A New Challenge for Marvin Miller

Marvin Miller solidified the strength of the MLB Players Association and helped the players earn free agency.  I wonder if he saw this one coming…

Before what we now know as free agency, the players were tied to a particular team through what was known as the reserve clause.  This meant that a team owned the player’s rights as a commodity.  Player salaries were naturally depressed as players never reached the open market and players had zero choice in what team he would play for.  This all changed when Miller, as executive director of the MLBPA, negotiated free agency after arbitrator Peter Seitz handed down the Messersmith/McNally decision which, for all intents and purposes, opened the floodgates of free agency.  Miller recognized that if a large amount of players were deemed free agents, this would flood the market and keep salaries down.  Owners, fearful of free agency pushing salaries up, came to an agreement with Miller on free agency that would take effect after six years.  The first three years, the player is bound to his team for an amount of money determined by the team.  The next three, the player is aigible for salary arbitration where, if the team and player can’t come to an agreement, each submits a number to a neutral arbitrator who then decides the player’s salary for the upcoming year by selecting one of the numbers submitted.

On July 18, the agent for Francisco Liriano asked the union to investigate why Liriano has not been called up to the Twins from AAA Rochester despite posting an 8-0 record and 2.53 ERA in his last ten starts for Rochester.

With two years and 45 days of ML service time, if on the Twins major league roster, Liriano could possibly continue to accrue service time to join the top 17% of players between two and three years of service (often referred to as “Super Twos”)to qualify for early arbitration (for more detailed info on the actual rules that govern player mobility, check out the MLB Basic Agreement).  However, since he is toiling in the minors, Liriano’s service clock is stagnant and the Twins are effectively able to keep Liriano at a lower price for an extra year.

Since free agency began in the late 1970s, there has been an increased focus on acquiring other teams’ talent rather than developing your own, so this issue of effectively halting a player’s service clock has never really been addressed by collective bargaining.  In the post Moneyball era, however, the focus has shifted back to developing a team’s own young talent (see: Oakland A’s, Minnesota Twins, Florida Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, et al) since this is the only way smaller market teams can compete in a game dominated by large market teams.

This issue is going to be a tough one for the union to prove.  There is no way they can demonstrate that the Twins are keeping Liriano in the minors just to keep his service time stalled.  The Twins are a half game back in the AL Central and have had solid pitching this season (although I’d take Liriano over most of their starters, especially Livan Hernandez and his 5.29 ERA and .335 batting average against).  With small market teams struggling to keep their own players and stay competitive, I don’t blame the Twins for sheltering Liriano in the minors, thinking they have a better shot in a year or two.

This may be the first of these sort of cases, but I can assure you it won’t be the last.  Look ahead for some changes to the “Super Two” rule to prevent teams from keeping a player in the minors to halt his service clock.

A .218 Hitting All-Star?

Jason Varitek is hitting .218 at the All-Star break.  Jason Varitek is one of three American League catchers on the AL All-Star team in 2008 and was voted in by the players to back-up Minnesota’s Joe Mauer, who the fans selected as the starting catcher for the AL.

In fact, of catchers with at least 150 at-bats this season, Varitek ranks 16th (remember, there are only 14 AL teams) in batting average, behind even the likes of – Quick… Name that Molina! – Jose Molina, the Yankees backup catcher.  Varitek also boasts an abysmal .299 on-base percentage, which is less than the batting average of three of the 15 catchers ahead of Varitek.  But nevertheless, Varitek is an all-star.

I could understand Varitek’s selection if he were voted in by the fans, since fan voting is nothing but a popularity contest, but he was chosen by the players.  Even worse, Varitek was chosen by the players, his peers – you know, the people who play this game who should know who merits an all-star selection.  Along with Mauer, Varitek was the only other catcher even listed on a player’s ballot.

It’s insulting that the players don’t even have a clue when voting.  Now, with a position like catching, defense and calling a game is a major part of the position.  But there is no way that Varitek’s game-calling or the way he handles pitchers makes up for his lifeless .218 batting average.  Without combing through catchers’ statistics too thoroughly, Pudge Rodriguez or A.J. Pierzynski would have been a better choice.  At least when selecting a third catcher, Terry Francona went with former Yankee farmhand Dioner Navarro of Tampa Bay who is having a stellar year, hitting .310 and doing a tremendous job with those young Tampa pitchers.  To show you how little fans know about Navarro’s year, he earned a paltry 533, 276 votes from the fans, good enough to rank eighth among catchers on the fan ballot.

A Great American Tragedy

On July 27 1998, I attended my first ever Baseball Hall of Fame game at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y.  In the game itself, the Orioles defeated the Blue Jays in the battle of the birds 7-1, but the result itself isn’t important.

I never lived through the simpler times of baseball and sports where leagues weren’t as tyrannical and (maybe) players cared.  They show these times on film in Cooperstown or on Yankeeography where the games are shown in black and white and players didn’t wear helmets.  Although I never lived through those times, I can imagine they were a lot like Cooperstown on the one day a year when Major League Baseball played a game there.

The things that I remember the most about my first time at the Hall of Fame game are the player interactions with the fans.   At a small venue such as Doubleday Field, players have no choice but to interact with the fans – talk to them and (gasp!) sign autographs.  Cal Ripken, Jr. was out there for what seemed like hours signing baseballs for kids.  Brady Anderson was the “big catch” for me, as I got his autograph along with guys like Tony Fernandez and Shawn Green.    It was also the first time I ever heard the name Roy Halladay, who started for the Jays and who was yet to make his MLB debut.  Although these players either played one inning or didn’t play in the game at all it was the interaction and closeness with the fans that made this event special.

There is only one barricade separating fans from players.  In 2007, the last HOF game I went to, Frank Thomas was waiting for a car to take him away from the ballpark and was faced with a few hundred fans calling out his name looking for an autograph.  I don’t know him, but the Big Hurt doesn’t seem like the friendliest guy in the world.  Due to the wait for the car, however, even Thomas caved and signed for some fans.

It’s sad to see MLB take away the Hall of Fame game, ending the annual exhibition because of the difficulties in scheduling the game.  There is no other MLB game on the schedule that puts the fans so close to the players or that takes one back to the simpler times of the game, when it was the game that mattered not the money.  Take a look at the site dedicated to saving the Hall of Fame game and encourage MLB to not end this great event.