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Major League Baseball will initiate a major change in its standard operating practices in response to the spread of the coronavirus. Per Jeff Passan of ESPN.com (Twitter links), clubhouses will be closed to media.

Just how long this standard will apply remains to be seen, though there’s no indication it’s anything but a temporary measure. Presumably, it’ll depend upon the course of the worrisome disease. The move comes on the heels of similar actions from the NBA and NHL.

It’s something of a partial measure that relates only to the safety of team personnel. There’s no reason to believe that media interactions are any more dangerous than the many other person-to-person interactions that players engage in on a daily basis. The league also has plans to limit travel and clubhouse access for certain team employees.

There’s some evident incongruity in this action. It will not offer any protection to fans and will not help guard against the broader spread of the coronavirus through the staging of large-scale events. Passan says that the league will continue to hold Spring Training and (ultimately) regular-season games. Those plans remain subject to change, on both a universal and situational basis.

Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball has announced that it will delay the start of the 2020 season owing to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak. Veteran reporter Jim Allen has the news from across the Pacific.

For the time being, Japan’s top league will push its opening date back into mid-April. It had been scheduled to kick off on March 20th. Whether further delay might be contemplated isn’t clear.

League commissioner Atsushi Saito framed the decision was an imperative. “We must protect the players, staff, families, but no one more so than the fans,” he said. “We must protect the cultural legacy of pro baseball.”

While NPB’s Spring Training contests have been taking place without fans in attendance, MLB’s Grapefruit and Cactus League action has proceeded as usual. The league has instituted some policies to help limit the potential for coronavirus transmission to or between players and others actually employed in or around the game. But fans have been left to make their own decisions.

By all indications from the scientific community, the questions facing the MLB commissioner’s office aren’t going to recede anytime soon. The dangerous Covid-19 virus is believed to have spread more broadly than positive tests reflect, with potential for exponential growth. Social distancing measures, including the avoidance of large public gatherings, represent a key tactic for slowing the transmission of the disease.

We have already seen several major events cancelled in the United States. The National Basketball Association has contemplated staging games without fans present. It seems that MLB will at minimum need to prepare for potential mitigation efforts — whether or not entered voluntarily or dictated by governmental action.

As Saito puts it, “if you have games you have to make a maximum effort.” NPB determined that the necessary level of precaution was not feasible. It remains to be seen how the matter will be handled in North America.

With much concern around the world regarding the spread of coronavirus, it was inevitable that there’d be an impact on the staging of sporting events. Asia’s two most significant baseball leagues are beginning to adjust their schedules to adapt to a situation in which large public gatherings would not be prudent.

The situation is especially concerning in Korea, which has seen the most cases of infection outside of China (where the disease originated). The Korea Baseball organization is responding by canceling its slate of planned pre-season games, as Jee-ho Yoo of Yonhap News reports.

For the KBO, this may only be the beginning. The league is still pondering what to do about the upcoming regular season. Delaying Opening Day (presently scheduled for March 28th) is presumably one possibility.

Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball is also taking action, as the Associated Press reports, but it is taking a somewhat different initial step. The NPB’s spring contests will take place in empty stadiums. There’s still hope of launching the regular season as scheduled on March 20th, but that decision has yet to be made.

Keeping fans away from the spring contests was a “bitter decision,” in the words of the NPB commissioner, but it seems clear that tougher choices could still be to come. In addition to the baseball regular season, Tokyo is scheduled to host the Summer Olympics beginning in late July.

The handling of these difficult questions abroad could help inform Major League Baseball’s approach to the coronavirus situation — if and when it must do so. No doubt the league is already working through contingency plans that would avoid disruption to the extent possible while serving far more important public health imperatives.

Pre-arbitration extensions aren’t exactly a new phenomenon. We’ve seen an increasing number of long-term deals with newer MLB players — and even pre-MLB players — over the past decade or so. (Way back in 2013, for instance, I referred to a “baseball-wide trend of … early extensions.”) Last winter featured a dizzying number of extensions, including quite a few involving players that hadn’t yet cracked into the big-dollar earnings stages of their careers.

