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Archives for February 2022
Nationals Sign Jordan Weems To Minor League Contract
The Nationals have signed right-hander Jordan Weems to a minor league deal, MLBTR has learned. The contract contains an invitation to the Nationals’ big league Spring Training camp, once that camp eventually opens after the lockout ends.
A veteran of 11 professional seasons, Weems made his MLB debut in 2020, posting a 3.21 ERA over 14 innings out of the Athletics’ bullpen. That solid performance didn’t carry over into a smaller sample size last season, as Weems had a 15.88 ERA over 5 2/3 total big league innings with the A’s and Diamondbacks. Arizona claimed Weems off waivers in July but only used him in two Major League games before outrighting him off their 40-man roster in August.
It was a tough season all around for Weems, who also had a 7.31 ERA over 28 1/3 combined innings at the Triple-A level with the Athletics’ and Diamondbacks’ top affiliates. Weems also saw a lot of shuttling back and forth between the majors and Triple-A, and he spent some time on the injured list with Triple-A Reno.
He’ll now look for a fresh start with Washington, and join a notable list of other newly-acquired pitchers (including Luis Avilan, Carl Edwards Jr., Victor Arano and more) competing in camp for a spot in the Nationals’ bullpen. Weems has a live fastball, though control has been an issue throughout his pitching career. This perhaps isn’t all that surprising since Weems only became a pitcher in 2016, after spending his first five minor league seasons as a catcher in the Red Sox farm system.
NL Notes: Benn, Mets, De La Cruz, Reds, Mitchell, Pirates
The Mets have hired Elizabeth Benn as the team’s new director of baseball operations, according to multiple reports (including from SNY’s Andy Martino). Benn has been a member of the MLB central office since 2017, beginning as an intern and then working in the labor relations and baseball operations departments. The hiring makes Benn the highest-ranking female baseball ops official in the history of the Mets franchise, as Benn joins the increasingly long list of women hired for prominent front office and on-field jobs with Major League organizations.
More from the National League…
- Elly De La Cruz was an international signing out of the Dominican Republic in 2018, joining the Reds for only a $65K bonus in part because the Reds were basically the only team to give him any serious scouting attention. “He was tall and rangy and athletic, and we liked that he had some bat speed. But he wasn’t really on the radar,” Reds VP of player development Shawn Pender told The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Charlie Goldsmith. Even after a decent Dominican Summer League performance in 2019, De La Cruz told Goldsmith that he was still worried that he might be cut when the Reds and other teams released several minor leaguers as part of the reduction in the number of minor league teams. However, the organization hung onto him, and De La Cruz might now be Cincinnati’s shortstop of the future after a huge 2021 season. The 20-year-old hit .296/.336/.539 with eight home runs over 265 combined plate appearances in rookie ball and A-ball, with his five-tool potential drawing trade attention from other teams and plaudits from prospect evaluators. De La Cruz went from being a fairly obscure prospect to a staple in top-100 lists from Fangraphs (who ranks De La Cruz 59th), Keith Law (69th), Baseball Prospectus (70th) and Baseball America (77th).
- Assuming the Rule 5 Draft happens whatsoever, the Pirates have some quality talent available for selection, which is a by-product of the team’s glut of intriguing minor leaguers and lack of space on the 40-man roster. Cal Mitchell was one of those players left off the 40-man in November, and Jason Mackey of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette figures Mitchell’s bat, ability to play the outfield, “athleticism and professional approach” could attract teams looking for a player who can actually stick on an active 26-man roster for the entire season. Mitchell (who turns 23 on March 8) was a second-round pick in the 2017 draft, and has hit .267/.328/.411 over 1613 PA in the minors. He made his Triple-A debut last season in brief fashion, appearing in seven games with the Pirates’ top affiliate.
Dodgers, Dave Roberts Discussing Extension
TODAY: Roberts and the Dodgers are in talks, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports, with the intent to have a new contract finalized prior to the start of the season.
