MLB

The future Las Vegas A’s

I mentioned this story in passing in that post about MLB in Utah, but it deserves a closer look.

The Oakland Athletics have signed a binding agreement to purchase 49 acres (with an option for additional land) near the Las Vegas strip, according to Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The A’s intend to build a stadium that seats at least 30,000 and that has a partially retractable roof, per team president Dave Kaval. They intend to have the stadium complete ahead of the 2027 season. (You can read a timeline of how the A’s reached this point by clicking here.)

It’s worth noting that the A’s lease in Oakland expires after the 2024 season. Kaval told the New York Times that it’s possible the club will then relocate to Las Vegas and play in the minor-league park that currently houses the Triple-A Aviators.

“For a while we were on parallel paths (with Oakland), but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” Kaval told the Review-Journal. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.”

The A’s relocation plan includes passing a bill through the Legislature, “to create a funding mechanism, including a special taxation district covering the stadium site, which would allow for sales tax proceeds to be reinvested in the area, along with an allocation of transferable tax credits estimated to be worth around $500 million,” according to the Nevada Independent. The stadium would be located near the homes of the NFL’s Raiders and the NHL’s Golden Knights.

The A’s have attempted to finagle a new stadium since 2009. At one point, it appeared they had made progress toward a ballpark in Oakland located at the Howard Terminal site. Obviously that deal never came into fruition. MLB had set a January 2024 deadline for a stadium deal. In the past, the A’s had also been weaned off revenue sharing as a means of forcing the issue.

“We support the A’s turning their focus on Las Vegas and look forward to them bringing finality to this process by the end of the year,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement to the Review-Journal.

If and when the A’s relocate, they’ll become just the second MLB team since the 1970s to do so. The Montreal Expos, of course, became the Washington Nationals following the 2004 season. The Expos were, at the time, owned by the league itself. The A’s have played in Oakland since 1968. The franchise had previously spent time in both Kansas City and Philadelphia, though both relocations took place before the 1970s.

Relocating has been a possibility for the A’s for awhile, more because of its stadium situation than anything else. Its ownership has done so much to alienate its fanbase and the local government that in some sense this was inevitable, but only if you accept the premise that the owners had no other way to act. Be careful what you ask for, Las Vegas, that’s all I’m saying. Yahoo and Fangraphs have more.

MLB in Utah?

Apr 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

It’s on the table.

A Salt Lake City consortium led by the former owner of the Utah Jazz plans to pursue a Major League Baseball franchise in the coming years, touting the area’s population growth, strong economy and baseball history as draws for a coveted expansion slot, people involved with the project told ESPN.

Big League Utah, a group headed by longtime Jazz owner Gail Miller, will join Nashville’s Music City Baseball and the Portland Diamond Project in lobbying to join the current 30 MLB organizations. Las Vegas, considered a prime destination for a franchise, has emerged as a strong candidate if the Oakland Athletics relocate.

While sources said MLB does not plan to expand until it figures out the futures of Oakland and the Tampa Bay Rays — both of whom have considered moving amid struggles to secure new stadiums in their current metropolitan areas — commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN in July: “I would love to get to 32 teams.”

The Salt Lake City coalition includes the Larry H. Miller Company — the conglomerate founded by Miller’s late husband, Larry, an automobile magnate — as well as local business leaders and former major league players Dale Murphy and Jeremy Guthrie, both Utah residents. The group has targeted building a stadium in the Rocky Mountain Power District, a 100-acre mixed-use zone located between Salt Lake City’s new airport and its downtown core, an investment that would come on top of an expected $2 billion expansion fee.

“Salt Lake City is a major league city,” said Steve Starks, CEO of the Miller Company. “We believe that as a top-30 media market in the fastest-growing state in the country with the youngest population, that’s where our attention should be — and that we could accomplish bringing a team to the Wasatch Front.”

Starks said the group surveyed local fans about their favorite sports leagues for potential expansion and that MLB was the top choice, ahead of even the NFL.

“It would be, I think, a validation of everything that we’ve worked so hard to do,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told ESPN. “We’ve proven ourselves in a sports capacity with Olympics in 2002 and coming back in 2030 or, more likely, 2034. We’ve hosted two NBA All-Star Games. We know we can do this. It would just be meaningful for people who love this sport, who care deeply about it. We’re a baseball state.”

Already owners of the Salt Lake Bees — the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels whose average attendance last year was 5,873, the 18th highest in minor league baseball — the Miller Company is building a new stadium for the team set to open in 2025. The Jazz, who moved to Salt Lake City from New Orleans in 1979, regularly sell out Vivint Arena.

Conversations with MLB about the possibility of expanding to Salt Lake City began about a year ago, when Starks inquired about the viability of a bid, with Las Vegas; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Montreal among the other potential candidates.

Leaders of the Salt Lake City group highlighted a media market larger than that of four current major league teams: San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. They stressed Utah’s significant growth, as its population of about 3.3 million swelled by a higher percentage than any state from 2010 to 2020, according to the Census Bureau, and the Wasatch Front population — stretching from Ogden to Provo — is around 2.7 million. On top of that, the group said, Utah’s 2.4% unemployment rate in February was the fourth lowest in the country, with an economy trumpeted in recent years as among the strongest in the United States.

I’m a proponent of MLB expanding, and I believe they should be thinking bigger than 32 teams. As such, I sometimes play a little game of “how many new MLB teams could I reasonably place somewhere in North America”. Salt Lake City has been on my list of fantasy destinations, so this possibility doesn’t come as a big surprise to me. SLC would not be on my short list for a two-team expansion, but if we’re talking six teams, or especially ten teams (yes, expand to 40 teams, and yes I see that SLC is not on that list) then it’s definitely a contender.

That said, there are some concerns, including the existing minor league team and a more existential problem, which Jay Jaffe notes in his overview of the Big League Utah proposal.

After decades of drying that have accelerated in recent years due to climate change and population growth, the Great Salt Lake reached a record low water level in November, dipping to 4,188.6 feet above sea level, having lost 70% of its water since 1850. A June 2022 report in the New York Times sounded a dire warning regarding the air quality if the lake continues to dry up: “Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, wind storms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.”

A January 2023 story in the Washington Post highlighted a report by researchers at BYU that showed that without dramatic cuts to water consumption — consumption driven by the same population growth that makes the area appealing as an expansion site — the lake was on track to disappear in five years. Since then, thankfully, the city has experienced its seventh-snowiest winter on record, with eight local ski resorts reporting record snowfalls. Already, the lake has risen three feet in five months, though it’s still six feet below “the minimum acceptable elevation for the lake’s ecological and economic health,” according to BYU ecologist Ben Abbott, the lead author of the January report.

The current snowpack and its runoff could raise levels another three or four feet, but the long-term sustainability of the lake remains in question, all of which would make for a thorny issue for MLB to consider in the context of a Salt Lake City bid. The likelihood that it will be a few years before the league makes up its mind about expansion — what’s the rush, right? — at least leaves time to see which way the wind is blowing, so to speak.

On the one hand, every city is already dealing with the effects of climate change, and some will have very big challenges going forward (Miami, anyone?), so we shouldn’t be too hard on SLC. On the other hand, any time you talk about arsenic in the air, that sounds like a problem. SLC is also at an elevation similar to Denver, so it would likely be a pretty offense-happy place. Assuming MLB can ever get the Oakland and Tampa situations resolved (which could be imminent for the A’s), we’ll see where we are with this.

Speedier baseball

Apr 5th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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A faster-paced game with more action is exactly what MLB hoped for with its myriad rule changes, and so far it’s exactly what it has gotten.

Major League Baseball’s new rules are working as hoped through the first four days of the season.

The average game time has dropped by 30 minutes, stolen bases have doubled, and batting average has increased by 16 percentage points compared to last year’s opening weekend.

Games averaged 2 hours, 38 minutes through Sunday with the new pitch clock, down from 3:08 for the first four days of the 2022 season and a 3:04 final average.

In the first year of restrictions on defensive shifts, the .246 batting average for nine-inning games was up from .230 over the first four days last year, when many games were played in cold and wet weather. Left-handed batting average increased to .232 from .229 in last year’s first four days and right-handed average went up to .254 from .230.

“We are extremely pleased with the early returns,” commissioner Rob Manfred said Monday. “Fan reaction has been positive to the brisker pace with more action. And players have made a great adjustment to the changes.”

[…]

MLB felt it was about time for drastic change after the average time of nine-inning games rose from 2:33 in 1981 to 2:46 in 2005 and a record 3:10 in 2021. With the introduction of the PitchCom electronic device to signal pitches, the average dropped to 3:04 for the full 2022 season.

Over objections from players, the 11-man competition committee adopted a pitch clock of 15 seconds with no runners on base and 20 seconds with runners. It also required two infielders to be on either side of second base and all infielders to be within the outer boundary of the infield when the pitcher is on the rubber. Players supported increasing bases to 18-inch squares from 15-by-15, proposed as a safety measure.

These were the most significant rules changes since the pitcher’s mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 for the 1969 season and the American League adopted the designated hitter in 1973, a rule that was extended to the National League in 2022 following its temporary use during the 2020 pandemic-shortened season.

“There’s a lot more action and a lot more appealing product for the fans,” Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said.

The clock has had a noticeable impact, with Colorado–San Diego taking 2:03 on Sunday, Cleveland-Seattle 2:04 on Saturday and the New York Mets-Miami 2:09 on Friday.

“I don’t think it’s wrong to take a semi-victory lap right now,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said, “but we’ll see how it evolves.”

I for one approve of the changes. There have been pitch clocks in place in the minor leagues for several years now, so quite a few current MLB players have experienced them. I suspect that has helped minimize the negative effects; the number of pitch clock violations is already low, and based on what we saw in spring training it should trend down over the year. I will note that in the minor leagues, there was also a large initial drop in game times with the introduction of the pitch clock, but over the course of several years after that the times crept back up to nearly what they had been before. I think as long as MLB enforces the rule – there were some issues with that in the minors – there shouldn’t be too much regression. But it will be worth watching.

