as a surprise. Perhaps it’s a hard “no” from the Reds, but listening to offers on Gray, Castillo and Mahle while turning away interest in Winker would be an odd line to draw in the sand.
Triple-A Baseball Season Expanded To 150 Games
Minor League Baseball announced this morning that the Triple-A schedule will be expanding from 144 to 150 games in 2022 (h/t to J.J. Cooper of Baseball America). According to the press release, the move is designed to “help Triple-A baseball better align with the Major League season” by delaying “the end date of the Minor League campaign to September 28.”
MiLB notes that the development puts into place the longest Triple-A season since at least 1964. In 2019, the most recent minor league season to begin on time, the Triple-A regular season schedule wrapped up by September 2. Ending the regular season within the first week of September was the typical process, leading to particular challenges for MLB teams that had injured players attempting to make late-season returns to the big leagues. Getting recovering players into minor league game action on rehab assignments during September became impossible unless one or more of the club’s farm teams had qualified for the postseason.
Last year’s Triple-A season carried into the first week of October, although that hadn’t been by design. Rather, the start of the season was delayed a month over COVID-19 concerns. This year, the Triple-A campaign is slated to begin on its more customary time, with first games scheduled for April 5. Expanding the docket a few games will allow it to more closely overlap with the MLB schedule, which is currently ticketed for March 31 through October 3.
The MLB schedule, of course, is contingent on the hammering out of a new collective bargaining agreement. Given the huge gaps still present in CBA talks, the possibility of a delayed start to the season (and possible compression of the schedule) looms larger day by day. The Triple-A schedule won’t be affected by the lockout, however.
Only players on an MLB 40-man roster are members of the MLB Players Association. That encompasses a handful of minor leaguers, mostly those added to the 40-man last November to keep them from selection in the Rule 5 draft. Yet the vast majority of minor league players are not on a 40-man roster. Those players can remain in contact with club personnel throughout the lockout and will report as scheduled for the start of the minor league campaign.
Read The Transcript Of Our Chat With Former MLB Reliever Will Ohman
If you regularly watched National League baseball from 2006-08, there’s a good chance you saw Will Ohman pitch. The lefty reliever ranked 10th in the NL in ’06 by appearing in 78 games for the Cubs, and then second in the league with 83 appearances for the Braves in ’08.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany on a U.S. Army base, Ohman was drafted in the eighth round by the Cubs in 1998 out of Pepperdine. He kicked off his big league career in 2000 by inducing Marquis Grissom to ground out as part of a scoreless inning. Ohman underwent Tommy John surgery in 2002, but fully recovered and in total appeared in 483 games for the Cubs, Braves, Dodgers, Orioles, Marlins, and White Sox in his ten-year career.
Ohman put together a sub-4.00 ERA in three different seasons, including a 2.91 mark in ’05. Among lefty relievers who tossed at least 100 innings from 2005-06, Ohman ranked sixth with a 25.2 K%. The list of Ohman strikeout victims includes Ken Griffey Jr., Todd Helton, Joe Mauer, Jim Thome, Bobby Abreu, David Ortiz, Barry Bonds, David Wright, Adrian Beltre, and Derek Jeter. In his career, Ohman held lefties to a .206 batting average.
Ohman’s website notes that he also “represented Germany in the World Baseball Classic Qualifier Tournaments in both 2012 and 2016.” He later served as the pitching coach of the Palm Beach Cardinals. Will now runs Ace Baseball, and he’s on Twitter @TheWillOhman.
Will told me he’s followed MLBTR since his playing days. We were thrilled to host him for a live chat today; you can click here to read the transcript.
Also, if you’re a current or former MLB player reading this, come do a chat with us! It’s fun and easy and only requires an hour of your time, and you choose which questions you publish and answer. Click here to contact us.
Orioles Expected To Pursue Catching, Pitching Depth After Lockout
There’s no end to the lockout in sight, but all 30 teams — even those who aren’t/weren’t planning to be overly active in free agency — will have to work at an accelerated pace coming out of the lockout. With that in mind, Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com takes a look at what’s typically a busy month for the Orioles, who in recent years have been quite active in February. Beyond recapping some of the team’s February dealings in recent years, Kubatko suggests that the O’s are likely to pursue additional depth both behind the plate and in the starting rotation.
Baltimore has already added a pair of catchers on minor league deals this winter, signing both Anthony Bemboom and Jacob Nottingham (an Astros draftee during current Baltimore GM Mike Elias’ first season as scouting director in Houston). Elias “isn’t averse” to a big league deal for another catcher, per Kubatko, though what was already a thin market for veteran backstops has been largely picked over.