Some further contracts of that kind were to be expected. But we could be seeing yet more expansion of the kinds of players targeted. The early-career extensions inked by still-youthful reliever Aaron Bummer and swingman Freddy Peralta may only be the tip of the iceberg, ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan indicates on Twitter.

It seems there’s something potentially afoot that goes beyond typical team-by-team extension targeting. Passan says that “teams across baseball are trying to lock up pre-arbitration players,” specifically, and that “there could be a rash of such deals in the coming weeks.”

This evidently widespread effort is all the more interesting given the marked open-market shift observed in the just-completed offseason. In each of the two prior winters, free agents — even high-end, younger ones — were approached with obvious reluctance. But MLB teams attacked the 2019-20 market vigorously, doling out both market-moving superstar deals and a series of hefty, lengthy payouts to quality older veterans.

It goes without saying that it’s good for business for a MLB organization to put a quality product on the field. But doing so consistently and in a cost-efficient manner is the gold standard. That’s also naturally quite challenging, since a baseball season is not only a zero-sum game but one that can swing upon innumerable, not-always-controllable factors.

Teams understandably prefer only to enter competitive bidding situations for free agents as needed. It’s not difficult to recognize a team’s potential upside in drafting (or trading for), developing, and then extending a player at an early enough stage in his MLB career that it can lock in low-cost, productive seasons for many years to come. There are obvious risks here as well. The Yankees-Luis Severino extension seemed a slam dunk but has been gutted by unfortunate injuries. But that deal could easily still pay out. Even if it doesn’t, it’d equate to whiffing on a good but not great free agent signing.

Anyway, all of that has long been appreciated and acted upon by MLB teams. So, what to watch for the rest of this spring? Beyond the obvious — whether specific young stars will be approached and wooed — it’ll be interesting to find out how far teams can take this approach. Remember: it’s still unclear just how certain major issues — the next CBA, the lively ball, universal DH, robo umps — will be resolved in the near term. Will there be a chase for upside or an attempt to lock in reasonable rates of pay for solid pieces? Will teams look to get a jump on anticipated changes to the labor market? MLB organizations also value roster flexibility and will be loath to tie up future payroll to non-productive players. Much remains to be seen, but it appears we’re in for another lively and interesting extension season this spring.

In 2019, BABSbaseball.com said we could draft…

• Charlie Morton (ADP 119) instead of Blake Snell (30)
• Ketel Marte (220) instead of Lorenzo Cain (66)
• Matt Olson (109) instead of Khris Davis (45)
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• Eloy Jimenez (117) instead of Vlad Guerrero Jr. (46)
• Zack Greinke (66) instead of Aaron Nola (25)
• DJ LeMahieu (265) instead of Robinson Cano (123)
• Mitch Garver (435) instead of Francisco Mejia (249)
• and on and on…

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You may recall that last month, I sought out experts on MLB salary arbitration.  My goal is to be trained on the traditional method of projecting a player’s arbitration salary.  Many qualified people wrote in offering their expertise, and I was fortunate to be able to hire two of them for my project.

While I’ve identified my arbitration teachers, I now have a better understanding of the stats I’ll need at my fingertips for each player.  Not only do I need a bunch of different stats collected from various sources, but I’ll need to create different multiyear slices of these stats.  The result will be a very robust spreadsheet, referred to as my “grid” in industry parlance.

I’ve got solid enough skills in Microsoft Excel, but I’ll need more than that to assemble the spreadsheet I’m envisioning.  I need an absolute Excel wizard.  This will be well beyond some basic VLOOKUPs.  If you’re a master in Excel and a big fan of baseball statistics, please drop me a line at mlbarbitration@gmail.com explaining your qualifications.  I’m looking for someone who can work with me to create my spreadsheet over the next few months as a paid project.  You do not need to be an expert in arbitration – I’ll explain how I want the spreadsheet to look and function.