As for the jump in stolen bases, Fangraphs goes deeper into the numbers. I think we will begin to see more steal attempts over time, as the slower runners begin to try their luck, and with that the success rate will start to fall a bit. While I think the basic pitch clock as it now is will stay the same, it won’t surprise me to see further tinkering with the bases and the pickoff rules and the shift restrictions. Once you’ve opened those cans, they’re not going to close up.

MLB reaches tentative CBA with minor leaguers

Apr 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Impressive.

Minor league baseball players and Major League Baseball struck a tentative deal Wednesday on the first collective bargaining agreement between the sides that will more than double player pay and represents the largest-ever gains in the rights of minor leaguers, sources familiar with the agreement told ESPN.

The deal, which will last for five years, comes after a rapid and successful effort last year by minor leaguers to unionize under the umbrella of the Major League Baseball Players Association and follows previous improvements in housing and pay. MLB formally recognized the union upon its formation, paving the way for a negotiation that finalized the deal on the eve of major league Opening Day.

After years of disillusionment among future major leaguers about paltry salaries forcing them to work offseason jobs — and coincidentally on the day a judge approved a $185 million settlement the league will pay players who accused it of violating minimum-wage laws — the parties agreed on a deal that went out to a vote among the union’s rank and file and that will need to be approved by owners, as well, before it is formalized. The agreement could be announced officially as early as Friday, the first day of games in the minor leagues.

The pay increases at each level are significant, according to sources, and will pay players for most of the offseason as well as spring training, including back pay for this season. At each level, the pay structure will see annual minimum salaries go from:

Triple-A: $17,500 to $35,800

Double-A: $13,800 to $30,250

High-A: $11,000 to $27,300

Single-A: $11,000 to $26,200

Complex league: $4,800 to $19,800

Among those not included in the deal are players at teams’ complexes in the Dominican Republic. The minor league unit of the MLBPA includes only players on teams’ domestic rosters — and players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other foreign countries will still reap the benefits when stateside.

The deal includes the reduction of the maximum Domestic Reserve List, which governs the number of players a team can roster outside of its Dominican Republic complexes, from 180 to 165 starting in 2024. The union had previously fought MLB’s efforts during the lockout last year to reduce the reserve list, which teams had identified as a priority.

Players, meanwhile, emphasized better housing and transportation as a matter of import. Starting in 2024, those at Triple-A and Double-A will receive their own bedroom, and players with spouses and children will receive special accommodations. In rookie ball, Single-A and High-A, teams will provide transportation to stadiums, where they’ll eat meals provided under rules negotiated by a joint clubhouse nutrition committee.

Given that MLB only recognized the MLBPA’s representation of minor leaguers six months ago, this is incredibly quick. The salaries negotiated here still aren’t a lot, but they’re a lot more than they were before, and that’s a big step forward. The players and the league still have to ratify the deal, which everyone expects to happen. I’m genuinely impressed. Kudos all around. Fangraphs has more.

Won’t someone think of the catchers?

Mar 5th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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There’s at least one constituency affected by the looming future of robo umps that isn’t so sure about the whole thing.

While pitch clocks, bigger bases and other rules changes debut this year at the major league level, the Automated Ball-Strike System will receive its biggest experiment yet at Triple-A. ABS will be used four days per week to call every pitch at baseball’s highest minor league level. On the other three days, umpires will traditionally call balls and strikes with a challenge system in place — teams will be able to appeal a handful of calls to the so-called robo-zone each game.

To many, ABS has begun to feel inevitable. Umpires have already agreed to allow it at the major league level when it is ready. Which means that within a season or two, everything around home plate could change

“It’s going to be here,” Servais said.

Others think Major League Baseball, and specifically Commissioner Rob Manfred, don’t recognize how seismically such a shift could alter the sport.

“I don’t see it happening,” said Yankees All-Star and distinguished pitch-framer Jose Trevino. “I don’t think Manfred has any idea what’s going on whenever he talks about that kind of stuff. He’s obviously never put the gear on, so he doesn’t know.”

Manfred, who last summer told ESPN that ABS could reach the majors by 2024, has cautioned this spring that the robo-umps remain in “the evaluation phase.” In order to be adopted in the big leagues, ABS would need to be approved by an 11-member competition committee that includes four players.

“There are issues that are still the topic of really considerable discussion within the ownership group and even more that are going to have to be resolved in the joint committee process with the players,” Manfred said. “The framing issue is one of those. I mean it’s a legitimate concern on the part of at least a subset of players.”

The subset includes some coaches, too, including New York Yankees director of catching Tanner Swanson — a pioneer of sorts in teaching backstops to steal strikes.

An appreciation for pitch framing had been under way for nearly a decade when Swanson jumped from college coaching to join the Minnesota Twins organization before the start of the 2018 season.

Among his most impactful ideas: If catchers received pitches while down on one knee as opposed to a traditional squat, they’d be better positioned to steal strikes near the bottom of the zone. Within just a couple seasons, the one-knee approach he coached with Minnesota was being used across the majors.

“When I got into pro ball, I think it really kind of opened the curtain to like, ‘OK, now this is not only extremely valuable, but this is something that we should be prioritizing just in terms of the frequency in which it happens relative to all the other skills.’” Swanson said.

Swanson preaches subtle movements with the glove on every borderline pitch — just enough trickery to sway even the most well trained umpire. Even if it came at the expense of blocking pitches or throwing out runners, the data showed framing trumped all other skills.

Swanson has had several notable success, starting with Mitch Garver in Minnesota and most recently Trevino, who was an All-Star and Gold Glove winner last season. Trevino converted 53.8% of non-swinging strikes on the edges of the zone into strikes — best in the majors, according to MLB’s Statcast.

The knee-down catching technique is already being taught to youth catchers on up, and there’s now an entire generation of big league catchers trained to put pitch presentation first.

“Framing’s always been big,” said Baltimore catcher Adley Rutschman, last year’s AL Rookie of the Year runner-up. “Since probably my junior year in high school, it’s been a big point of emphasis. Got to college, same thing, and in the pros, same thing.”

Robot umpires, of course, can’t be fooled. So what happens when framing falls out of focus?

The short answer to that is that the good-field, no-hit catchers will lose value, which is a thing that aficionados of pitch framing as well as those catchers themselves are extremely wary of. I think we’re well more than one year out from MLB adopting some form of automated ball-strike calling, but it is coming sooner or later. The version that I’m now leaning towards, which is a middle ground that seems to ease most of the anxiety about this, is a challenge system, in which human umps make the original calls, and either side can ask for some number of pitches to be reviewed by the robo ump. The experience so far has been that the reviews are very quick, and the response has been positive. If that is the case in Triple A this year, then this might indeed be very close to happening in MLB. Check back later in the year and we’ll see.

A brief digression on baseball broadcasting and leveraged buyouts

Feb 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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I call your attention to this fine article about some current baseball-business news, which among other things helped me better understand some business lingo.

Diamond Sports Group, the company that owns Bally Sports Network and thus the rights to 14 teams’ local broadcasts (plus minority stakes in two team-owned broadcasts)*, is careening towards bankruptcy. Per Bloomberg, the actual bankruptcy declaration is merely a formality: the firm will reportedly skip an interest payment due in February, triggering a restructuring that will wipe out the firm’s existing equity and convert all but the most senior debt into equity stakes in the new company, leaving its current creditors in charge.

That’s a shocking turn of events for a media group that sold for more than $10 billion in 2019. Heck, it’s a shocking turn of events for a company that made more than $2 billion in revenues in the first nine months of 2022, and more than $3 billion in 2021. It might also affect long-term cashflows for every team in the league; after all, local broadcast rights are a key piece of the revenue pie, and broadcast rights have exploded along with MLB revenues in the past decade.

How could this have happened? Which teams will be impacted, and what will that impact be? How will the league adapt to the new media landscape brought on by this bankruptcy and any subsequent dominos that fall as a result? I don’t have the answer to all of those questions, but I’ll walk through each in turn before speculating about what might happen next.

The easiest thing to figure out is how this happened. In early 2019, Sinclair Broadcast Group purchased the Fox Sports Networks brand and its associated networks from Disney as part of Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. They bought it via a subsidiary called Diamond Sports Group, which is an annoying bit of corporate legerdemain that allowed Sinclair to keep the business at arm’s length and decline to backstop it if things went wrong. That set this entire chain of events into motion.

See, Sinclair didn’t buy this large collection of regional sports networks with cash. They used some financial sleight of hand known as a leveraged buyout. They paid $9.6 billion to Disney for the business (other investors put in $1 billion to make the aggregate purchase price $10.6 billion), but they didn’t do so by peeling an unending string of crisp new hundreds from their wallet. They only put up $1.4 billion of their own money, in fact. The remainder was covered by $1.8 billion in senior debt, $3.1 billion in secured debt, and $3.3 billion in a subordinated term loan facility (read: $8.2 billion in borrowed money).

In some sense, this bankruptcy was preordained. When Sinclair opted for a debt-enabled purchase, they considered these risks extensively. In fact, there’s no doubt about the way they thought. Scour the prospectus for one of the notes they issued, and you’ll find 22 references to bankruptcy, as well as an interest rate that assumed some chance of default. That’s hardly unusual in debt financing, but the point remains: behind all the ponderous wording that pervades financial documents, these bonds were issued and purchased with the understanding that Diamond Sports Group might not be able to make all of its payments. One peek at their financial reports could tell you that.

It’s good stuff, so read the rest. And no, the Astros are not among the teams whose local broadcast revenue is affected. Those of you who grimaced at the mention of Sinclair Broadcasting should get a bit of schadenfreude out of it by the end. Awful Announcing and Pinstripe Alley have more.

Scott Rolen elected to the Hall of Fame

Jan 26th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Well deserved.

Scott Rolen

The hot corner has historically had a high bar for National Baseball Hall of Fame entry. But in 2023, Scott Rolen made the cut and completed a meteoric rise in support in his time on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot.