FEBRUARY 9: Longtime Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is entering the last season of his contract, though it seems like an extension isn’t far off, as both Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told The Athletic’s Andy McCullough. “It’ll get done,” Roberts said, while Friedman said that “Doc has been a big part of our past success and I look forward to him being a big part of future success as well.”
There hasn’t been any indication that L.A. was planning any sort of managerial change, as Roberts has done nothing but win over his six years as the team’s skipper. Roberts has led the Dodgers to a 542-329 record during those six years, a run that includes five NL West titles, three pennants, and the crowning achievement of the 2020 World Series championship.
With the lockout halting most baseball-related activities, Roberts has been given a bit more of an opportunity to relax and “reset” during his offseason, as he told McCullough. It could be that an extension might have been struck earlier in the winter, though Roberts noted that he didn’t get in touch with Friedman prior to the lockout, given that the front office was naturally very busy in trying to finish more pressing matters before all Major League transactional business was halted.
Roberts joined the Dodgers back in November 2015, initially signing a three-year contract that contained a club option for the 2019 season. Following the end of the 2018 campaign (and the Dodgers’ loss to the Red Sox in the World Series), Los Angeles exercised that club option to lock Roberts up for 2019, and then in December 2018 announced a new four-year pact with Roberts covering the 2019-22 seasons. With that timeline in mind, it isn’t surprising that L.A. is again working essentially a year in advance to prevent Roberts from any sort of lame-duck status.
Establishing A Nationals Way
The Nationals have been a team in transition since winning the 2019 World Series. Their on-field talent has shifted the team into a new strata of contention (which is to say, non-contention), the front office has had to retool itself under GM Mike Rizzo after numerous departures, and most of the stars that represented the Nationals for the last half decade have departed. With all those changes, the Nationals are working to remake their identity.
Externally, Juan Soto will be the face of this club for the next three years, but internally, the organization needs processes, ethos, and a shared vision to return to their status as a perennial contender. That starts with establishing a “Nationals Way,” writes Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com. While awaiting participation from the Major League contingent of players, the Nationals are wasting no time in putting their minor league campers to work in building that culture.
In St. Louis, organization wide adherence to the “Cardinal Way” has long been the call-to-arms for the most stable franchise in the the National League. It’s not a bad model to follow. But it’s not easy to duplicate.
The Cardinal Way is more than strategy, more than brand. People, baseball teams, businesses, any complex organization needs a ground truth, to know “true north,” and the Cardinal Way is the religion that keeps St. Louis baseball on task. It’s not an accident that two teams with the strongest organizational identities – the Yankees and Cardinals – have been the most stable contenders over the years. Out of 22 baseball seasons this century, the Cardinals made the postseason 15 times. They put a winning ballclub on the field in 21 of those 22 years, only failing to do so in 2007 when they posted a hardly-disastrous 78-84 record. The Cardinal Way works.
Of course, other franchises have talked the talk about building organizational continuity, but it’s harder than it looks. If there’s hope in the Nationals Way succeeding, it’s in their short history. The Nationals posted a winning record in eight consecutive seasons from 2012 to 2019. They were not, at the time, viewed as a behemoth of contention because it wasn’t until the eighth season – their championship season – that they even won a playoff round. But they had created an engine that routinely churned out winners.
That said, while competence became boilerplate for those Nationals, true contention was balanced on a razor’s edge. Only once did they make the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, despite four division titles in the six-year span from 2012 to 2017. From where we sit today, the fact that their run coalesced into a World Series win seems more magical than engineered. But of course, that doesn’t give the Nats’ organization enough credit.
With Major Leaguers locked out, Ryan Zimmerman retired, and a host of new instructors leading the way in Nats camp, whatever system was in place before needs a system reboot in order to get up and running again. De Jon Watson, in his first season as the Nats’ Director of Player Development, is the man tasked with establishing the Nationals Way. De Watson talked to reporters, including Zuckerman, who provides some details about the system they’re trying to implement. Zuckerman passes along De Watson’s plan, but with axioms like “attacking the strike zone” and “doing damage when we have the opportunity to do damage,” the Nationals Way, publicly, is more esoteric than proper outline. In that way, it’s identical to the Cardinal Way. It’ll take time to know if they’re similar in any of the ways that matter most.
