Ben Badler of Baseball America, a highly respected observer in the international amateur arena, has written an article panning the league’s reported effort to push for an international draft in collective bargaining talks. Though Badler concurs with the need for reform, and suggests that a properly conceived draft may ultimately be a legitimate pursuit, he argues that the first step ought to be a change in how the commissioner’s office approaches the international market.
Here are a few more stray notes from around the game:
- While things didn’t go the Dodgers’ way tonight, the team is still battling in the postseason and just wrapped up its fourth-straight NL West title. And as Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes, if club president Stan Kasten has his way, the club will keep taking shots at the postseason year after year — without losing the discipline it needs to be a repeat contender. “It is largely correct that the playoffs are a crapshoot,” Kasten said. “So if you think you can lock something up in just one year by going all in, that is folly. I know our chances of winning a championship are better if we win eight out of 10 division titles.”
- The Mets are still weighing some of their harder decisions, but Jon Heyman of Fan Rag says the club has already made two rather obvious ones. New York will exercise its league-minimum option over infielder Jose Reyes. The team was able to secure that rather unusually favorable clause because the Rockies still owe Reyes a large sum for 2017 and he was in need of an opportunity after being suspended and designated for assignment owing to his shameful domestic violence episode. Meanwhile, the Mets will pay lefty Jon Niese a $500K buyout rather than picking up his option at $10MM. Niese was even worse in New York than he was with the Pirates, who sent him back to the Mets over the summer after adding him in last winter’s Neil Walker swap, but ought to draw interest as a bounceback candidate.
It looks like the Dodgers will have to win the division every year for many more to come to ever have their number come up in the postseason, unless they get rid of dead weight such as Pedro Baez. I mean, how many games and titles is that guy going to lose for us before they finally notice that he’s totally worthless?
it’s only been 1, believe it or not
but because it’s Pedro Baez it feels like he’s been at it for years….
Two, actually. He gave up the go-ahead to Murphy in game one against the Mets in the NLDS last year, and then of course hit the first batter he faced on the first pitch with the bases loaded in this year’s NLDS. And don’t get me started on his glacial pace and lousy fielding. He simply does not belong on the roster of a contending team.
As a Cubs fan, we like when he pitches
So do all the other teams in baseball. Line up and take a number.
Guess you’ve been in hibernation when Blanton pitches, huh?? Why single out Baez? Seems right.
Because Blanton has actually been good most of the time, which is why Roberts has gone back to him over and over. Baez has almost never been good. In addition to last night’s debacle he came with a gnats eyelash of destroying the NLDS too. Some of us also remember his performance against the Mets last year. So, yeah. seems totally right. Aside from Blanton and Jansen, the Dodgers’ bullpen is an assortment of ineffective leftovers.
YOU comment stated Baez loses games/titles for dodgers. But you praise Blanton for 3ips 7hits 7runs and 21.00 era. I guess, according to you, he shares no blame. PLEASE.
What I said is Blanton is overused because he was actually good during the regular season. Roberts went back to that well during the regular season constantly because the FO didn’t give him anybody reliable other than Blanton and Jansen. So to nobody’s surprise (anybody who is paying attention, anyway) the same pattern we’ve seen all season is being repleted now. Bottom line: Baez is awful. He has always been awful, regular season and post. He can throw through brick walls, but he cannot pitch, and he cannot field. Anything else you need to know?
He’s STILL Better than YOU and pitched more innings than YOU. Anything else YOU need to know, HATER?
Wow, somebody jumped off whatever rails they were on.
No rails at all. You come here blaming ONE person for the Dodgers failures makes you sound like a HATER. Why don’t you blame management for having a 300 million payroll w/only 2 reliable relief pitchers, as you claim.
Sheesh. I’ve taken lots of heat around here for years for saying almost exactly that, something you could easily figure out from what I’ve said in this thread, if you weren’t so intent on launching straight into shouting mode.
And it isn’t a claim, it’s the reality we’ve experienced for the last two seasons at least.
Are you Pedro Baez?
Chill tsolid.
Bad performance is allowed to be called out. Especially in the playoffs.
Tell your mom to chill
I have NO problem with bad performances being called out. WHY only Baez?? Did you ignore Blantons playoff numbers??
Tsolid, that is a stupid argument. Of course he’s better than me. Doesn’t mean he’s a good ML bullpen arm.
Aside from Kershaw, Dodger starters haven’t gone beyond 5 or 6 innings all year. The pen is worn out, although Baez has had more than his share of implosions. Not about to throw Blanton under the bus; he’s out of gas. Gotta fix the rotation, but that should happen with younger arms next year.
I put as much blame on the dissappearing offense. Nonexistent run support for the starters the last 3 games. Dodgers desperately need to do 4 things to improve for next year. 1. Re-sign Jansen/Turner/Hill. 2. Cespedes or Bautista to Left Field/Howie goes back to second. 3. Sign Melancon.