Rolen was the only one of the 28 candidates on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot to reach the necessary 75% support in results, which were revealed Tuesday night on MLB Network. Rolen will join first baseman Fred McGriff in the Class of 2023 after McGriff’s selection in December by the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee.

Induction ceremonies will be held July 23 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“You don’t think about this,” Rolen said of his playing days. “You think about trying to do the best you can and play for your team and do the best you can. It’s such a long road, and I never thought the Hall of Fame would be the answer.”

It is now.

Though Rolen was the BBWAA’s only inductee for 2023, he was not the only one to continue a major surge. Todd Helton jumped from 52% in 2022 to 72.2% in his fifth of 10 possible appearances on the ballot, falling just 11 votes shy of what would have been one of the biggest final flourishes for an electee in history. Billy Wagner went from 51% to 68.1% in his eighth year, and Andruw Jones (58.1%), in his sixth year, and Gary Sheffield (55%), in his ninth, both made the important cross above the 50% threshold for the first time.

Carlos Beltrán had a solid 46.5% showing on his first ballot, (Francisco Rodríguez, at 10.8%, was the only other first-timer to receive the necessary 5% to remain on next year’s ballot), while Jeff Kent had the exact same percentage on his 10th and final try with the BBWAA. Kent’s case will go to the Historical Overview Committee for potential inclusion on the 2025 Contemporary Baseball Era ballot.

Rolen was definitely deserving, and as the article notes third basemen are under-represented in Cooperstown. Everyone else from Helton down to Beltran is also deserving and will hopefully have their time soon. Next year it gets a bit more crowded as Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer, and Chase Utley join the ballot. Congrats to Rolen and better luck to the rest in 2024. ESPN and Fangraphs have more.

Fred McGriff elected to the Hall of Fame

Dec 7th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Congratulations to him.

“The Crime Dog” finally had his day.

In Fred McGriff’s first second chance at the National Baseball Hall of Fame voting process, the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee did what the Baseball Writers’ Association did not. McGriff was the committee’s lone Hall of Fame selection among the eight candidates considered during a vote held Sunday at baseball’s Winter Meetings in San Diego.

McGriff received unanimous support, appearing on all 16 ballots cast. He will be inducted alongside any BBWAA selections on July 23 in Cooperstown, N.Y. The BBWAA results will be announced Jan. 24 on MLB Network.

“I’ve been totally blessed over the years,” McGriff said. “[This selection] is just icing on the cake. And for it to be unanimous, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Though McGriff went 16-for-16, none of the other men on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot — a ballot comprised of players whose greatest contributions to the game came from 1980 to the present — received the 12 votes (or 75%) necessary for selection. The results revealed by the Hall were as follows:

McGriff: 16 votes, 100%
Don Mattingly, 8, 50%
Curt Schilling, 7, 43.8%
Dale Murphy, 6, 37.5%
Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro: Fewer than 4 votes

And so once again, three prominent players linked to performance-enhancing drug use — Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro — were left on the outside looking in. The earliest they could be considered again is three years from now.

I’m happy for McGriff, who has a better traditional-stats case for the Hall than an advanced-stats case and whose candidacy is not as compelling as some players not on the ballot but who is by all accounts a good guy and as scandal-free as they come. Indeed, as Jay Jaffee has pointed out, the deck was kind of stacked for him. Which, fine, he’s a decent fit for the Hall even if he shouldn’t have been first in line. It’s just weird to see and a little too reminiscent of the days when Frankie Frisch got all his buddies elected via the Veterans Committee for my liking. None of which is McGriff’s responsibility, so congratulations to him. We’ll see who if anyone gets elected from the writers’ ballot in January.

Your 2023 Hall of Fame ballot is out

Nov 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Should be a quieter year, at least for the writers.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame revealed the 2023 Baseball Writers’ Association of America Hall of Fame ballot on Monday, with several notable names appearing for the first time, as well as returning candidates hoping to continue trending toward possible enshrinement in Cooperstown.

Former slugging outfielder Carlos Beltrán, who belted 435 home runs and stole 312 bases during a 20-year MLB career, appears on the ballot for the first time, as does former All-Star closer Francisco Rodríguez and his 437 career saves. Other notable first-timers are Huston Street, Matt Cain, John Lackey, R.A. Dickey, Jered Weaver, Bronson Arroyo, Jacoby Ellsbury, Andre Ethier, Mike Napoli, Jhonny Peralta, J.J. Hardy and Jayson Werth.

Among the returning candidates, three received more than 50 percent of the vote in 2022, with 75 percent needed for election: Scott Rolen (63.2 percent), Todd Helton (52 percent) and Billy Wagner (51 percent). Rolen is in his sixth year of eligibility (candidates are on the ballot for up to 10 years), while Helton is on his fifth and Wagner is on his eighth.

There’s been a bit of a logjam on the ballot in recent years, with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling receiving sizable shares of the vote without being elected. Though all three are no longer eligible on the BBWAA ballot, they appear on this year’s Contemporary Era ballot.

[…]

Another notable candidate, in his second year of eligibility, is Alex Rodriguez, who received 34.3 percent of the vote on his first ballot despite his then-fourth-place ranking on the all-time career home run list. His connection to performance-enhancing drugs could keep his vote totals low, though he’s another candidate who may benefit from Bonds, Clemens and Schilling falling off the BBWAA ballot.

The general consensus on Beltrán is that he’s an absolutely worthwhile candidate, and also that he’s tainted by the Astros’ cheating scandal. No one knows how much that will hurt him, but I’d bet money he doesn’t get close to being elected this year. Maybe over time, but not right away. No one else new to the ballot is worth serious consideration, and those three top votegetters from last year are all likely to benefit from that. As for A-Rod, well, he’s not likely to go anywhere either.

The Contemporary Era Ballot has the most recent problem children on it, as well as some curious omissions. Perhaps this is Fred McGriff’s big moment; I don’t have strong feelings about that but it would be nice for him if it happens. As usual, we’ll know the results in early January. Fangraphs has more.

Click out

Nov 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Gotta say, this is shocking.

Six days after winning a World Series title, the Astros parted ways with general manager James Click on Friday, ending months of intensifying speculation with unprecedented action and throwing one of the sport’s most successful franchises into a new state of chaos.

In a three-year tenure marred by tumult he did not create and carried by a core of players he inherited from predecessors, Click sustained the franchise’s golden era, but could not coexist with an owner who demanded more. Click oversaw three American League Championship Series appearances, two American League pennants and, this year, the Astros’ second World Series title in franchise history.

“We are grateful for all of James’ contributions,” owner Jim Crane said in a statement. “We have had great success in each of his three seasons, and James has been an important part of that success. I want to personally thank him and wish him and his family well moving forward.”

[…]

An Astros spokesman said Crane would not be commenting further on his unprecedented action. No general manager in 75 years had lost their job an offseason after guiding a team to a World Series title.

According to the Society of Baseball Research, the last who did, Larry MacPhail, resigned in 1947 after entering the New York Yankees’ World Series winning clubhouse “in a “drunken stupor” during which he “unleashed a barrage of insults, punched a writer, and announced his resignation.”

Click authored nothing so absurd. His downfall came gradually, after a chasm among him, Crane and manager Dusty Baker festered behind the scenes of standout on-field performance.

Obviously there was conflict between the three team leaders, and in the end James Click was the odd one out. That doesn’t speak well for the Astros as an organization, but it’s unlikely to hinder them. They still have a ton of talent, and I’d say will have their pick of successors if they choose to go outside for the next one. They’ll continue to be among the favorites to win the pennant for the foreseeable future. It’s still a weird thing to happen. Fangraphs and Sean Pendergast have more.

MLB to recognize MLBPA representation of minor leaguers

Sep 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Wow.

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association on Saturday finalized a card-check agreement expected to formalize the league recognizing the union as the bargaining representative for a unit of minor league players in excess of 5,000 members, sources told ESPN.

The agreement, in which the MLBPA will present union-authorization cards Wednesday to be counted by a neutral arbiter, is the latest step in the rapid unionization of minor league players and sets up the parties to negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement.

The parties plan to begin negotiations in the offseason in hopes of striking an agreement before the 2023 minor league season.

By voluntarily recognizing minor leaguers’ desire to unionize with the MLBPA, which was first announced by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on Friday, the league is hastening what people on both sides saw as inevitable: the MLBPA representing a wide swath of minor league players, including all who play in the four domestic levels as well as those at team complexes in Arizona and Florida.

[…]

Absent the recognition, the MLBPA would have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board and earned status as the bargaining representative with a vote of more than 50% of players who returned ballots. With the MLBPA saying that more than 50% of the potential unit has returned cards indicating they want to join the union, the league chose to recognize the unionization of minor leaguers under the MLBPA umbrella.

See here for the background. I had assumed MLB would fight this, as they are not at all known for being labor-friendly, but it would seem that the numbers are such that it didn’t make sense to draw it all out. The next step would be a collective bargaining agreement with the minor leaguers, and that will among other things provide for the league more opportunities to gain some leverage over the major league players. This is a historic agreement and a great start for the union, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Here comes the pitch clock

Sep 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Some foundational rule changes are coming to MLB next year.

A pitch timer, limits on defensive shifts and bigger bases are coming to Major League Baseball in 2023.

Following recent experiments in the Minor Leagues, the recently formed Joint Competition Committee voted Friday in favor of three rule changes aimed at improving pace of play, action and safety at the MLB level.

The pitch timer, defensive shift limits and bigger bases were the only three rules proposed by MLB to the Joint Competition Committee — a voting body consisting of four active players, six members appointed by MLB and one umpire, that was created as part of the 2022-26 Collective Bargaining Agreement. Though the automatic ball-strike system (AKA “robot umps”) — and, alternatively, an ABS challenge system — has been experimented with in select Minor Leagues this season, a formal rule change proposal related to the ABS has not been made to the committee and is not expected for the 2023 season.