Despite Report, No Deal Close Between MLB, MLBPA
11:15 AM: At least one player has decided to chime on the conversation. Zack Britton responded (via Twitter) to Heyman’s earlier tweet with a very simple and straightforward, “This is not accurate.”
10:28 AM: The prospects of owners and players being close to an agreement has been characterized as “beyond absurd” by someone close to the players, per Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca (via Twitter). Nicholson-Smith adds that the players will need to see more than just the incremental changes to the Collective Bargaining Tax that owners were offering yesterday.
9:34 AM: Amid all the doom-and-gloom surrounding the CBA negotiation, there is at least one voice suggesting a deal could be in the offing. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports this morning that the two sides are “within striking distance” of a deal, and the two sides could reach a suitable compromise by tomorrow night. MLBTR’s sources disagree vehemently with Heyman’s report, however, and continue to say that a deal is not close.
Most of the other scuttlebutt, including from Heyman, suggests that the players left yesterday’s session upset and unconvinced of the owners willingness to negotiate in earnest. At the same time, despite the hostility, players have not walked away yet, with another meeting scheduled between the two sides for today at noon.
Heyman suggests the difference could be a settling of the luxury tax threshold around the $230MM mark. That would more-or-less evenly split the divide between the two sides, but that’s not the way negotiations have leaned thus far. That’s to say nothing of the many other issues on which the two sides are at odds. At last reporting, the gap between the two was still at $31MM for 2022, with the players offering a $245MM luxury tax line, and the owners countering at $214MM.
Multiple Teams Closing Spring Complexes To Opposing Scouts
Some MLB teams are closing their spring complexes to scouts from other teams until either Major League spring play commences or until after the Rule 5 draft, per ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel (via Twitter).
McDaniel also suggests the Rule 5 draft could be cancelled outright, at which point teams would likely be more lenient. Canceling the Rule 5 draft would be unfortunate, as it offers at least an opportunity to blocked minor league players to get opportunities for promotion elsewhere. While it may pale in comparison to the other issues currently on the table, canceling the Rule 5 draft would close off at least one avenue that struggling teams have utilized to find and audition controllable players.
The implications here are fairly clear. Currently the only players allowed in camp are those that are not on the 40-man roster. Those are also the players who will be available for plucking during the Rule 5 draft. By locking opposing scouts out of camp, teams are strategically denying valuable information to clubs about the progress of certain players. Without current scouting, teams picking in the Rule 5 draft will have to rely on old information, which is difficult when specifically looking for players who might have jumped a rung in terms of their development.
Last year’s Rule 5 draft proved a (relatively) fertile area of player acquisition for Major League clubs. Akil Baddoo (Tigers), Garrett Whitlock (Red Sox), Jordan Sheffield (Rockies), Trevor Stephan (Guardians), and Zach Pop (Marlins) being among the players who stuck with new clubs after being taken in the draft. Tyler Gilbert (Diamondbacks) put up 1.1 rWAR for Arizona after being selected in the Triple-A phase of the draft. He improbably tosses a No-Hitter in his first start for the Diamondbacks, finishing the year with a 3.15 ERA/4.27 FIP over 40 innings in the Majors. These players provided some of the more memorable success stories from the 2021 campaign.
Whitlock, for example, was one of the most important players on a playoff team. Working out of the bullpen, Whitlock became the Red Sox most reliable reliever down the stretch. He finished the year with a 1.96 ERA/2.84 FIP across 46 outings totaling 73 1/3 innings, good for 3.0 rWAR. Finding a ready contributor like Whitlock in another team’s complex will be much more difficult if scouts don’t have access to those playing fields.