LF-cespedes/toles
CF-joc/trayce
RF-puig/ethier
C-grandal/barnes/ruiz
1B-agon/van slyke
2B-kendrick/kike
SS-seager/culberson
3B-turner
Sp-kershaw
Sp-hill
Sp-urias
Sp-maeda
Sp-kazmir/mccarthy/deleon/wood/Ryu
Rp-jansen
Rp-Melancon
Rp-blanton
Rp-Baez
Rp-Dayton
Rp-stripling
Lots of depth on this roster, free agent class is really thin, no top line starters available.
A crap shoot. Tell the Cubs and Indians that. Loading up your rotation with a bunch of question marks instead of getting getting qualified pitchers while waiting for ify prospects does make it a crapshoot indeed.
Clevelands rotation is litterally 1 big question mark lol
Plus 1
The Indians had a great rotation before the late-season injuries to Carrasco and Salazar. Their depth is largely untested, hence the question marks.
The last few years, the Dodgers have loaded up their rotation, but when you have two entire rotations ending up on the DL, what are you supposed to do?
what do you expect out of the dodgers rotation? pretty much everyone they signed this offseason was a high upside guy with an injury history and a bunch of them started on the dl.
Fair enough. I have to wonder, though, about their training program. Injuries will always happen; it’s the nature of professional sports. But the number of Dodgers players spending time on the DL does raise questions.
Exactly, by the way why invest 40 million into a front office that hasn’t done more or even the same as the last regime (Colletti
Why are you so hooked on Coletti? This front office has them 2 games away from a World Series
Colletti got us this close too, but this ain’t horseshoes, folks. Not after 28 years, it isn’t.
This postseason hit the rocks like the last three seasons because of a thin bullpen. I hope I won’t have to take guff like I have all season for being critical of this FO for not doing more to fix this obvious flaw. I can hope, but not expect.
Well, they did try, remember? They acquired Aroldis Chapman in the offseason then nixed the deal after Chapman’s domestic violence incident.
Trying and failing doesn’t count for much in my book.
It is a crapshoot, but it feels less so after these last two games.
Every Commish has acted mostly in ham fisted ways when major policies/agreements have been enacted. Not 1 good commissioner since bowie kuhn, because ALL have been nothing more than little mouth pieces for owners, or actual owners themselves and acted as such with small market bias to boot that has gotten worse as number of teams has expanded the last 40 years.
Iron fisted commissioner, not obliged to babysit either faction (small/large) market of owners and will look out for NOTHING more than health and well being of the game in general, THAT is what the commissioner used to be elected for and somewhere down the line? The cheapo owners seem to have forgotten all about it.
It’s time to bring it back, then have a proper bargaining agreement, movement of franchises that need it (oakland to san jose, tampa to anywhere else) and cease this small market pandering that’s been going on.
Then you can’t have the owners decide their commish, which they get to do
The bogeyman now is “those evil Dodgers” or “those evil Cubs” or “those evil Yankees”…
Instead, the outlook should be “What can we do to get people (athletes and fans) to choose baseball over football and basketball?”
Giving up a few million here or there might make the game a better product overall.
23 of 30 owners don’t agree with that sentiment. If they did, baseball would be a more popular game and sport.
Oh, here we go again, if everyone just spent money like the top handful of bottomless budget teams, baseball would be perfect.
Gag me with a spoon.
So often when someone disagrees with a comment their response is to take it to an extreme. The lowest average salary in MLB (2016) was 2.3 million dollars a player. I have not seen ANYONE suggest that minor leaguers should be paid anything close to that. Which is EXACTLY what you suggest when you say “if everyone just spent money like the top handful of bottomless budget teams baseball would be perfect”.
The minimum MLB salary is $480,000. Again, not seen ANYONE suggest that minor leaguers should be paid that amount of money.
Just to pick a static number out of the air. If each team paid each minor league player $50,000 (which is way higher than they are asking), that would be a payroll of $1,250,000 for each team. The average salary of ONE MLB player is $4.4 million.
MLB are talking about expanding the rosters, that means for the cost of those two extra players (when you look at average salaries) it would cost more than paying a livable salary to all minor leagues. Yet I have not heard ONE person say that 2 extra MLB players would cause teams to make a loss.
If you don’t think each and every MLB team could afford to send another $6 million down to the minors to cover every team’s salary commitments then you’re not that smart. Oh and by the way, I’m OVERESTIMATING and simplifying what a salary would likely be so $6mm is way more than it would actually cost.
Right now the minimum is $11,490 for a single person and $23,550 for a family of four, below poverty levels.
I’m sick to death of people who are against minor league salary increases thinks that it’s some terrible thing or against the free market or some other crap reason, and most clearly to unintelligent or lazy to do simple math.