Of course, given that the Orioles are widely expected to give 2019 No. 1 overall draft pick Adley Rutschman his MLB debut at some point in the 2022 season, any catching additions would only be in the backup mold anyhow. Veterans such as Robinson Chirinos, Kurt Suzuki and Austin Romine are among the yet-unsigned backstops awaiting the lockout’s resolution, and any would ostensibly make sense as an early-season starter to hold the fort down until Rutschman debuts.
Rutschman, the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball according to both Baseball America and Keith Law of The Athletic, is fresh off a season in which he posted a combined .285/.397/.502 with 23 homers, 25 doubles and a pair of triples in 543 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A. The switch-hitter, who’s set to turn 24 this weekend, is arguably ready for a big league look right out of the gate, though most teams tend to delay the debuts of prospects of this caliber in order to secure an additional year of club control.
As currently constructed, the service time system would only require the O’s to keep Rutschman in Triple-A for just over two weeks in order to push his entry into the free-agent market back from the 2027-28 offseason to the 2028-29 offseason. It’s a natural call for a front office from a business standpoint, but the simplicity with which teams can delay a top prospect’s free agency is one of the many topics the MLBPA sought to discuss heading into labor negotiations this winter.
On the pitching side of things, the outlook is far more open. The O’s do still have a pair of highly touted top prospects — righty Grayson Rodriguez and lefty D.L. Hall — who could debut in 2022, but the current lack of depth could create opportunities. John Means and veteran Jordan Lyles, who agreed to a one-year deal just before the lockout, are locks for rotation gigs early in the season. Beyond that pair, Baltimore has already gotten looks at Dean Kremer, Bruce Zimmermann, Keegan Akin, Zac Lowther, Alexander Wells and (briefly) Mike Baumann in the big leagues. Prospect Kyle Bradish had a nice 2021 season between Double-A and Triple-A as well.
The O’s aren’t necessarily lacking options, which is likely why Kubatko suggests that any veteran additions at this point would likely be on minor league deals with non-roster invites to camp. The O’s have worked out such deals regularly in recent years (e.g. Matt Harvey, Wade LeBlanc, Tommy Milone), and at least one more addition along those same lines would further deepen the pool of rotation candidates and help to keep the team from overworking up-and-coming arms. Such signings can also net trade candidates at the deadline, and if the player in question has fewer than five years of MLB service (Jakob Junis, for example), there’s always the possibility of retaining them via arbitration next winter — should things go well.
There’s also plenty of fluidity in the infield, where the O’s are currently looking at some combination of Rougned Odor, Jahmai Jones, Ramon Urias, Kelvin Gutierrez, Rylan Bannon and Jorge Mateo to shoulder the load at second base, shortstop and third base. There’s ample room for a veteran addition here, but it’s worth noting that the largest deal for a free-agent position player under Elias has been Jose Iglesias‘ $3MM deal prior to the 2020 season. A large splash isn’t likely, even if the O’s are currently only projected for a payroll in the $60MM range.
MLBPA Drops Proposed Bonus Pool Allotment From $105MM To $100MM
FEBRUARY 2: While the parties are meeting on non-core economics issues today, both Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet and Michael Silverman of The Boston Globe write that core economics discussion could pick back up by the end of this week. Whenever those discussions resume, the owners are likely to put forth their response to the MLBPA’s Tuesday proposal.
FEBRUARY 1: There was another round of collective bargaining negotiations this afternoon, at which the Major League Baseball Players Association made its latest proposal. According to various reports, the union put forth only small changes relative to its past offers.
The most meaningful alterations are twofold, hears Evan Drellich of the Athletic (Twitter thread). First, the union tweaked the bonus pool system that would award exceptional pre-arbitration performers. While the MLBPA had pushed for a $105MM pool in previous offers, they reduced that number to $100MM in today’s proposal. That’s still far above the $10MM that MLB has envisioned for those bonus allotments, leaving a massive gap yet to be bridged. As Drellich and Ken Rosenthal explained yesterday, that’s even before accounting for the fact that the MLBPA is hoping to spread that money to a smaller group of players than MLB would like, given the union’s push for players reaching arbitration earlier in their careers.