Read on for the details. I favor the pitch clock and I’m fine with the larger bases. I’m more ambivalent about banning the shift, but I think everyone agrees that the significant decrease in balls in play is a negative at least from an aesthetic fan-friendly perspective, and on those lines I can support it. I suspect it may take some time for the full effects of the changes to be felt – the sport will need to start growing contact hitters again, if nothing else – but we should begin to see them during the season. MLB has made big changes to respond to a drop in offense before – lowering the pitcher’s mound, reducing the strike zone – and I’m sure they will again some day as things evolve further. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. ESPN has more.

MLBPA seeks to represent minor leaguers

Aug 31st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Good to see, though there are some questions that will need to be answered.

The Major League Baseball Players Association took an initial step toward unionizing the minor leagues Sunday night, sending out authorization cards that will allow minor league players to vote for an election that could make them MLBPA members.

“Minor leaguers represent our game’s future and deserve wages and working conditions that befit elite athletes who entertain millions of baseball fans nationwide,” players’ association executive director Tony Clark said Monday in a statement. “They’re an important part of our fraternity and we want to help them achieve their goals both on and off the field.”

The potential unionization of more than 5,000 minor leaguers is the latest action in a yearslong effort by players who won a $185 million settlement from the league in an unpaid wages class-action lawsuit and have received housing from teams and increased pay in recent years. Minor league players, whose compensation and benefits are not collectively bargained, continue to argue for higher salaries, which for a vast majority range from around $5,000 to $14,000 annually. Furthermore, the Senate Judiciary Committee has suggested it will call a hearing to explore MLB’s antitrust exemption and its treatment of minor leaguers.

[…]

Advocates for Minor Leaguers, the group that has spent recent years organizing minor league players, is now working with the MLBPA, which collectively bargains with MLB on behalf of the 1,200 players on major league rosters.

“The last couple years has been a buildup of players offering their voices and their concerns, with Advocates for Minor Leaguers continuing to echo and aggregate those voices in a way that have gotten us to this point,” Clark told ESPN.

In order for the MLBPA to represent minor leaguers in collective bargaining, 30% of players need to sign union authorization cards, which would prompt an election. If a majority of those who vote in an election choose for union representation, the National Labor Relations Board will require MLB to recognize the union. The league and MLBPA then would collectively bargain for minor leaguers, an outcome that even five years ago would have registered as farfetched.

You can see a statement from the MLBPA here. I’m all in favor of this, and Lord knows the minor league players need representation, between MLB’s relentless efforts to cut their pay and more recently reduce the number of minor league teams. It’s just that the MLBPA hasn’t necessarily been a friend to minor leaguers in previous CBAs. Which is understandable, since those players weren’t and still aren’t a part of that union and the MLBPA was aiming to get the best deal it could get for its members. If the owners put some MiLB concessions on the table as a chip, well, the MLBPA had to consider what it meant for them. Very few current minor leaguers were affected by past CBAs, at least at the time, so I don’t think that will be an obstacle. The contraction of the minor leagues, with MLB in control of them, is a strong incentive for the players and the union to join forces. If this goes through, it won’t stop MLB from trying similar tactics in the future, it will just be a test of the larger union’s resolve. I’m rooting for them to get this done. CBS Sports has more.

Baseball fans are mostly OK with the idea of robot umps

Jul 21st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

So says a poll, so it must be true.

Illustration by Martin Laksman

MLB fans, it may be time to welcome your robot overlords.

Baseball is known for its long-standing traditions, unwritten rules about players’ on-field conduct and a fan base that skews older compared to other major U.S. professional sports. A new Morning Consult survey, however, found that MLB fans are gradually entering the modern era and accepting likely changes to the sport.

A plurality of self-identified MLB fans (48%) said they support the implementation of an automated ball and strike system, also known as “robo umps,” for MLB’s 2024 season. Thirty-six percent of fans said they do not support such a system, which Commissioner Rob Manfred floated as a possibility in a wide-ranging ESPN interview last month.

[…]

The future of baseball

Half of MLB fans said they “strongly support” or “somewhat support” an automated ball and strike system that calls every pitch during a game and relays the balls and strikes to a human home plate umpire via an earpiece. There’s slightly more support (55%) for a replay review system of balls and strikes, which would allow each manager to challenge several calls per game.

While self-identified sports fans showed slightly less enthusiasm for robo umps than MLB fans did, a clear plurality still supported the concept. Of the options included in the survey, regular sports fans showed the most support for in-game manager challenges at 54%.

More than half of MLB fans (54%) said they are “very interested” or “somewhat interested” to watch a game in which a home plate umpire receives balls and strikes through an earpiece, while 56% expressed interest in watching games featuring manager challenges.

I’m basically fine with the robo-ump scheme. The tech still needs some work, as well as some refinements to the rulebook strike zone, which is not called that way and would be very unpopular if it were. Back in 2020, I figured it would be five to ten years for robo umps; the current CBA allows for them to be implemented as soon as 2024. I think I’d be happier starting with a challenge system first, but we’ll see what we get. In any event, if you’re a traditionalist, don’t expect a wave of fan sentiment to carry your preference for you.

Rob Manfred speaks

Jul 4th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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About the Astros and other things.

Did not age well

When it comes to the Astros’ sign-stealing saga and its aftermath, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred does have one big regret.

Was it his non-punishment of any individual players or granting immunity to them to get candid answers out of them? In an expansive interview with ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. that published Wednesday, Manfred said he wasn’t interested in “rehashing past stuff” like the Astros scandal.

But there was something in the wake of his punishment of the Houston franchise (a $5 million fine, stripping two years’ worth of first- and second-round draft picks and year-long suspensions to now-former general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch) that still gnaws at Manfred.

It was Manfred’s choice of words in the aftermath to the sanctions about why he didn’t strip the Astros of their 2017 World Series championship.

“The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act,” Manfred said in February 2020, referring to the Commissioner’s Trophy.

Those words generated a fierce backlash from MLB players and fans and two-plus years later, Manfred calls the “piece of metal” reference one of his biggest miscues since becoming commissioner in January 2015.

“The ‘piece of metal’ thing — the worst,” Manfred told Van Natta. “I regret it because it’s disrespectful to the game. I also regret it because I was being defensive about something.”

You can read the interview here – it’s quite long. I agree that was a dumb thing for him to say, but I’ve always had the impression that a lot of fans – and other players – were mad about the fact that no Astros players received discipline for their role in the scheme. There are lots of reasons for that – MLB wanted their cooperation, the collective bargaining agreement didn’t allow for it, the real responsibility belonged to management, etc – but it’s how people felt. No one ever said this stuff was entirely rational.

As for his September 2017 letter to the Yankees that recently became unsealed and revealed a $100,000 fine for New York using the dugout phone to steal and transmit opponents’ signals during the 2015 and 2016 seasons, Manfred was asked if widely publicizing that punishment at the time would’ve instilled a greater fear among teams for the repercussions of sign-stealing.

“Look, I think the answer to that question is really temporal,” Manfred said. with Van Natta noting the commissioner showed “a flash of irritation and not sounding as thick-skinned as he claims.”

I mean, speaking as a Yankees fan who didn’t understand why they fought the release of that letter so hard – it really made them look guilty of something, and in the end it was largely no big deal – that would have been better from my perspective. Maybe next time.

“Significant” suspension expected for Deshaun Watson

Jun 18th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I should think so.

The NFL will argue that Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson should receive a “significant” suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, multiple people familiar with the case said Friday.

The league “probably” will seek a suspension of one full season for Watson, a person on Watson’s side of the case said Friday. A person familiar with the league’s view of the case cautioned to be “careful” about specifying a precise length at this point for the suspension the NFL will seek. But that person also said: “Significant would be the proper term.”

[…]

Under a process that was revised in the most recent collective bargaining agreement between the league and the NFLPA completed in 2020, the initial ruling on a prospective suspension or fine will be made by Robinson, now an attorney in Wilmington, Del., after retiring from the bench in 2017.

The case would be finished, with no appeals possible, if Robinson rules that there was no violation of the personal conduct policy. If she rules that there was a violation of the policy and imposes a penalty, either side could appeal to Goodell. The NFLPA pushed for revisions to the personal conduct policy in the CBA after clashes, some of which spilled into courtrooms after litigation filed by the union and players, in previous disciplinary cases. Previously, Goodell was responsible for making both the initial disciplinary ruling and resolving appeals.

It’s not clear whether Robinson will hold what amounts to a quasi-trial before making her decision. She declined to comment this week, referring questions to the league and union.

The NFL’s investigation has been conducted by Lisa Friel, the former chief of the sex crimes prosecution unit for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who is the league’s special counsel for investigations.

Friel interviewed at least 11 of the women accusing Watson who are represented by attorney Tony Buzbee, according to a person familiar with the investigation, along with other women. She reviewed relevant available documents. The NFL’s representatives interviewed Watson over several days in Houston.

[…]

The league has made a presentation on the case to the NFLPA and Watson’s representatives, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. That led those on Watson’s side of the case to conclude that the NFL will seek a substantial penalty.

It’s not clear whether Major League Baseball’s two-season suspension of pitcher Trevor Bauer under its domestic violence policy will serve as a precedent for the NFL’s proposed suspension of Watson, another person familiar with the league’s view said in recent weeks. But the NFL is aware that the length of the Bauer suspension could affect the public’s expectations and reaction in the Watson case, that person said.

Outside NFLPA attorney Jeffrey Kessler has become involved in the case. A person familiar with the NFL’s view said the league is wary that Kessler will argue for no disciplinary action at all.

Kessler declined to comment Friday, referring questions to the NFLPA. The NFLPA could cite the lack of criminal charges, although the NFL’s policy allows discipline to be imposed without such charges.

The NFLPA’s defense of Watson will raise the issue that owners Daniel Snyder of the Washington Commanders, Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots and Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys were not suspended by the league for incidents involving them and their teams. That was confirmed by a person with knowledge of the case after first being reported by Pro Football Talk.

