Oh, I totally agree. The only way to solve the long game “problem” is one MLB will never take, so why are they bothering at all?
For one thing, the umps enforced pace of play. They told batters to get back into the box, told pitchers to get it going. Players worked faster anyway, because they were used to it. The sun was an effective game clock.
Schedules were very attuned to the demands of train travel. The season started two weeks later and ended a bit earlier, and the World Series was over by the second week of October. The schedules would look odd to us today; teams skipped some Fridays, played different opponents on Saturday and Sunday, stuff like that. More doubleheaders, obviously. Rainouts and suspended games might be made up the next day, the next week, who knows. Of course, making games up was much easier in one really important way; teams played far more games against fewer opponents. Today, a team will play no fewer than 19 different other teams during the season, and most of them are faced in only one or two series. From 1901 to 1960/1961 they played just seven different opposing teams, 22 games a year across six or seven series, so unless the rainout/called for darkness game was late in the year it was very likely you could make it up. Few games were called for darkness in midseason anyway, the sun doesn’t go down until pretty late in North America from May to September.
Pitching was really different too. Starting rotations were not as set as they are now; they were much more fluid after the lively ball revolution. We tend to think of the past as being a day when starters all made 40 starts and went the distance but that’s something that was only possible with night baseball and air travel and the stability that provided. In the train era, it was common for an ace to only start 28-32 games but pitch relief in a dozen others. In 1927, which I picked at random, NO pitcher in the major leagues made 40 starts, and only 23 pitchers - one and a half men per team - made 30 starts. Of the 96 major leaguers who started at least ten games, 95 made at least one relief appearance, and for many it was a LOT of relief appearances. Lefty Grove, one of the greatest starting pitchers who ever lived, started 28 games and relieved in 23. When you might have two games rained out on Monday and Wednesday and have to make them up Thursday and Friday - teams absolutely would play doubleheaders two days in a row - you couldn’t just assume everyone was starting in order.
and they were gonna make those games up. In 1927 the entire major leagues had just five games that failed to be made up, and that was a typical year. Baseball was a tough business, and the teams were very, very determined to make every buck they could.
Very informative post, Rickjay. I’ll admit to having that misperception about starting pitchers and workloads. Just for fun I took a look at Wilbur Wood who, in a five year stretch during the 70s, racked up 224 starts and 1682 innings. :eek: That’s Dead Ball Era stuff. I don’t think those days are ever coming back.
I stopped bitching about player salaries after reading articles like this:
As a fan I used to care about the luxury tax then I realized that this was stupid in today’s day and age. I want the best team we can field period, If the Lerners don’t like it they can sell. The owners are more replaceable than the bullpen catcher. (with that said, the Lerners aren’t horrible owners)
These last 2 years of free agency bidding makes it clear that something is wrong. There is not enough of an incentive to win and be competitive.
There should be a penalty for sucking too much.
Perhaps you can have forced auctions for teams at the bottom of the standings for too long. Or demotion like they have in soccer (not sure how hat would affect minor league affiliates). The Tampa Bay Rays are worth a billion dollars almost
I also agree that 6 years of mandatory service time seems too long. For many of these players that is the the entirety of their productive career.
Pitcher’s duels are boring unless you have fantastic seats or are a real baseball guy. The “strategy” of baseball is lost on most fans. Watching 4-6 different pitchers during a single game (sometimes with a pitcher facing a single batter) is less fun for the casual fan. Watching this happen in the middle of an inning is boring as hell.
The universal designated hitter rule might be the first step towards the bifurcation of baseball into an offensive team and a defensive team. Have as many designated hitters for the pitcher, catcher, shortstop, whatever you want if you can fit them on your roster. It would fundamentally change the game but I can think of a few minor leaguers with awesome fielding who are MLB level defensive players but AA level batters. We do this in little league, I don’t see why we can’t do it in MLB.
I see no evidence of that. None at all. Winning brings financial rewards and glory for the people running the team. There is just as much of an incentive as ever, maybe more so.
What, some free agents aren’t making as much as they used to? Sorry,m thyat has nothing to do with teams wanting to win. It’s because free agents don’t help you win enough. Full stop. Most huge contract hitters suck. That’s just a fact; if you give a hitter a huge contract it will usually be a total flop.