Have some big picture thinking are realize that a minor league system that pays well, will attract the best athletes and if you want to look at it selfishly, well it makes the game better for all of us. But more importantly, it’s just the right thing to do.
I think you misunderstood what he was saying “deke”. I took it as him sarcastically saying that if all teams spent like the Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees, etc, baseball would be better. That’s how big market fans think, and they think small market teams should be punished, not helped, for not being able to spend money the way the big market teams can. That’s just what I got from it
I’m a Cubs fan, and have been for over forty years. The size of the Cubs market has stayed remarkably the same the last four-plus decades. The uniforms have remained largely the same. The team has played well, then poorly, then okay, then really good, then really bad, now really good, since then.
The difference now, as compared to then, is the commitment of ownership and the executives to putting a good product on the field. Never before have the ownership and executives been “in line” about putting a good product on the field. Not since the thirties or forties.
What they are doing is investing in the entire product. The executives are are spending aggressively on scouting, Both stateside and overseas.
Yeah, Baltimore, Oakland, or Minnesota aren’t Chicago. However two things are rather inescapable.
In the same market, the White Sox are, dare i say, treading water. They clearly are not investing heavily overseas. Or in the MLB draft. Or any of the other areas that consistently send the organization dividends.
The other thing that you might argue, but you’d be wrong about. One other team is committing to the draft, player development, and all that other jazz.
The Cleveland Indians. The team that is such a major market, they have an AHL team.
If ownership commits with the chief executives to creating talent and value wherever possible, your team will be better than if they didn’t.
It’s not about big market teams being “right” or “perfect”. Clearly, that’s not it. LA is a huge market, and the Angels are the worst system around.
As the CBA gets agreed to, I hope teams place heavy penalties on teams that overspend internationally. Like, decade-long executive suspensions, or banning the teams from the June draft for three years. Heavy sanctions.
However, spending $2-4 million per season internationally should be thought of more as a standard cost of doing business, not some sort of a cataclysm.
To catch the other sports, ownership and executives ought to give 14 year old kids across the globe a reason to want to play baseball. Yeah, the international agent situation is unsavory now.
However, expansion to Brasil/India/China ought to be thought of as an improvement over now, not some sort of a nefarious thing brought on by big market teams. If the Indians (or, Drones, as I call them) can get their hands on a young pitcher from Mumbai, that should be a good thing.
All the owners are rather wealthy people. Here’s to them. However, the goal should be to make baseball a better sport across the globe. In Philly. In Brasil. Eventually, in Pakistan.
To do that, 23 of 30 owners have to want to make baseball a better game than it is now, not clamp down on teams who would like to open a baseball academy in Sao Paolo, Barzil.
No. It was meant as thought it came out.. Kuhn was the last Commish who had the gall to make decisions bold enough to stand against and for both Small and large market teams equally in mind. Manfred was afraid before he took over would be no better than he predecessor, another small market ex owner himself that didn’t even turn over his team to his niece until taking over the league as commish as remember.
Someone suggested above taking away the vote from owners.. Too juicy to passup here.. Veteran ownership committee of past owner’s, not of the McCourt variery, but ones who were solid could vote on it maybe?
Above all else, operating a major league team is a business, as far as the owners are concerned. Yes, you need to invest in the team if you want them to be successful and more lucrative, but some owners don’t want to take risks by operating at a loss and then having the team implode. See: 2012 Marlins.
That’s funny. Every commissioner is pretty much hand picked by the large market owners. These “advantages” you get worked up about that small markets have, is all so the big markets can keep their money. There is a much larger advantage to big markets in baseball than any other league.
Until a real revenue sharing is in place, this is what you get.
Jeff, you do a great job, but please stop hyphenating your adverbs.
Are you talking about ‘highly-respected’ and ‘properly-conceived’? Because yeah, those don’t need to be hyphenated.
Which ad-verbs shouldn’t-be hyphen-ated?
Hyphenated, not caffeinated.
Oh goody, it’s like going back in time to an overwrought law review meeting! Jk, jk.
Look, I know that there’s a general prohibition on hyphens after adverbs ending in “ly” (though you state too broad a rule). But there are limited times when it makes sense to do so anyway — I even remember debating this on the law review — and sometimes I just find myself writing late at night and not paying the strictest attention to those rules of grammar that don’t really impact the feel and flow of something.
But I have probably allowed my hyphen-deployment standards to slip too far. In this case, I agree with you.
You can always claim they were on sale at Wal-Mart.
Nah I always find mine at the local Good-will.
Niese’s biggest issue was the long ball. And if that was an issue in the very lefty pitching friendly PNC Park, I dont see it getting much better in too many other places. His best bounce-back at this point would be to show he could at the very least become an effective LOOGY
Maybe he could be the next Oliver Perez.