I think one year is the minimum. The charges against Watson are considerably greater than those against Bauer, and as such I wouldn’t mind seeing him get two years as his punishment. Maybe Robinson or Friel found Watson’s accusers to be not fully credible, or maybe the NFLPA’s argument about the lack of punishment for these miscreant owners will hold some sway, I don’t know. I just don’t have any sympathy for either Watson or the Browns. Whatever the case, the expectation is that there will be an answer by the start of NFL training camp, which is to say by late July.

We finally see that Manfred letter to the Yankees

Apr 28th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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The Chron headline is blaring, but I kind of think we already knew most of this stuff.

Major League Baseball fined the New York Yankees $100,000 in 2017 for using their replay room and dugout phone to steal their opponent’s signs during the 2015 and 2016 seasons in what commissioner Rob Manfred described as a “material violation” of rules governing the replay room.

The ruling was in a letter that Manfred sent to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman on Sept. 14, 2017.

[…]

The two-page document provided few specifics and rehashed much of what Manfred already acknowledged in a Sept. 15, 2017 statement, one in which he disciplined the Red Sox for using their replay room to decode signs and warned “future violations of this type will be subject to more serious sanctions, including the possible loss of draft picks.”

The Astros continued to use their electronic sign-stealing scheme and trashcan banging at Minute Maid Park despite the warnings. Owner Jim Crane fired manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow after the system became public in Jan. 2020. The league also fined the franchise $5 million and took away its first and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021.

Manfred’s letter to Cashman helped to reinforce two long-held beliefs: electronic sign-stealing predated the Astros’ infamous trashcan banging scheme and ran rampant throughout the sport before stricter enforcement arrived in Sept. 2017. Multiple players across baseball have acknowledged it since the Astros’ punishments were levied and they became pariahs. No other publicly known sign-stealing schemes — including the one detailed in Manfred’s letter to Cashman — approach the severity of Houston’s trashcan banging scheme.

[…]

According to the letter, a Yankees baseball operations assistant admitted to league investigators that he provided information about opponent’s signs to members of the team’s replay room during the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

The staffer’s name is redacted in the letter. The Boston player, who had played for the Yankees earlier in his career, is also not named.

The staff in the replay room “physically relayed the information” to the Yankees dugout, but the letter did not specify how it happened. The team also tried its tactics during road games, according to the letter. At ballparks where the dugout was farther from the replay room, the Yankees sometimes used a dugout phone line to “orally provide real-time information” about the opponent’s signs, the letter said.

Manfred wrote that the Yankees’ wrongdoing “constitutes a material violation of the replay review regulations” and had “the same objective of the Red Sox’s scheme that was the subject of the Yankees complaint.”

In his public statement on Sept. 15, 2017, Manfred acknowledged that the Yankees “had violated a rule governing the use of the dugout phone” during a season prior to 2017.

“The substance of the communications that took place on the dugout phone was not a violation of any rule or regulation in and of itself,” Manfred said in that announcement. “Rather, the violation occurred because the dugout phone technically cannot be used for such a communication.”

Both the 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox were cited for sign-stealing schemes that originated in the team’s replay room. The Astros ran a far more egregious operation: positioning a camera in center field at Minute Maid Park, pointing it at the catcher and banging trashcans to relay the signs he flashed to Houston hitters.

Manfred’s letter to Cashman mentioned nothing about cameras. It also does not accuse the Yankees of illicit activity after Sept. 15, 2017 — the day Manfred promised harsher punishment for sign-stealing.

The 2018 Red Sox scheme was “far more limited in scope and impact” than the Astros’ 2017 actions, according to the league’s findings. Alex Cora, Boston’s manager that season, incurred a one-year suspension for only his actions as the Astros’ bench coach in 2017.

See here for the previous update. Going back through my archives, the first mention of this letter was from 2020, and most of what happened since then was related to the Yankees’ efforts to keep it under wraps. I don’t see any specific mention of the Yankees being accused of some form of sign stealing, but there was definitely the assumption all along that multiple teams had at least dipped a toe in those waters, with more than a little suspicion thrown at New York. The key thing, which we did know from the beginning, was Manfred’s warning to teams in 2017 that any further violations will be treated more harshly. Which is what happened to the Astros and to a lesser degree to the Red Sox.

So if you’re an Astros fan and you want to feel smug about this and go on about Yankee hypocrisy, go for it. You’ve got all the evidence you need. Just know that some of the dunking I’ve seen on Facebook has largely boiled down to “we cheated better than you did!” which really isn’t all that compelling if you ask me. I’m sure you can do better than that. If you’re a Yankees fan, the best response is along the line of “yeah, but when MLB said ‘no, seriously, cut it out’, we did and you didn’t”. And then we can go on hating each other as usual, which is the natural order of things in sports. Everybody wins!

Courts keep turning the Yankees down

Apr 23rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Time to give up and move on, y’all.

The New York Yankees keep taking losses in court.

A federal appeals court has denied the team’s latest attempt to keep a 2017 letter from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred detailing alleged sign-stealing by the Yankees.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit turned down the Yankees’ request for an en banc hearing of an earlier court decision affirming a U.S. District Court Judge’s ruling that the letter be unsealed.

En banc hearings, which are rarely granted, ask the circuit court’s 13 active judges to rehear the case. The appellate court’s March 21 ruling was made by a three-judge panel.

NJ.com reported Thursday the letter could be unsealed in a week. The Yankees’ only legal recourse at this point would be to seek a Supreme Court review.

“We’re disappointed in the Court of Appeals’ decision, but we respect it,” Yankees president Randy Levine told NJ.com. “But I believe that it’s going to lead to a lot of unfair results down the road.”

The Yankees have claimed making the letter public would result in “severe reputational damage.”

See here and here for the background. I follow a lot of dumb stories on this blog, and this is one I’m ready to stop following. I don’t know what could possibly be in that letter the team has fought so hard to keep under wraps, but at this point if one was inclined to believe it must be something terrible, I’d be hard pressed to argue against you. Either there really is something damaging in there, or they have a greatly over-inflated sense of their own importance. Possibly both. Can we please just rip this band-aid off and get on with our lives? Thanks.

JC Hartman

Apr 17th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good column from Jerome Solomon about the first Black baseball player for the Astros, who were still the Colt 45s at the time.

Carrie Beth Tucker / Houston Chronicle

You have probably never heard of many of the first Blacks to play modern-day baseball for franchises.

J.C. Hartman, the first Black man to play for the Astros, [was] a special guest at the team’s Jackie Robinson Day luncheon Friday.

Special is indeed a proper descriptor. We’re talking about a man who played in the Negro Leagues, is a retired Houston policeman and, as a barber’s college graduate, cut Willie Mays’ hair.

Hartman was 28 when he debuted with the Colt .45s. Friday [was] his 88th birthday.

Two weeks ago, he told me he was on his second-story roof doing work.

“Um, Mr. Hartman, that doesn’t sound like something you should be doing.”

“If you have a leaking roof, what are you gonna do, son?” the longtime Third Ward resident asked.

[…]

Hartman played for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues and was an All-Star in 1955 before his contract was sold to the Cubs.

He played for the Magic Valley Cowboys, the Cubs’ Class C affiliate in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 1956. He was in Double-A with the San Antonio Missions in 1959.

Between those stints, Hartman was drafted into the Army, where he played on the 1957 Fort Carson team, winning the All-Army team championship along with teammate and Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo stalwart Charley Pride.

Baseball is just part of the story of firsts for Hartman.

After he retired from the sport, he joined the Houston Police Department and, after just two years on the force, became the first Black to be a supervisor. His efficiency score and test grade had to make up for his lack of seniority.

Instead of taking off-duty jobs, he prepared for the exam by often taking refuge in his son’s treehouse to study.

“There were almost no Black people in the department and none wearing stripes, so I was determined,” Hartman said. “I knew I couldn’t play baseball forever, so once I decided that’s where I wanted to be, I had to focus on it.”

I’ve been in Houston almost 35 years, and I don’t believe I’d ever heard the name JC Hartman before I read this story. I’m glad he had the chance to be honored at the Jackie Robinson Day luncheon while he’s still here with us, but the Astros should have been celebrating players like him well before now. Hartman’s major league career was brief, but he still made an impact. We should know more about him and about those who followed in his footsteps.

MLB unveils a technical fix for sign stealing

Apr 7th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I like this.

Pitchers and catchers will have the option of shaking off the traditional means of communicating between pitches during the upcoming Major League season.

MLB informed clubs in a memo today that it is moving forward with regular-season use of PitchCom — a wearable device that transmits signals from catcher to pitcher — in 2022. The technology, which will be optional, was approved by the MLB Players Association after receiving generally positive feedback in experimental usage at the Single-A level last year and in big league camps during Spring Training this year.

Aimed at both improving pace of play and preventing opponent sign-stealing, PitchCom eliminates the need for a catcher’s traditional finger signals. Rather, the catcher wears a forearm sleeve — resembling a remote control — with nine buttons for calling the pitch and location. The pitcher has a receiver in his cap, the catcher has one in his helmet and receivers can also be worn by up to three other fielders (typically, the two middle infielders and the center fielder) to adjust fielder positioning.

An encrypted channel can be used in multiple languages, and teams can also program in code words to replace pitch names such as “fastball” or “curveball.”

[…]

Last year’s average nine-inning game was a new record high at three hours, 10 minutes, 7 seconds. The game is often slowed when teams have a runner or runners aboard, particularly at second base, where the runner can attempt to decode a catcher’s signals. Pitchers and catchers will typically switch up their signs in those situations to try to shield their calls.

With PitchCom, the communication between catcher is more seamless and straightforward. The technology can also conceivably reduce the number of mound visits in which pitchers and catchers go over signs.

This concept has been around for a couple of years, and the PitchCom product has been tested successfully in the minors and in spring training, as noted in the story. Teams will not be required to use it – for sure, there will be some traditionalist holdouts – but the reviews have been positive and the benefits are obvious.

Here’s a brief description of how it works.