Of last year’s top 25 highest paid hitters, how many do you think were worth it? I’d guess maybe five or six. Mike Trout, J.D. Martinez and Freddie Freeman had MVP type stats, and I will give you Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto, who were pretty good, and arguably Bryce Harper, who hit well but fielded like he was blind. Robbie Cano would have had a good year if he wasn’t suspended. Most were actually bad players, and some were awful; Yoenis Cespedes, Miguel Cabrera, Isan Desmond, Chris Davis, Jason Heyward, Josh Donaldson, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Eric Hosmer, and more - old, injured, or they just sucked. The average wins above replacement by a top 25 paid hitter, if that’s a number you care about, was 2.0. That is roughly as good as Kevin Pillar, who you can have for a fraction of that kind of money. 2018 was, by the way, not at all unusual. The numbers are pretty much the same for 2017, 2016, and 2015.
What, the Rays won’t spend a lot of money? Oh, that must be why they sucked… no, wait, they don’t suck at all, do they? They won 90 games and look damn good. Team want to win just as much as ever, they just know better how to spend their money. Develop them yourself like Trout, Mookie Betts, Jose Altuve. Let some other idiot pick up the $250 million contract after their prime. Big deals to all but the inner circle Hall of Famers are for chumps.
There is, and it’s the same for most any sport.
It’s called “loss of fan interest”, and it translates into lower attendance, smaller audiences for broadcasts and loss of ancillary sales for team apparel and such.
“you can always sell the team for more money” may not work out too well eventually, when prospective owners are less willing to fork over billions for the privilege of sitting in the owner’s box and having fans curse them for not opening their wallets to the max.
If the “problem” with free agency is that players have to settle for gigantic salaries over a shorter term instead of stratospherically enormous ones that’ll pay them $35 million annually when they’re 40 and batting .203, then I can’t be bothered to worry about it too much.
It’s ironic that with players yelping about lack of big free agent deals, Derek Jeter who co-owns the Marlins) not only has been dedicated to shedding stars to make the team more financially viable, he’s due to make millions in bonuses if the team becomes profitable.
So much for solidarity with his fellow (former) wage slaves. 
It isn’t 6 years. It is often over a decade and can be up to 12 years under a team control.
Desmond, Davis, and Hosmer were all considered terrible contracts from the moment they were given while Heyward and Ramirez were questionable was. The rest are older players who perhaps got a little older than expected, but did provide a fair bit of value in earleir years. So yeah we are perhaps past the days that Mike Moustakis is going to get a monster deal and that is okay. But Harper and Machado are stars in their prime. Thye are no bad or even particulary risky investments on a long term deal. The fact that Hosmer sucks is absolutely irrevelent. Nearly every team should want them and only a handful are showing even casual interest. Teams aren’t redirecting mispent funds, they are keeping it.
The problem is “loss in fan interest” doesn’t really matter that much more. If you get enough revenue from revenue sharing and split league revenue (like MLB TV) what do you care if fans show up the game. The marginal gain of being a decent team over a bad one is not worth the increased risk or bottom line. The marlins of course being a prime example if this, though I doubt they let Jeter anywhere near actual decisions. They are not trying to win, and they don’t need to. They will still make gobbles of money every year and sell for an enormous profit. When it was just a couple teams it wasn’t that big a problem, but when its half the leave the system breaks.
How are the Indians, a championship contender with a minor league outfield not trying to get better? Why are the pirates not trying to win a winnable division? Why are the Twins, a team with a lot of young talent and no long term commments in on Harper and Machado? Why don’t the Orioles, Tigers and Royals try to built respectable teams. They just don’t have incentive too. This is fixable, you reward teams for doing better instead of tanking, use market sharing instead of revenue sharing, salary floors etc. but it is a problem and it requires major change.
Realmuto goes to the Phillies, but for a bit more than a bag of balls.
Phillies - J.T. Realmuto (C)
Marlins - Jorge Alfaro (C), Sixto Sanchez* (RHP), Will Stewart (LHP), and an international bonus slot.
*Sanchez is considered a top prospect although limited by injury last year.
No more Disabled List, starting this year - it’s now the Injured List. PC, dontchaknow.
Franchise value and income is only very loosely correlated with winning. a bigger correlation IMHO is size of the market.
I don’t know about that. Baseball contracts are always a crap shoot for the teams. Some work out wonderfully and others do not. The longer the contract, the less predictable the outcome. I don’t know that there has been a good statistical study of how these contracts play outt
I think WAR is a valid measurement but one thing I think war doesn’t really account for all the effect on franchise value. Having stars improves merchanidising and, ticket sales and franchise value. Bryce Harper is arguably worth a lot more to the Washington Nationals than his WAR would imply.