Pro Hockey Rumors, MLBTR’s sister site devoted to coverage of the hockey world, is looking to add multiple part-time writers to its staff. The positions pay on an hourly basis. Specifically, PHR is looking for people who have availability at these times of the week (plus some weekend availability may also be needed):

• 8am – 9am CT, Monday-Friday
• 8am – 3pm CT, one day per week
• 3pm – 9pm CT, Monday-Friday

Applicants must meet ALL of the following criteria:

• Exceptional knowledge of all 31 NHL teams, with no discernible bias.
• Knowledge of the salary cap, CBA and transaction-related concepts.
• At least some college education.
• Extensive writing experience, with professional experience and a background in journalism both strongly preferred.
• Keen understanding of journalistic principles, ethics and procedures. Completion of basic college-level journalism classes is strongly preferred.
• Attention to detail — absolutely no spelling errors, especially for player and journalist names.
• Ability to follow the site’s style and tone.
• Ability to analyze articles and craft intelligent, well-written posts summing up the news in a few paragraphs. We need someone who can balance creating quick copy with thoughtful analysis. You must be able to add value to breaking news with your own insight, numbers or links to other relevant articles.
• Ability to use Twitter, Tweetdeck, and an RSS feed reader such as Feedly. In general, you must be able to multi-task.
• Flexibility. You must be available to work on short notice.

If you’re interested, email prohockeyrumorshelp@gmail.com and take a couple of paragraphs to explain why you qualify and stand out. Be sure to attach your resume to the email.  If you have applied to PHR before, please feel free to submit again.  Many will apply, so unfortunately we cannot respond to every applicant.

There’s a noon ET deadline today for players and teams to exchange arbitration figures, meaning over the next few hours, there will be a landslide of settlements on one-year deals to avoid an arb hearing. Currently, Nolan Arenado’s $26MM figure from last winter stands as the record, although the expectation is that Mookie Betts will set a new benchmark. A few reminders:

• Players are typically arbitration-eligible three times. Three years of Major League service time is the standard entry point for the arbitration process; a player remains arbitration-eligible until he either signs a multi-year deal buying out his arbitration seasons or until he accrues six years of MLB service time, thus qualifying him for free agency. Typically, players are given raises based on their prior year’s work. The arbitration process tends to focus on fairly basic stats: e.g. plate appearances, batting average, home runs and RBIs for hitters, as well as innings pitched, wins, ERA, saves, holds and strikeouts for pitchers.
• The top 22 percent of players (in terms of total service time) with between two and three years of service are also eligible as “Super Two” players. These players are eligible for arbitration four times. Brewers reliever Josh Hader, for instance, became arbitration-eligible in this manner this winter.
• Players who are non-tendered before reaching six years of service time can reenter the arbitration system. Last year, for example, the Angels non-tendered right-hander Matt Shoemaker when he had four-plus years of service. He signed a one-year free-agent deal with the Blue Jays, accrued a full year of service in 2019, and is currently arb-eligible as a player with between five and six years of service.
• It’s become fairly standard for teams throughout the league to adopt a “file and trial” approach, meaning they’ll cease negotiating on one-year deals once salary figures are exchanged. Clubs that exchange figures with a player will sometimes continue working toward a multi-year deal, but it’s become increasingly rare for teams and players to negotiate one-year deals following the exchange deadline. Arbitration hearings typically begin in early February. Negotiations can continue right up until the point of a hearing.
• Arbitration contracts, unless specifically negotiated otherwise, are non-guaranteed. Teams can cut any player who agrees to a standard arb deal and owe him only 30 days’ termination pay (roughly one-sixth the salary) up until halfway through Spring Training. Cutting him in the second half of Spring Training but before Opening Day entitles the player to 45 days of termination pay. Arbitration contracts are guaranteed come Opening Day. There are a few fully guaranteed arb deals every year. Royals lefty Mike Montgomery already agreed to one such pact earlier this offseason.

As is the case every offseason, MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz has projected arbitration salaries for all of the eligible players. It’s a blanket, algorithm-based approach that doesn’t factor in context of unique or atypical cases, but the model has generally been an accurate barometer. For some higher-profile and/or atypical cases, Matt has gone into detail on why the model may or may not be at risk of missing; you can read these in his Arbitration Breakdown series. Also, as we do every year, we’re providing an Arbitration Tracker to follow along with settlements and, for those that reach the point of exchange, proposed salary figures. You can bookmark MLBTR’s 2020 Arbitration Tracker as a means of keeping up, and we’ll also be running a pair of posts to track settlements in the American League and National League throughout the morning.