Catchers can put a PitchCom transmitter on their forearm, which makes it look just like a wristband. The black transmitter has nine buttons on it that catchers press to let the pitcher know the pitch he’s calling and the location. On the mound, pitchers have a six-inch rubber receiver inside their hats that communicate the pitch call with a computerized voice – either in Spanish or English – that will tell the pitcher, for instance, “fastball up” or “curveball, down and in.” The catchers also will have the audio device in their helmets, so they can be sure they’ve sent the right signal to their teammate.

Three other players besides the pitcher and catcher also can wear the device inside their hats, so they’ll know the pitch and can adjust their positioning accordingly. Most often, those players would be the second baseman, shortstop and center fielder.

The PitchCom website has some more details. It notes that this can also be used by coaches to communicate with players on the field, so don’t be surprised if the definition of a “mound visit” gets an update soon, too. I can’t wait to see this in action. ESPN has more.

Do tell, Chris

Apr 6th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I have three things to say about this.

A rival of the Astros during their current run as a Major League Baseball power said Houston wasn’t the only team that’s resorted to cheating.

Red Sox lefthander Chris Sale, who pitched against Houston during playoff series in 2017, 2018 and 2021, made the remarks during a Monday interview on “The Greg Hill Show” on Boston sports radio station WEEI.

When asked about former Astros designated hitter Carlos Beltran — a central figure in the 2017 sign-stealing operation — telling the YES Network that the team’s championship that season is tainted during his first interview on the subject, Sale said the Astros weren’t alone in the cheaters’ fraternity.

“If the Astros were the only team doing it, then yeah, give (the championship) back — take it back,” Sale said. “I know for a fact they weren’t. All these people pointing fingers: Well, hey, take a check in the mirror real quick. Make sure that you and your team weren’t doing something.

“What (the Astros) did was wrong. And I’m not trying to condone it. Shoot, we’re talking five years ago now and we’re still talking about this stuff. I’d like to kind of turn the page on it. It happened. They dealt with it. There’s nothing you can do about it now sitting here where we are. So you just kind of move on from it.”

1. I’m sure Sale is correct that the Astros were not the only team cheating. It would be odd if they were.

2. That said, cheating exists on a spectrum – small scale, short term, individual effort to large scale, long term, team effort. The Astros were on the far end of the scale in all categories, they were extremely visible about it in retrospect, and as the World Series winner that year it was just embarrassing. But maybe they weren’t alone in those regards, maybe they just had the bad luck to be outed about it. Which leads to…

3. Spill the beans already. I know no one is going to narc on their own team, and if you’re accusing a rival it will be seen as gamesmanship, but surely someone out there is now in the same position that Mike Fiers was when he ratted on the Astros. I really don’t want to be talking about cheating when we may finally have a “normal” season again, but the reason we’re still talking about this five years later is because we feel like there had to be more to the story. (Yes, the MLB letter about the Yankees, whatever it says, is a part of that as well.) So let’s get it all out there, therapy-style, and see if we can’t finally get some closure.

Carlos Beltrán speaks about sign stealing

Apr 5th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

Of interest.

Carlos Beltrán, the venerated designated hitter painted by Major League Baseball as a ringleader of Houston’s electronic sign-stealing scheme during the 2017 season, said this week he “wished somebody would’ve said something” and stopped the trashcan banging scheme.

In an interview with YES Network broadcaster Michael Kay, who doubles as the television voice of the New York Yankees, Beltrán said the Astros’ World Series championship has a stain and tried to direct blame to Houston’s front office for a scheme the league deemed “player driven.”

“Nobody said anything to us, you know, nobody said anything,” Beltran said. “I wish somebody would’ve said something. A lot of people always ask me why you didn’t stop it? And my answer is, I didn’t stop it the same way no one stopped it.”

“This is working for us. Why you gonna stop something that is working for you? So, if the organization would’ve said something to us, we would’ve stopped it for sure.”

Beltrán said Astros players never received commissioner Rob Manfred’s edict in mid-2017 that cracked down on electronic sign-stealing and promised harsh punishments for teams that broke rules.

Beltrán was the only player cited by name in Manfred’s report detailing the league’s findings into the Astros’ scheme. He took issue with the distinction in his remarks with Kay, which will be aired in full on Monday at 3 p.m. CT on the YES Network. Excerpts of the interview were released on Sunday morning.

“The part that bothered me about that is that, you know, when I sit down to cooperate with them (MLB), they said to me, “We’re not going against the players. We’re going against …field personnel, front office and organization,’” Beltrán said. “And the fact that I’m the only player named in that report? So how … that happen? Like, that’s the part that I don’t understand. Everyone gets immunity except Carlos Beltrán? I don’t get it.”

On the one hand, it makes sense for Beltrán to put blame on the Astros’ front office for not stepping in to stop the banging scheme. MLB put the blame on the manager and coaches and the front office as well, which is why Jeff Luhnow is an ex-GM. On the other hand, Beltrán was a full-grown adult who certainly should have known that what they were doing was against the rules, and that whether it worked or not it would reflect poorly on them all. You can say it didn’t help much – others have made that claim, but Beltrán is contradicting them – and you can say the Astros would have won the World Series in 2017 regardless – I for one believe that to be true, whatever Yankees GM Brian Cashman may say. But that almost makes it worse. You were the best team on the field, you knew you were the best team on the field, so why put all that energy into something shady? Just go out there and beat ’em.

The main thing I take away from this is that it’s going to be a long time before we’re done with the banging scheme. It’s such a shame, because the 2017 Astros were a great team, and it was a huge boost for the city a couple of months after Hurricane Harvey. We’d all be so much better off if they’d never done this, whatever the effect might have been. Sean Pendergast has more.

Yankees still fighting to keep that MLB letter under wraps

Apr 4th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I mean, it can’t hurt to ask.

The New York Yankees plan to continue to fight the unsealing of a letter from MLB detailing alleged sign-stealing by the organization.

The Athletic, citing a source with knowledge of the team’s plans, reported Friday the Yankees will appeal the release of the 2017 letter from commissioner Rob Manfred. A federal appeals court on March 21 had affirmed a U.S. District Court judge’s June 2020 order to unseal the letter.

Friday’s report said the Yankees plan to file a petition either later in the day or Monday, the deadline for submission, for an en banc hearing with the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. That appeal would ask the circuit court’s 13 active judges to rehear the case. The appellate court’s previous ruling was made by a three-judge panel.

Historically, en banc reviews have been rarities in the Second Circuit.

The Yankees have claimed making the letter public would result in “severe reputational damange.”

See here for the background. I can’t imagine they’d continue on to SCOTUS if they lose again, but at this point who can say? As ol’ Jack Burton once said, you never know till you try.

Appeals court upholds ruling to unseal MLB’s 2017 letter on sign stealing

Mar 23rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Look, if you’re going to follow a weird story, you’ve got to stay committed to following that weird story.

A September 2017 letter from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred detailing alleged sign-stealing by the New York Yankees should be unsealed, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a June 2020 ruling by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ordering “a minimally redacted version” of the letter to be unsealed.

Per NJ.com, it may be two weeks or more before the court releases the letter.

Rakoff’s order had been stayed pending an appeal by the Yankees and MLB. The Yankees claimed making it public would result in in “severe reputational damage.”

But in Monday’s decision that also upheld the dismissal of a $5 million lawsuit filed by daily fantasy sports player Kristopher Olson and 100-plus other plaintiffs seeking damages from MLB, the Astros and Boston Red Sox over illegal sign-stealing operations of recent seasons, the appeals court upheld Rakoff’s ruling regarding the letter.

“In light of plaintiffs’ attempted use of the letter in their proposed Second Amended Complaint and the district court’s discussion of the letter in explaining its decision to deny plaintiffs’ request for leave to amend in their reconsideration motion, and because MLB disclosed a substantial portion of the substance of the letter in its press release about the investigation, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in unsealing the letter, subject to redacting the names of certain individuals,” the appeals court’s ruling said.

The sealed letter to the Yankees had been obtained during the discovery phase of the class-action lawsuit, which claimed MLB and the Astros and Red Sox for liable for any money lost during games in which either team cheated.

The plaintiffs had argued that a Manfred press release in 2017 had been an “actionable misrepresentation” of the facts laid out in the letter, with the plaintiffs claming that “the investigation had in fact found that the Yankees engaged in a more serious, sign-stealing scheme.”

On Sept. 15, 2017, MLB issued a statement from Manfred concluding the investigation into the Red Sox’s illegal use of an Apple Watch, which had been prompted by a complaint lodged by the Yankees. As a part of that investigation, Manfred discovered the Yankees’ illegal use of their dugout phone and fined them a “lesser, undisclosed amount” than he levied the Red Sox.

“No club complained about the conduct in question at the time and, without prompting from another club or my office, the Yankees halted the conduct in question,” Manfred wrote. “Moreover, the substance of the communications that took place on the dugout phone was not a violation of any rule or regulation in and of itself. Rather, the violation occurred because the dugout phone technically cannot be used for such a communication.”

In that same ruling, Manfred said he found “insufficient evidence” to substantiate a claim from the Red Sox that the Yankees illegally used the YES Network to steal Boston’s signs.

See here, here, and here for the argument. A copy of the appellate court’s ruling is in the Chron story. The affirmation of the DraftKings lawsuit is likely the more substantial matter, but who knows? I still think this letter is probably no big deal, but if it is then the lessons are clearly 1) don’t do things that you’ll be embarrassed about later if people find out about it, and 2) better hope no one writes down the details of your embarrassing stuff. NJ.com has more.

MLB’s Canadian conundrum

Mar 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Here’s an interesting wrinkle to the recently-resolved MLB lockout.

With the Major League Baseball season set to start, unvaccinated players will once again need to sit out series against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

Players who haven’t been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will not be able to play in Toronto.

In addition, unvaccinated players won’t be paid for games or service time for the entirety of a series played north of the border. Each day spent on a baseball club’s active roster or injured list represents one day of service time.

Current vaccination guidelines still doesn’t allow foreign unvaccinated travellers to cross the Canadian border. Athletes no longer have special status in order to travel without having taken the vaccine after the federal government revoked the exemption on Jan. 15.

Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi reports the subject was “a significant point” in players’ CBA discussions with “a few teams” taking issue before ultimately relenting.