They also have the lowest franchise value in MLB.
The fact that you think that the first year of free agency frequently occurs after their “prime” is one of the things that I think is broken about free agency. The mandatory service period is too long. You can have a player on his 3rd year on the all star team and still be in his mandatory service period.
Mike Trout, arguably the best player in the league for years isn’t a free agent until 2020.
Mookie Betts, a hands down all star and best war in MLB isn’t a free agent until 2021.
The period of indentured servitude is too long. Either pay them significantly more in the minors and the mandatory service period or pay them during the free agency. But right now the baseball players go through a very long apprenticeship period for a diminishing pay off at the end of the process.
analytics was supposed to shift some of the salary from stars to the bench but what it ended up doing was shifting money from the stars to the owner’s pockets.
Revenue sharing offsets much of this. But of course there is always some incentive to win. I said there isn’t ENOUGH incentive.
Right now that is a hypothetical. The market for MLB teams is significant. The list of investors that would like to field an expansion team is pretty long.
The free agency flaw is not necessarily that the free agency contracts aren’t big enough. It might also be that it takes to long to get to free agency. Baseball has an extraordinarily long apprenticeship period and the tradeoff was that there would be a signficiant payoff during free agency. if that payoff is no longer going to be there, then the apprenticeship period should be reduced.
Pretty sure its 2020 for Mookie*. Mookie also made 10.4 mill last year and is making 20 mill this year. Next year he’ll probably make 25 mill.
And a note on merchandising. All domestic sales are split evenly between the 30 teams.
*I know baseball ref says 2021…but he played his first full time year in 2015, so I dont see how 2021 can be accurate…ok i see. They’re kind of saying the 2021 baseball season. He in fact becomes a free agent at the end of the 2020 baseball season barring a new contract.
Those are basically one year contracts
I did not know this
I feel like the red Sox have been lowballing mookie.
Spit take.
That 10 mill Mookie won in arbitration. And the 20 mill he gets this year he agreed to without going to arbitration. I’m also pretty sure (certainly could be wrong) that 20mill is the most a fifth year player has ever made. (Non multi-year contract like Trout)
Harper got 13 mill in his fifth year. Machado got 11 mill.
Josh Donaldsn got $23 million.
In his sixth year
The Betts example is actually pretty illustrative. On the FA market his projected value for 2019 is likely worth, at a minimum, $40M (and probably more). So even with the highest arb-5 agreement ever he is at least 50% underpaid relative to what he would make as a FA.
His choices are to take that and hope to get a big FA contract in a few years or sign a long-term contract now and lock in below-market compensation for more security (guaranteed multi-year). Either way he will make a ton of money but you can see why if the big FA contract becomes less likely he could feel like he’s being squeezed by ownership.
In baseball CBA terms, 2017 was Donaldson’s fifth year. He had just 4.1 years of service going into that season so it’s treated as Year 5. Betts also has 4.1 years of service time going into next year but it didn’t take him as long to accumulate it because he became a regular much quicker and wasn’t bouncing between minors and majors.
2017 was the sixth calendar year Donaldson appeared in the big leagues, but calendar years are not relevant. What matters are service years.
Actually, as I looked up the two players, an interesting note - at this point, going into their fifth year, they look superficially similar. Both became exceptional, multi-talented players. Both deservedly won an MVP Award and were high in the voting in other seasons. They have roughly the same career value. What’s different is that Betts is just 26 this coming year - Donaldson was 26 when he first reached the majors, remarkably late for an elite player. As a result, Donaldson was already beginning his decline phase when he got his $23 million, while Betts is entering his peak now. (I am not saying Betts will necessarily have seasons even better than 2018, but that’s no insult.)
Consequently, the odds are Josh Donaldson’s career is basically written. He might have another nice season or two hitting 30 homers as a DH or first baseman but it’s likely 90% of his career is in the books. Betts, conversely, is a candidate to be a Hall of Famer someday if he stays healthy.
At this point I’m just being pedantic, cause if Donaldson is the record holder for salary in terms of service time. Then I’m wrong. And thats fine. But baseball ref says he was paid 17 mill in 2017. But again, I fully admit I’m being pedantic.
And re: Betts and the HOF…He is going in. But I admit to being slightly biased when it comes to Mookie. And if the Sox don’t sign him for life, I will riot.