Quick Hits: Cubs, Giants
While the lockout rages on, so, too, does front office churn. Here’s the latest from front offices around the game…
- Cubs assistant GM Jeff Greenberg is one of three finalists to be then next GM of the Chicago Blackhawks, writes The Athletic’s Scott Powers and Mark Lazerus. Greenberg’s candidacy is definitely a bit of a surprise, and he’s not the odds-on frontrunner of the final three. The once-proud Blackhawks are staring down another season outside the playoff field, and with the championship stalwarts of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews in their age-33 seasons, they’re eager to get the franchise back on track. With Captain Serious largely out of action because of injuries, Kane is only only palpable link to Chicago’s Stanley Cup winners in 2010, 2013, and 2015. The closest baseball corollary to these Blackhawks might be the pre-2020 Giants, and the Hawks would love a similarly quick turnaround. If they miss the playoffs this season, as expected, it will be the fifth time in the last six years that Chicago sits out postseason play. Greenberg has no formal experience in hockey, but he wouldn’t be the first executive to switch playing fields. Paul DePodesta is the hallmark example, having jumped from baseball to the NFL to run the Browns. To see how this saga ends, stay plugged into the latest Blackhawks news over at Pro Hockey Rumors.
- The Giants have hired Josh Herzenberg as the Assistant Director of Player Development, per Herzenberg himself on Twitter. Herzenberg has spent the past two years working with the Lotte Giants of the Korean Baseball Organization. He started in the KBO as a pitching coordinator, but rose to the level of Director of Research and Development and International Scouting. Prior to his time overseas, Herzenberg spent time in the scouting departments of both the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers. Congrats to Herzenberg on his new position in San Francisco.
Latest CBA Talks Lead To “Hostile” Meeting Between Players, Owners
7:19PM: The MLBPA and the league have agreed to resume talks at noon CT on Sunday, according to multiple reports.
4:39PM: Today’s negotiating sessions between the league and the MLB Players Association have concluded for the day, after a pair of separate meetings between the two sides. After each group conferred privately for an extended period of time, MLBPA reps presented a new proposal to the owners during a 15-minute session. The ownership group then took time to mull over the offer before another meeting with the players that lasted roughly 45 minutes.
The union’s proposal was a “comprehensive” offer that addressed several core economic issues, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers (Twitter links). Perhaps most importantly in terms of finding common ground on a new collective bargaining agreement, the MLBPA is now “backing significantly off” some of its most noteworthy asks in previous offers. This includes changes to the players’ previous demands about the luxury tax, an expansion in Super Two eligibility, and cuts to the amount of revenue-sharing funds allocated to smaller-market teams.
Despite these concessions, the owners still “reacted badly” to the latest union offer, The Athletic’s Evan Drellich reports. This led to an “outraged” reaction from the players and a “hostile” tone in the second meeting between the two sides. As per Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post, the “players are currently considering walking away from the table” altogether, rather than take part in meetings that were slated for tomorrow and Monday.
As reported by ESPN’s Enrique Rojas (Spanish-language link) and The Associated Press, the MLBPA is now seeking to expand Super Two eligibility to 35% of all players who have between two and three years of service time. This represents a major decrease from the players’ previous ask of 75% of all players within that service-time window, and yet apparently it isn’t enough to change the owners’ stance. The league has been steadfast in refusing any expansion to the Super Two structure — in the last CBA, the top 22% of players with between two and three years of service time received an extra year of arbitration eligibility.
Likewise, the league has refused any discussion of changes to the revenue-sharing structure. The union initially sought a $100MM cut in revenue-sharing funds, and later dropped that demand to $30MM. Today’s proposal altered that number further, as teams receiving revenue-sharing wouldn’t lose any money, but would still be incentivized to increase local revenue with the offer of extra money made available from MLB’s central fund. However, the owners are still not willing to budge whatsoever on the topic.
Discussions about the competitive balance tax have at least led to some back-and-forth negotiations, albeit without much progress. The players made a $2MM reduction for each of the second, third, and fourth years of luxury tax thresholds, breaking down the numbers as follows: a $245MM tax number in 2022, $250MM in 2023, $257MM in 2024, $264MM in 2025, and $273MM in 2026.
The league made only one change to its base tax thresholds, with a $1MM increase to the second year of the CBA. The owners’ proposed luxury tax thresholds are $214MM in 2022, $215MM in 2023, $216MM in 2024, $218MM in 2025, and $222MM in 2026.
