A recent controvery in my Fantasy League has me looking back at controversies in the past.
One of the first was a trade that two owners tried to do in which a player to be named later was involved and it turned out that they had an agreement to trade the same player back to the original owner. A draft pick was also involved so the net effect would have been “renting” his player out for a couple months.
Has anything like this happened before in the majors? Is there a rule keeping that from happenning.
I don’t know about MLB, but I know that it is considered very dirty pool in fantasy league sports.
The scenario you describe could well be a form of collusion, as it more or less involves two clubs pooling resources. Not sure where in the MLB bylaws I’d check on that.
The Harry Chiti case referenced by Knead to Know is very unusual.
In MLB, “player to be named later” can mean several things:
We’ve decided on the player, but he can stay where he is for now. It might have something to do with roster space: there’s no room for the player.
We haven’t decided on the player, but have narrowed it down to several choices which will decide later.
We want to get rid of this guy and will decide what we get for him later.
Technically, Harry Chiti was not a player to be named later; the Mets purchased him from Cleveland, and then sent him back. Baseball-reference.com doesn’t indicate it was a trade – just a straight purchase.
I would also think any transaction of this type would get a great deal of scrutiny from MLB to make sure nothing was planned.
I’ve always wondered about “a player to be named later”. Are teams ever unable to decide on who to fill that role with? It just seems weird to complete a trade without all the details figured out.
For instance, Team A trades a major leaguer to Team B for a couple draft picks and a player to be named later. Later comes along and Team A decides they want a certain minor leaguer. Team B says no, we want to hold on to that guy, but we’ll give you this other minor leaguer. But Team A doesn’t want that guy, and so on. Does this ever happen? How do teams figure it out if it does?
Cases of Player To Be Named Later I remember:
August 28, 1996: The Atlanta Braves sent a player to be named later and Ron Wright to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Denny Neagle. The Atlanta Braves sent Jason Schmidt (August 30, 1996) to the Pittsburgh Pirates to complete the trade.
You can’t trade an injured player, so Pittsburgh had to wait until Schmidt came off the DL.
March 27, 1993: Chris Hammond traded by the Cincinnati Reds to the Florida Marlins for a player to be named later and Gary Scott. The Florida Marlins sent Hector Carrasco (September 10, 1993) to the Cincinnati Reds to complete the trade.
The teams informally agree to see how well a player performs before agreeing on the compensation. When Hammond had a good season, the Marlins agreed to give the Reds a little more back.
July 8, 1999: The Arizona Diamondbacks sent a player to be named later, Vladimir Nunez, and Brad Penny to the Florida Marlins for Matt Mantei. The Arizona Diamondbacks sent Abraham Nunez (December 13, 1999) to the Florida Marlins to complete the trade.
The Diamondbacks decided they didn’t want to give up Abraham Nunez even though he was on a list of minor leaguers for compensation. I believe they took it to arbitration and the arbitrator ruled for the Marlins.