The other known modification to the union’s offer, per Drellich, involves efforts to disincentivize service time gaming. The MLBPA is seeking to allow players to “earn” a full year of service based upon their finishes in various awards voting and placements on Wins Above Replacement leaderboards. The union’s most recent offer would grant a full year of service to catchers and infielders who finish among the top seven in each league in their position’s WAR rankings; outfielders, starting pitchers and relief pitchers who land among the top 20 in their league by WAR at each position would also pick up a bonus year. That’s less comprehensive than previous union proposals, which would’ve granted a full year of service to catchers and infielders among the top 10 at their position and outfielders and pitchers among their league’s top 30. (Presumably, the union’s previous efforts to reward service time based on awards voting remains in place).
Basing service time off positional WAR rankings has its challenges. Teams have become increasingly flexible in deploying players all around the diamond, perhaps making it difficult to identify certain players’ “true” positions. That’s also the case in drawing a distinction between starters and relievers, particularly as teams have expanded their use of openers and true bullpen games to manage pitcher workloads and mitigate the times-through-the-order effect (where hitters tend to perform better after seeing the same pitcher multiple times in an outing). The league and union would also need to agree upon some form of WAR metric — whether by pulling directly from one website like FanGraphs or Baseball Reference, blending multiple public WAR figures together to create a composite number, or by fashioning one from scratch.
Finally, the union acquiesced (at least in concept) to a league initiative on service time manipulation. MLB’s most recent proposal included the possibility of teams receiving draft pick compensation as a reward for keeping top prospects on their roster for an entire season, if those players go on to hit certain thresholds in awards voting. Drellich tweets that the union is on board with the possibility of awarding extra draft selections to incentivize teams to put talented young players on their active roster, although the union’s proposal contained unspecified modifications to MLB’s vision.
Much about the MLBPA’s proposal this afternoon remains unchanged relative to past discussions. Bob Nightengale of USA Today writes that the parties remain significantly divided on issues like the lowest league minimum salary — the union is seeking $775K; MLB has offered $615K — and the next base luxury tax threshold, which the MLBPA is hoping to set at $245MM while MLB has proposed $214MM.
Given the relativity minor changes in the union proposal, it’s little surprise that general sentiment about the state of negotiations remains overwhelmingly negative. Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post tweets that today’s talks were “heated.” Jeff Passan of ESPN suggests the prospect of starting Spring Training on time is now “in grave danger,” while Jon Heyman of the MLB Network calls it remote. Nightengale tweets that the parties are expected to meet again tomorrow but will limit those talks to issues outside of core economics.
Quick Hits: Mullins, Farm Rankings, Mariners, Universal DH
Cedric Mullins of the Baltimore Orioles, baseball’s top power-speed threat in 2021, opened up in a video (Twitter link) that dropped today about some previously private health struggles with Crohn’s disease. The 27-year-old details how teammate Trey Mancini‘s abrupt colon cancer diagnosis before the 2020 season helped him pay more attention to his own health woes.
This introspection ultimately led Mullins down a path that included intestinal surgery in November 2020, severe weight loss, and a Crohn’s disease diagnosis that very well could have been career-derailing. That Mullins broke out last season— earning an All-Star nod, Silver Slugger, and the distinction as baseball’s only 30-30 player— is made all the more remarkable by the presence of a condition that so often proves debilitating. We at MLBTR tip our collective caps to Mullins for sharing his story and raising awareness for a condition that is growing in prevalence.
Some more uplifting news from around the league…
- Baseball America unveiled their 2022 Organization Talent Rankings today, with the Seattle Mariners claiming the top spot on this offseason’s installment. With talented youngsters like Julio Rodriguez, George Kirby, and Noelvi Marte forcing their way up the minor leagues and the Mariners fresh off a 90-win season, the time may be right to buy stock in the Mariners franchise. BA’s Kyle Glaser notes that 16 of the last 17 teams to claim the top farm system have reached the playoffs within two years of earning that distinction. The one team who bucked that trend, the 2011 Royals, took three years, reaching the World Series in 2014 and winning it in 2015. This history may prove to be of huge import for Seattle fans, who are now 20 years removed from their last playoff appearance.
- Jon Heyman of MLB Network lent more credence to the idea that a universal DH will be included in the next CBA, stating (via Twitter) “Barring something totally unexpected, it can be assumed at this point that the universal DH will be in place in 2022”. Heyman adds that both the player’s union and league are in favor of implementing the rule, though there is some disagreement about which party will benefit more from having a DH in the National League. We polled readers back in December to gauge how a universal DH would be received, with 62% of readers expressing enthusiasm, 26% expressing disdain, and another 12% expressing indifference to the change.