In regards to the penalties for exceeding those thresholds, Major League Baseball again made only slight adjustments from its previous offer. In today’s proposal from the league, teams exceeding each of the three levels for the first time would pay a 45% tax on the overage of any dollar spent between $214MM-$234MM, a 62% tax on overages from $234MM-$254MM, and a 95% tax rate on the overage for anything spent beyond the $254MM mark. Previously, the league wanted respective tax rates of 50%, 75%, and 100% for each of the three thresholds.
These are obviously still sizeable jumps over the overage tax rates in the last CBA (20%, 32%, and 62.5%), and the league has compounded the penalty by asking that teams that surpass the second and third tiers lose draft picks. The MLBPA has been adamantly against the owners’ luxury tax asks, viewing the demands as essentially the creation of an unofficial salary cap.
As reported yesterday by Drellich and Ken Rosenthal, the league has been looking shorten the amount of time required before unilateral on-field rule changes can be imposed. The previous CBA had a one-year grace period between a league’s proposal and (whether the union agreed to the rule changes or not) the implementation of said new rules, though the owners are now looking for a grace period of only 45 days. The MLBPA has been resistant to this shorter window of time, and the league needs the players’ approval in the next CBA to agree to the owners’ ability to implement unilateral rule changes of any kind.
Returning to the issue of service time, the league has agreed that players who finish first or second in Rookie Of The Year voting will receive a full year of service time. (Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was among those to report the news.) This counts as a minor win for the players, even if the MLBPA has been looking at a WAR-based formula for multiple players who excel in their rookie seasons to receive service time. The league had been looking instead address the service-time manipulation issue by offering extra draft picks to teams who have players with top-three finishes in the ROY/MVP/Cy Young voting during their first three arbitration-eligible seasons.
If there is any other minor glimpse of good news from today’s meetings, one CBA issue has apparently been settled. The owners and players agreed to a new rule on minor league options, as USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports that players can now be sent to the minor leagues a maximum of five times per season.
Unfortunately, progress has apparently been lost on the topic of a draft lottery. Reports from yesterday’s negotiating sessions indicated that the two sides were at least coming close to settling the exact number of teams involved in such a lottery, though the owners attempted to make a larger lottery (as per the MLBPA’s demands) contingent on the acceptance of a 14-team postseason. That same offer was floated by the league today and turned down by the players, who had previously expressed a willingness to expand the playoffs to 12 teams. Given the amount of extra revenue involved in extra postseason games, it isn’t surprising that the union isn’t willing to make such a major concession to the owners without tying it to an issue of greater import than the draft lottery.
Saturday’s sessions mark the sixth consecutive day of talks between the two sides, yet this increase in negotiations has yet to produce much in the way of concrete progress. MLB has stated that without a CBA in place by Monday, some regular-season games will have to be canceled, though the union has remained skeptical that the league truly sees February 28th as a firm deadline.
However, some Spring Training games have already been canceled, and it becomes increasingly unlikely that Opening Day will proceed as scheduled on March 31. If the hard feelings reportedly generated in today’s meetings actually do result in a breakdown in talks, it will only lead to more dismay and frustration among baseball fans who are more than ready for the lockout to be over.
MLB Looking To Move Athletics Back To Revenue-Sharing Recipient Status
The Athletics were singled out in something of a unique fashion in the last collective bargaining agreement, as their status as a revenue-sharing recipient was gradually phased out over the course of the five-year deal. Under the terms of the now-expired 2016-21 CBA, the Athletics’ normal take of revenue-sharing funds dropped to 75% in 2017, 50% in 2018, 25% in 2019, and then nothing for the CBA’s final two years.
As negotiations about the new CBA (slowly) continue between the owners and players, the league is now looking to once again reinstall the A’s as a recipient of revenue-sharing, MLB Trade Rumors’ Tim Dierkes reports (via Twitter). This appears to be one of the relatively few areas of common ground between the two sides, as the MLBPA is “willing to” restore the Athletics’ former status.
