The Reds announced a slew of players who’ve been reassigned to minor league camp Friday, headlined by top prospect Nick Senzel. Cincinnati’s decision to do so has prompted a response from Senzel’s agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman, who spoke harshly of the organization’s decision to ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Twitter link).
“I don’t believe I’ve ever made public statements on this issue in my career,” said Wolfe, “but I feel compelled to do so in this case where it feels like a simply egregious case of service-time manipulation. We are well aware of the mandate from ownership for the Reds to win this year — and this seems to fly in the face of it. The NL Central was decided by one game last year. Every game matters. This is a shortsighted move that may be frugal now but could cost them dearly later.”
Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams, unsurprisingly, told C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic that the decision was not tied to service time (Twitter link).
The Reds’ Senzel decision is, at the very least, more defensible than some recent service-driven minor league assignments (e.g. Kris Bryant, Eloy Jimenez, Ronald Acuna). Senzel is learning a new position on the fly after being moved from the infield to center field, and injuries limited him to just 44 games last year while also preventing him from taking place in the Arizona Fall League.
That said, Senzel is hitting .308/.300/.462 with six doubles and four stolen bases in 39 spring at-bats thus far, and he batted .310/.378/.509 as a 22-year-old in his first exposure to Triple-A pitching last season. There’s an argument that Senzel’s bat is ready for big league work, and the timing of his promotion to the big leagues will be an interesting situation to monitor in the coming weeks. The Reds would only need to keep Senzel in the minors for just over two weeks in order to secure an extra year of club control over the 2016 No. 2 overall draft pick.
Regardless of whether the move is service-driven, the Reds are well within their rights to make it and are arguably even wise to do so. The fact that they’re hoping to be more competitive and contend for a postseason berth in 2019, as Wolfe suggested, does muddy the waters a bit, and the Reds will unquestionably receive their share of criticism if they call Senzel up early in the season and narrowly miss the playoffs.
However, the current service time constraints were collectively bargained long ago and were not addressed in the latest wave of negotiations between the league and the MLBPA, thus maintaining a clumsy and antiquated system that is a disservice to virtually every party other than ownership. The game’s best young players are often held down longer than need be, slowing their path to significant earnings, while fans are deprived from seeing rising stars on the game’s biggest stage. Even front offices are left to make thinly veiled and often transparent statements to their fans, knowing full well that they’re setting themselves up to incur an angry backlash. It’s an out-of-date mechanism that would be better served to be restructured, and it’s likely to be a focal point as the league and union begin preliminary discussions well in advance of the next wave of the current CBA’s expiration.
In other Reds news, Cincinnati skipper David Bell announced that right-hander Tyler Mahle will open the season as the team’s fifth starter while Alex Wood heals up from back spasms that have plagued him throughout the spring (Twitter link via Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer). Wood’s injury isn’t expected to sideline him long, so he may only be in line for a small handful of starts before either shifting to a bullpen role or heading back to Triple-A to continue making regular starts.
Mets better be smart and send Alonso down for the first two weeks as well
Yeah be smart and miss the division or miss the playoffs or miss getting stuck on a play-in game or miss having home field advantage by a game. Genius. So that they can have Alonso mashing for them in 2025 lifting them from being a 60 win team to a 65 win team. Absolutely genius.
You’re the reason why I hate that this site took away the thumbs down button. You would at least be working on a bakers dozen by now. I’m positive that every analytics department would suggest collecting an extra year of cheap, prime age, service time in exchange for two weeks at the beginning of a season. Just like you, I think the rule is stupid, but you can’t blame the team for holding a player for 8-10 games so they can gain 162.
Yes the Reds will be very smart if they get to a play-in game or miss home field advantage for sure. I think all Red’s fans would appreciate that type of season.
Boohoo.
WHAA, WHAA!
If Senzel’s agent – Joel Wolfe – could find a loophole to have his client take advantage of the Reds, he’d do it in a heartbeat.
The easiest way out of this is to determine the number of days a player participates in games at the ML level before he becomes a free agent, but then the agents would complain about that – taking authority away from the teams Manager. These snakes look for any edge for their clients, and let the team and their fans be damned. Sort of like politicians vs. taxpayers.
There are more egregious cases.
Senzel has played 101 games above A ball, and there’s not an obvious, regular spot in the Reds starting 9 where they need him.
God forbid a prospect get more time to develop. He’ll see the bigs this year and I’m betting it will be after more than two weeks. Honestly the service time agreement exists and God forbid teams take advantage of holding onto a quality player for one more season.
no kidding, why wouldn’t they hold him down, they’d be dumb not too.
It’s certainly going to be later than two weeks after these comments by the agent.
I’m sure he thought he was standing up for his client, but now, Cindy will not want to look like it was a super two service time decision and could park him in AAA for a month or more.