Regarding Ben Badler’s article, he fails to mention the huge disparity between international amateur free agents and those players subject to the current draft system. Bottom line for me, the International players should not have an advantage over those amateurs from USA, Canada, and Puerto Rico who are subject to the annual draft and the restrictive bonus pools. Just one example, Dodgers sign Alvarez to a $16MM contract while a standout college pitcher Walker Buehler gets less than $2MM. In my opinion, the current draft is a clear restraint of trade for players covered by draft considering the enormous amounts spent on 16 to 18 year old foreign amateur players.
How about a way to correct it, in a CBA-friendly fashion?
Teams have three ways to “overspend” on amateur talent. “Young” internationals, like Alvarez. “Older internationals”, like the Gurriels. And in the draft.
Limit the amount teams can spend in any of the three areas.
For instance, keep the draft similar to how it is, but increase the floor spending levels. A team ought to be able to spend four million per season on the June draft. Use the same formulas, and allow up to ten mil, or whatever. However, when teams are denied the opportunity to spend in the draft, they can’t really add any high school talent of note.
Young internationals. Let teams spend, again, a decent base amount every season on 16 year olds from Panama, Venezuela, or the Dominican. Based on record, allow between $3-5 or $4-6 million per season on international free agency. And if a team overspends their amount, their top three executives get banned from MLB for a decade. Easy. Problem solved.
Older internationals. A bit trickier, as a 27 year old will be looking at a bigger/quicker payday. Increase the amount to $8 million per year (-ish. Could be bigger or smaller.), and expand the window over three years. Using 8 per as the baseline, if a team immediately spends $12 million on a Cuban pitcher, great. Cool. Congrats. They only have $12 million more for the next 33 months.
Again, if the team overspends, their top three execs get a ten year suspension. Or, they get banned from the June draft for three years.
Encourage an equitable amount of reasonable spending, and make the violation for going over so severe that no team will do it.
That is irrelevant. There’s no compelling fairness point that would require the league to pull down international spending to some supposed lower level available to US/PR/Canadian talent. And if you really think there’s a disparity, wouldn’t you argue for more spending for the other group?
More importantly, this viewpoint is also based on misleading beliefs. Only a few Cuban players (and, in a different way, Asian professional players) are in a situation to command bigger bonuses than domestic amateurs. It’s a quirk of the whole US-Cuba thing that there have been some relatively advanced, highly-talented players who got to function as pure free agents (more or less) given the rules regimes and political circumstances. The kids that will actually end up being drafted internationally are currently subjected to a system that results in bonuses a fair bit smaller than those available to draft-eligible players. Miguel Sano-level prospects get less than their domestic counterparts, in part b/c of their younger age but also a variety of other factors.
Of course the current draft is a restraint of trade. Maybe a poorly conceived one. But how on earth do you get to that proposition through this strange outrage at the “enormous” (but actually, lesser) amounts spent on just-as-talented international kids?
I’m a Sox Fan Rooting for the Dodgers …….. I don’t think it matters who you have pitching if in a must Win game your batting Kike Hernandez #1 and Ruiz #4 ……… If the Dodgers had Traded for Ryan Braun I really believe this Series would be over by now
I would say the Dodgers and Cubs have the position players to get to the playoffs a lot in the next decade. I agree, the playoffs are outlier. Pitching is the biggest variable in the ablility of a team to win. With all the parity in baseball and the nature of the game, the best pitcher doesn’t win that often. It now comes down to the relief pitching .
Dodgers did a great job this year but absolutely need a solid right hand starter
And hitters who can produce against lefties, and couple of legitimate bullpen arms. They will also need a closer if they let Jansen go and somebody to play 3B if they allow Turner to walk.
Idk about that to be honest. You look at the teams that they have played and the playoff field. Their lefties when on and not on short rest have given the Nats and Cubs so much trouble. The problem resides in the fact that Urias is not at that point where he’s ready to go deep in playoff games. His development next year will be crucial which is why I believe they start him late. Maeda and Blanton are also gassed. The problem have been the swing games which is quite evident in a 7 game series. I’m more encouraged right now looking into next year than I was last year. That being said even with the Dodgers down this is the part of the rotation they want to see.
If the playoffs weren’t a crapshoot, why do so few teams with the most wins during the regular season actual win the WS? The good and bad thing about restricting games played (which is a playoff system v. regular season) is that a smaller sample size increases the chances that the sample selected is not representative of the larger sample. Unfortunately a hot team or some bad luck can really tank an otherwise solid team.
April through August baseball is one game. September baseball is another. With all the days off, October baseball is an entirely different animal.
As long as travel days are used, rotations become three-man instead of five man. With a different experiment, you get different results.
The team best prepared for Tier Three baseball after qualifying through five months of Tier One baseball and a month of Tier Two baseball has a definite edge. But, yeah.
It’s a coin flip.