It remains to be seen exactly how baseball’s revenue-sharing system could be altered in the next CBA, though given the owners’ unwillingness to discuss any revenue-sharing changes whatsoever with the union, whatever changes are made could be pretty minor. It could be that Oakland’s shift back into the recipient category might stand as the biggest move in this area, as the A’s will now stand to make tens of millions of extra dollars each year.
Under the terms of the last CBA, 48% of each team’s local revenues were placed into a pool, then divided equally among all 30 teams. Since some teams’ local revenues are naturally much larger than others, this provided quite a windfall for smaller-market clubs. While the exact figures weren’t known, MLB.com’s Jane Lee wrote in December 2016 that the A’s received over $30MM in revenue-sharing funds in 2016.
This will have a wider impact on the other 29 teams, as the revenue-sharing teams will now be paying a slightly larger share of that revenue pot with the Athletics now removed from the sharers list. Likewise, the teams receiving funds will now also get a slightly lesser share of the pie, with the A’s joining the party. There was also the concept of the revenue-sharing rebate for larger-market teams in the last CBA (as explained by The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier) though it isn’t known if a similar mechanism might be in place for the next agreement.
The seemingly neverending saga of the Athletics’ quest for a new ballpark was the reason for their initial inclusion on the revenue-sharing list, and now the reason for their return. Despite the lack of revenue generated from the Coliseum, the A’s don’t exactly play in a “small market,” given the size of Oakland and the Bay Area market in general. As such, the decision was made to gradually remove the team from the group of revenue-sharers, though with over five years now gone, the Athletics are still not much closer to landing that long-desired new stadium.
Amidst much speculation about a potential move to Las Vegas, there has recently been more positive momentum towards a new ballpark in Oakland. The franchise’s longstanding concept of a new stadium in the Howard Terminal area was recently given a vote of confidence by Oakland’s City Council, which certified an environmental impact review on the project.
There are still more logistical hurdles to be jumped, however, and between those potential obstacles and the time necessary to actually build the ballpark and adjoining infrastructure, it is quite possible the A’s might not have their new stadium in place before the end of a hypothetical 2022-26 term of the next CBA. More will be known about the Athletics’ fate (whether in Oakland, Las Vegas, or elsewhere) in the next few years, so by the time the next CBA talks roll around, it would seem like the A’s would again be removed from the revenue-sharing recipient category if a new stadium project is indeed up and running.
In the interim, the A’s will reap the benefits of additional revenue. For Oakland fans wondering if this means the team will spend these new funds on player payroll, it’s worth remembering that Athletics weren’t big spenders in their previous era of receiving revenue-sharing money, so a sudden spending splurge probably isn’t likely. Since the A’s wouldn’t get any new funds until the end of the 2022 season anyway, it won’t do much to forestall the speculation that the A’s will be looking to cut payroll and move at least some of their higher-salaried players once the lockout is over.
From the MLBPA’s perspective, it was almost exactly four years ago today that the union filed a grievance against the Athletics, Rays, Pirates, and Marlins about how the teams were allocating the money collected via revenue-sharing, as receiving those funds wasn’t reflected in any boosts in player payroll. To that end, it might seem curious that the union would be okay with the A’s again joining the revenue-sharing list, though speculatively, there could be a bigger-picture tactic at play. As much as the league has claimed that any negotiations about revenue-sharing practices are a non-starter in CBA talks, the Athletics’ situation itself counts as a notable change in the revenue-sharing plan, which the MLBPA might perceive as a crack in the owners’ stonewall on the subject.
Beyond just the extra cash, the A’s may also benefit in another fashion from being a revenue-sharing recipient, depending on how the new CBA addresses free agent compensation. Under the last agreement, revenue-sharing recipients stood to land a compensatory draft pick directly after the first round if they had a free agent who rejected a qualifying offer and signed with another club for more than $50MM. While teams that lost certain free agents would still be eligible for a compensatory pick in the league’s new proposal, it remains to be seen exactly what the criteria would be for that compensation, or if revenue-sharing teams would be in line for a greater draft reward.