Cincy…
He’ll just get an extension in 2 years anyway so it doesn’t really matter
Yeah like Lewis Brinson, or Jorge Soler, or jp Crawford, dansby Swanson, let us not forget lucas giolito…and many more…were all big league ready. Lol
Which of those were service time manipulated?
None were. I think they are just bringing up the point that there are no guarantees.
The move likely has more to do with the fact the Reds would have to make a move (outright, release, or trade) with another player to be able to add Senzel to the 40 Man Roster and most likely don’t want to lose any of the players currently on the 40 Man Roster.
The fact that he’s learning a new position makes this a tough situation to judge and pick sides. As of now, both sides, reds management and Senzel’s reps both have strong cases.
Blah, blah, blah…the agents statement doesn’t need to be made public it needs to go to the MLBPA. Also, the words ‘collectively’ and ‘bargained’ should have been somewhere in the statement…placed together….acknowledging that the team was given this option by the players.
The MLBPA can negotiate this out of the next agreement; I don’t think its a big deal to them
Maybe just maybe if he would take a BB every once in awhile .He might then see the show.
Yeah the 0 walks is a little concerning but it’s in a small sample size and his minor league stats show that he’s more disciplined
New position, very small sample size, Reds have other options for CF. He’ll be down at least two weeks, if he’s ready he’ll be back up quickly. Not like he was brilliant defensively at five positions while hitting .350/.500/.1.000 and just annihilating AAA. over the course of two seasons and the Reds left him down in the minors till Suarez or Scooter were no longer with the club.
Senzel has no clear place on the roster and spent most of 2018 injured. no good reason to keep him in the majors, rather then the other way around.
Classic case of letting your emotions speak and as an agent it looks bad..
The whole 2 week minimum in the minors vs an extra year of control has to go to the wayside.
Acuna would have been in the ROY conversation all by himself last year and possibly top 3 MVP candidate at least..
So you’d rather have him win ROY than have him for cheap when he’s entering his MVP level seasons?
Service time manipulation will also impact some career numbers for high end players.
Vlad Jr should have been up with the Jays last year… does he miss out on an extra 10 career home runs because of it?
Yea he could also have come up at the end of the season and did what Mike Trout did when he was first called up before his monster rookie year.
Nicely written on the service time implications, Steve. This is the contractural environment that the Union negotiated, and perhaps they didn’t foresee that MLB would close ranks to take advantage at every level….but they should have. Unfortunate for the players–and it’s the player who should be pushing the Union to do better next time.
Rather see Puig in center for a few weeks, see if he can cut it. The responsibility and spotlight might embolden him into hitting like an mvp.
That agent would use any loophole he could to get $1 more any time , any way. So now that the club uses the collective bargaining rules to their advantage its boo hoo??? Grow a pair Mr. Wolfe. Sick of these agents pissing and moaning. We all knew this was coming so get over it. See you in 3 weeks Nick.
Not to mention he just got flat out beat out for the CF job by Schebler
Hey Wolfe, complain to the players union; they’re the ones who negotiated and the players ok’d it.
Scooter got carted off the field maybe Senzel will be on the team after all.
Hopefully, Scooter will be okay. But if not, they’ll play Dietrich and Farmer will make the team.
No, the Reds are NOT well within their rights “regardless” of whether it’s service time manipulation. Nor is any other club. If that were true, teams would admit it. But they don’t, because a player’s grievance under the CBA would be upheld if they did. Clubs easily get away with manipulation under the current framework because it is nearly impossible for a player to prove “readiness” if the team denies manipulating & says the player needs to improve something. But the ability to get away with something is vastly different from being within your rights to do it.
The better question is who didn’t know the FO would do this? Of course they would, it gives them another year of control and it’s all about control with small market (minded) clubs. Why would they want to show good faith in a top MLB prospect who is 24 years old who is willing to learn new positions, who has delivered in ST, and who was on the want list of many other orgs in trade talks? That would just be wrong of them.
They obviously do not believe their own propaganda about being a contender this season since games lost in March and April count the same as games lost the rest of the season. Add in that if Senzel performs as well as expected they will be negotiating a new deal in 2-3 years anyway, which makes the extra year moot.
The rule is dumb, but since it exists, the Reds would be dumb not to take advantage of it.
Exactly! Besides Scheb is batting like .400 and we need a couple of weeks to see if he can backup in CF enough, which likely determines Ervin’s spot on the roster.
On the flip side with Scoot out, you easily call BS on service time because no way to say you will be starting your best team now. As GM, I’d probably play Deit and move on under the circumstances.
Steve….”That said, Senzel is hitting .308/.300/.462”
Senzel was drafted in 2016. Just looked it up because 2015 sounds so much further away than 2016…2015 was the Dansby Swanson draft with Bregman going #2 overall.