According to the story, about 88% of “tier one individuals” are fully vaccinated, which includes players, coaches, and other staff that travel with the teams, so the extent of the problem should be relatively limited. Still, if we assume that is the value for active players as well, on a 26-man roster, that’s three players per team, and as anyone familiar with the Kyrie Irving situation knows, who the unvaxxed players are matters. It’s one thing to miss a reliever at the back of the bullpen or a starting pitcher whose turn in the rotation wouldn’t have happened anyway. It’s another thing to miss your starting catcher or an All Star outfielder. Some teams will be much more affected than others, and if a team in the same AL East division as the Jays has its own Kyrie on it, that could affect the playoff races.

The collective bargaining agreement that has settled the lockout is still preliminary and subject to some details being worked out, including those relating to this situation. It may be that Canada eventually relaxes this rule, and it may be that some holdout players give in so as not to be the reason why their teams are disadvantaged. Most likely, this will be an ongoing story and another reminder that however done we may be with COVID, COVID is not done with us.

MLB ends its lockout

Mar 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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One small bit of good news.

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association reached a tentative agreement on a new collective-bargaining agreement Thursday, ending the league’s 99-day lockout of the players and salvaging a 162-game season, sources familiar with the situation told ESPN.

With the end of the second-longest work stoppage in the game’s history, spring training camps will open Sunday, free-agent signings can begin Thursday night, and baseball will attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy after months of fraught negotiations.

The deal materialized after talks ratcheted up this week, when the league made a proposal that bridged the significant gap in the competitive-balance tax, a key issue in the end stages of talks. A dispute over an international draft threatened negotiations and caused the league to “remove from the schedule” another two series Wednesday, but those issues were resolved Thursday morning and the league delivered a full proposal to the union, which it voted to accept.

The final vote by the MLBPA’s eight members of the executive subcommittee and 30 player reps was 26-12 in favor of the agreement, sources told ESPN.

The basic agreement governs almost all aspects of the game, but baseball’s core economics were front and center in the labor talks. In addition to the new CBT, which increases from $230 million to $244 million over the five-year deal, the minimum salary governing players with less than three years of major league service will jump from $570,500 to $700,000, growing to $780,000, and a bonus pool worth $50 million will be distributed among those younger players who have yet to reach salary arbitration.

MLB had pushed for expanding the postseason to 12 teams — a plan to which the MLBPA agreed. Additionally, player uniforms will feature advertising for the first time, with patches on jerseys and decals on batting helmets.

Other elements of the deal include:

• A 45-day window for MLB to implement rules changes — among them a pitch clock, ban on shifts and larger bases in the 2023 season

• The National League adopting the designated hitter

• A draft lottery implemented with the intent of discouraging tanking

• Draft-pick inducements to discourage service-time manipulation

• Limiting the number of times a player can be optioned to the minor leagues in one season

I haven’t written about the lockout, mostly because there’s enough depressing news out there, but I’m glad to see it’s finally over. The owners largely maintained the gains they had won in previous CBA talks, but the players picked up a little bit of ground. I’m happy to see a pitch clock and the universal DH, and I can live with a 12-team playoff. The fact that it took this long to get to a deal, even though the sides were mostly bargaining over relative pennies at the end, is all on the owners, who imposed the lockout in the first place. For now, as I breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to more free agent signings, all I can say is “Play ball!” Fangraphs has more.

David Ortiz elected to MLB Hall of Fame

Jan 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Congratulations, Big Papi.

With the process still tainted by the steroid era, David Ortiz was the lone player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, while others like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were shut out.

“Big Papi” was the only player to clear the required 75% threshold, according to results of this year’s voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Ortiz finished with 77.9% in becoming the 58th player elected in his first year of eligibility. At 46, he will also be the youngest of the 75 living members of the Hall.

“I learned not too long ago how difficult it is to get in on the first ballot,” Ortiz said. “Man, it’s a wonderful honor to be able to get in on my first rodeo. It’s something that is very special to me.”

Bonds, baseball’s all-time home run leader; 354-game winner Clemens; 600-homer-club member Sammy Sosa; and longtime ace pitcher Curt Schilling were in their 10th and final year of eligibility in the annual BBWAA balloting.

Bonds, Sosa and Clemens posted numbers that marked them as surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famers, but they became avatars for the era of performance-enhancing drugs. While Bonds and Clemens in particular have long denied using PEDs, accusations have dogged them in the media and in books, and have been the subject of court dramas and testimony in front of Congress. In the end, about a third of the voters decided the allegations were too egregious to overlook, enough to bar their entry to the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, at least via the writers’ vote.

Ortiz is a different story, despite his own PED suspicions. A 2009 story in The New York Times reported that Ortiz was among 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing substances during a round of tests conducted in 2003. Those results were supposed to remain confidential, and the tests were done to see if the league had reached a threshold to conduct regular testing.

Ortiz has long denied that he used banned substances, and in 2016, commissioner Rob Manfred said the tests in question were inconclusive because “it was hard to distinguish between certain substances that were legal, available over the counter and not banned under our program.”

Manfred added that during subsequent testing Ortiz “has never been a positive at any point under our program.”

When asked about those suspicions Tuesday, Ortiz said, “We had someone coming out with this one list, where you don’t know what anybody tested positive for. All of a sudden people are pointing fingers at me. But then we started being drug tested and I never tested positive. What does that tell you?”

As for the last-chance candidates, Sosa’s support never approached the threshold for election, but the cases of Bonds and Clemens were more divisive among the selectors. Both climbed over the 50% mark in 2017 only to see their support plateau in recent seasons. The tallies for their last go-arounds were 66% for Bonds and 65.2% for Clemens.

There’s a whole lot of discourse about this, and I’ll just link to a few articles so you can get a feel for it. I’m worn out just thinking about it. Ortiz joins six other former players who were elected via the Eras Committee process in December. And hey, guess what?

The hotly debated cases for Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Schilling will move to a new arena: the Hall of Fame’s Today’s Game era committee. The era committees comprise players, executives and media members who are charged with evaluating overlooked candidates. The Today’s Game committee is next scheduled to convene during the 2022 winter meetings in December.

We get to live through the whole Bonds/Clemens/Sosa/Schilling debate again later this year, and again in 2024. Deep breaths, we’ll get through this together. Fangraphs, The Ringer, and Drew Magary, among many others, have more.

MLB Hall of Fame rights a couple of wrongs

Dec 6th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Congratulations, Buck O’Neil and Minnie Minoso, and the four other new Hall members.

Six candidates earned election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday via the Eras Committee process, it was announced today on MLB Network.

Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso and Tony Oliva were elected by the Golden Days Era Committee, which considered a 10-person ballot comprised of candidates whose primary contribution to the game came from 1950-69.

Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil were elected by the Early Baseball Era Committee, which considered a 10-person ballot of candidates whose primary contribution the game came prior to 1950.

Miñoso was named on 14 of 16 ballots (87.5 percent), while Hodges, Kaat and Oliva were each named on 12 of 16 ballots (75 percent), with all four reaching the 75-percent threshold necessary for election.

O’Neil was named on 13 of 16 ballots (81.3 percent), while Fowler was named on 12 ballots (75 percent)

The Golden Days Era Committee and the Early Baseball Era Committee held meetings today in Orlando, Fla.

Kaat and Oliva are living. Hodges passed away on April 2, 1972; Miñoso passed away on March 1, 2015.

Fowler passed away on Feb. 26, 1913; O’Neil passed away on Oct. 6, 2006.

Fowler, Hodges, Kaat, Miñoso, Oliva and O’Neil will be joined in the Hall of Fame Class of 2022 by any electees who emerge from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America voting, which will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 25.

This is great news for O’Neil and Minoso, both of whom could and should have been inducted while they were still living but weren’t. Both were pioneers and ambassadors in addition to being great players, and the Hall is a better place for finally having them.

The way the Eras ballots worked this year, there were a lot of Hall-worthy nominees to consider, a function in part of better and more comprehensive Negro Leagues data and in part of reconsidering some players who had been under-appreciated before. One of those players was Dick Allen, who fell a vote short but at least came closer to being enshrined than ever before. Maybe next time for him.

You can see comprehensive profiles of all of the Golden Days nominees here, and of the Early Baseball nominees here. They’re worth your time – I learned a lot about some players I’d known very little about before. Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, had a recent podcast episode about the Negro Leagues players on the ballot, and that’s worth your time as well. Really, his whole Black Diamonds podcast series should be on your list. There’s no other baseball to pay attention to now, so make the most of it while you can. And congrats again to Buck O’Neil, Bud Fowler, Minnie Minoso, Tony Oliva, Gil Hodges, and Jim Kaat.

The Hall of Fame 2022 ballot

Nov 24th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Should be another interesting year.

The ballot for the 2022 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame class was released Monday. The 30-player ballot is headlined by some huge names in their 10th and final year on the ballot — Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens — as well as notable newcomers, like Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz.

As a reminder: In order to gain enshrinement into the Hall of Fame, a player needs to be named on at least 75 percent of the turned-in ballots from eligible BBWAA members. In order to avoid falling off the ballot, a player needs to get at least five percent. Players are eligible to remain on the ballot a maximum of 10 annual voting cycles.

The results of the vote will be revealed on Jan. 25, 2022. There are 17 holdover candidates in addition to 13 newcomers on the ballot. Newcomers are players who spent at least 10 seasons in the majors, have been retired for five years and were chosen by the Hall of Fame to be added to the ballot.

The big-name newcomers would be A-Rod and Big Papi, trickling down to Jimmy Rollins and Mark Teixeira. Some other notable first-timers include Joe Nathan, Jonathan Papelbon, Tim Lincecum, Jake Peavy, Justin Morneau, Carl Crawford and Prince Fielder.

You can see the full ballot, plus bios of the nominees, here. There’s also the Early Days Era and Golden Days Era ballots, which when all put together should avoid a shutout like we got last year. However you may feel about the more controversial players, there are guys to root for. I’m hoping for some good results this year. Jay Jaffe has more.

NAACP tells athletes to steer clear of Texas

Nov 2nd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

At least someone is willing to take a stand.

The NAACP is urging professional athletes who are free agents to boycott Texas over recent restrictive voting and abortion laws as well as policies stopping local governments from enacting coronavirus containment measures, all of which the civil rights organization says “isn’t safe for anyone.”

“From abortion to voting rights and mask mandates, Texas has become a blueprint by legislators to violate constitutional rights for all, especially for women, children and marginalized communities,” wrote NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson in a letter to all major players’ associations.

The letter specifically called out the GOP elections bill that Gov. Greg Abbott signed last month; the virtual ban on abortions Abbott signed in May that’s being challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court; and Abbott’s executive orders blocking school districts from enforcing mask mandates.

“Texas lawmakers have destroyed the state’s moral compass by passing these laws. In return, we are asking that you seek employment with sports teams located in states that will protect, honor and serve your families with integrity,” Johnson wrote in the letter to the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB and NHL Players’ Associations.

You can see the letter here. On the one hand, we’re going to need as many people who oppose these things as we can get if we want to be able to vote these bastards out, and anyone who might heed this warning would presumably be on our side for that. On the other hand, people have to do what’s best for themselves and their families. I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to have to deal with this crap when they have other, better choices available to them. So thank you to the NAACP for calling attention to these issues. I’m still waiting for the NCAA to do its part.

Astros reach settlement with the family of the girl hit by the foul ball

Aug 20th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Some closure to a tough story.

The family of a girl struck by a foul ball at Minute Maid Park during the 2019 season has reached a confidential settlement with the Astros, the family’s attorney said Friday afternoon.

Because the settlement involves a minor, it must receive court approval, leading to a lawsuit filed Thursday night in Harris County Court. Plaintiffs Jonathan David Scott and Alexandra Colchado are described as the “natural parents and next friends” for the minor, whom the lawsuit does not identify.

“This is the initiation of that process,” attorney Richard Mithoff said Friday. “The matter has been resolved and we are now seeking court approval of that settlement, which we are required to do under the law.”

The case is assigned to Judge Michael Gomez in 129th district court. The court will appoint a guardian “ad litem” on the minor’s behalf that will make a recommendation about the settlement.

The girl was 2½ when a foul ball hit by then-Chicago Cubs outfielder Albert Almora struck her in the head during a May 29 game against the Astros. Mithoff told the Chronicle last January she sustained a skull fracture and a permanent brain injury that left her at risk for seizures.

“She’s doing pretty well,” Mithoff said Friday. “Her anti-seizure medication has been gradually reduced over the last two years and so she has been seizure-free for 22 months. We anticipate she will continue to improve and they can continue to reduce the anti-seizure medications. She seems to be doing well. The family is obviously very hopeful about the future.”

[…]

Three months after the incident, the Astros extended netting at Minute Maid Park more than 150 feet down both foul lines. That December, Major League Baseball announced all 30 teams would have extended netting during the 2020 season.

“The family remains very grateful that, I think, virtually every ballpark now has put in the enhanced netting that goes all the way to the foul pole,” Mithoff said. “I think they are very pleased that has come about, even though it took this very unfortunate event to bring it about.”

See here for the previous update. I’m very glad to hear that the girl is doing better, and I hope she continues to improve. And I completely agree that the implementation of netting at all MLB stadia is the best possible outcome of this otherwise tragic situation. My wish is that we hear from this girl herself someday, and that she is able to tell us that she is all right.

Astros again seek to dismiss Bolsinger lawsuit

Jul 16th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

They will probably succeed.

Did not age well

The Astros have submitted their proposal for a Harris County judge to dismiss former Toronto Blue Jays reliever Mike Bolsinger’s lawsuit against the team.

Bolsinger has alleged trade misappropriation and sought more than $1 million in damages in the wake of Houston’s sign-stealing scandal in the 2017 season.

[…]

In the Astros’ 17-page motion to dismiss submitted on Tuesday night, the team pointed to Bolsinger’s misinterpretation of Texas’ trade secrets law and called Bolsinger’s lawsuit an attempt “to turn a headline-grabbing sports story into a cash recovery.”

According to the Astros’ motion, Bolsinger needed to prove ownership of the trade secrets, misappropriation of them and injury caused by the misappropriation to recover any damages under the state’s trade secrets law. The club claimed he did not.

The motion, submitted by Astros attorneys Hilary Preston and James L. Leader, challenged the notion that Toronto’s signs are even secrets at all.

“The signs are not trade secrets, and, to the extent that any party can “own” hand gestures meant to convey pitching strategy, the signs are owned by the Toronto Blue Jays, not (Bolsinger),” the Astros wrote in their motion.

“The signs are hand gestures made in front of thousands of spectators, and the mere fact that the Blue Jays attempted to conceal the meaning of those signs from the Astros’ hitters does not turn those gestures into trade secrets under Texas law.”

See here for the previous update. As noted, Bolsinger had sued in Los Angeles originally, but that suit was tossed on the grounds that California didn’t have jurisdiction, so he re-filed in Harris County. I don’t buy his argument and expect the suit to be dismissed, but we’ll see.

Will MLB come to Central Texas?

Jun 12th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

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Drayton McLane thinks it might.

Drayton McLane, who knows a thing or two about the subject, believes Central Texas is closing in on being able to support its own Major League Baseball team. That pronouncement might lead you to wonder what we’ll call our new team—Lone Star Hipsters? Canyon Lake Coyotes?—and to look forward to summer evenings sipping a cold one at the ballpark as the sun sets on the San Marcos River.

Anyway, McLane has precisely the kind of can-do spirit Texas is going to need to land a third MLB franchise. No one thought he’d succeed in purchasing the Astros in 1993, and certainly no one thought he’d persuade Houston voters to approve, in 1996, the construction of Minute Maid Park. He breathed life into a franchise that had never won much of anything and led them to six postseason appearances during a nine-year stretch from 1997 to 2005. That run culminated with a National League pennant, which at the time was close to the sweetest moment Houston sports fans had ever experienced.

Now 84, McLane makes it clear he’s not going to lead this effort. That’s where Nolan Ryan comes in, but more on him later. In fact, McLane admits it’s a tad early to begin putting down a deposit on season tickets.

“Ten years from now, it’s a possibility,” he told me.

[…]

One thing that never came up in our conversation: the availability of a team. That’s the easy part. The Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays are something akin to free agents, with both unable to land new ballpark deals in their host cities. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has given the A’s permission to shop around for better options, and team officials were to visit Las Vegas this week. The Rays, apparently desperate for leverage, have come up with the far-fetched idea of playing half their games in Montreal and half in Tampa or St. Petersburg. Almost no one who follows the sport believes a split-city format is workable, and it seems only a matter of time before the Rays begin shopping for a new full-time home.

Plus, Manfred has said MLB will expand—by at least two teams—once the A’s and Rays are settled. While Portland may have a big head start on Central Texas, are there really four better North American markets than the Austin–San Antonio corridor? Think of San Marcos as perhaps the perfect accessible-to-both-cities spot for a ballpark. And McLane might be underestimating the market’s viability. The Interstate 35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio is booming, and a ballpark accessible to both cities would make the are more appealing than several current MLB cities.

Austin’s economy was the twelfth-fastest-growing among major metropolitan areas in 2019, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce. A sleepy government and university town no more, Austin now hosts some of the largest and most profitable companies in in the world, from Apple and Amazon to Tesla and Oracle.

There are plenty of TV sets, too. San Antonio is the nation’s thirty-first-largest television market, according to Nielsen, while Austin checks in at number 38. Together, the cities deliver 1.65 million television households, more than a long list of major-league cities, including St. Louis, San Diego, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore.

We’ve discussed the possibility of a second team in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but I tend to agree with McLane. Central Texas is the more likely location, with enough population between Austin and San Antonio to support an MLB team. For a variety of reasons, MLB owners are not looking to expand now, but I expect that it will be on the table in the not too distant future, maybe some time after the next CBA. One possible obstacle to this dream is the nightmare that is I-35, which I guarantee will be overly congested no matter how much it gets expanded. Maybe this could be the fulcrum to finally get the Lone Star Rail line built. If I’m gonna dream, I may as well dream big.

Former MLB pitcher re-files lawsuit against Astros

May 17th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s the second attempt to sue them for damages over the sign stealing scheme from 2017.

Did not age well

Continuing to maintain that the Astros’ 2017 sign stealing cost him a job in the major leagues, former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Mike Bolsinger refiled his lawsuit against the team in Harris County District Court on Thursday afternoon.

Bolsinger, who hasn’t pitched in the majors since allowing four runs and four walks in a third of an inning against the Astros on Aug. 4, 2017, contends his signs were trade secrets under Texas’ Uniform Trade Secrets Act. He is seeking more than $1 million in damages.

A judge in California dismissed Bolsinger’s lawsuit in March, citing in part an attempt by Bolsinger and his attorneys to try to extract sympathy from potential jurors who were fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team the Astros beat in the 2017 World Series. In March 2020, the Astros asked a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to dismiss the suit in a motion that called the case “utterly devoid of merit.”

[…]

Bolsinger’s new suit claims the Blue Jays’ signs are defined as “trade secrets” under section 134A.002(6) of the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Bolsinger alleges “willful and intentional misappropriation of the trade secrets.”

“The owners of these trade secrets had taken the reasonable measures customary in the baseball industry to keep the signs secret,” Bolsinger’s suit reads. “Moreover, the signs derived independent economic value, actual or potential, from not generally being known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by, another person who can obtain economic value from the disclosure or use of the information.”

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the lawsuit, which is also embedded in the story. I either missed the dismissal of the original case or I just never got around to blogging it. Regardless, and in my vast legal experience as some guy on the Internet, this sure seems like a longshot. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the signs were a trade secret, they wouldn’t be trivially easy to crack. I have a hard time believing this will survive a motion to dismiss. You actual lawyers out there, please feel free to tell me why I’m wrong about this.

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