Now that the calendar officially reads March, it means that the beginning of the baseball season is just getting closer and closer. The biggest talking point of the offseason has been the extremely slow-moving free agent market, as even though Bryce Harper finally has a team, star players Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel still remain un-signed. Another topic that I have heard discussed to a much lesser degree is the case of top prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. Because Guerrero is the son of a Hall of Fame player, he has been the primary example of what some people deem to be an awful problem.
According to anyone familiar with the pipeline of prospects in baseball, Guerrero is clearly ready to play for the Toronto Blue Jays. His hitting talent seems to be undeniable, and he has the chance to be a generational prospect and the face of a Toronto franchise that has lacked a face for quite some time now. However, despite that, general manager Ross Atkins recently stated that Guerrero would begin the season in the minor leagues because the organization felt that he still needed work on his defense.
People close to the game have condemned this move because of Guerrero's talent, and said that the Blue Jays were doing a disservice to both the game and their team by keeping him at Triple-A to start the year. Despite the claims of the organization that he still needs to work on his defense, it is pretty clear that the only reason Guerrero will not be on the Opening Day roster is because if he begins the season in the minor leagues, the team gains an extra year of control over his contract. Instead of being a free agent after six years in the big leagues, Guerrero will have to wait until seven years from now before he becomes a free agent. Does that hurt the Blue Jays in 2019? Yes, it probably does. But does it make sense for the organization (both on the field and off the field) as a whole? Despite what people claim, it unquestionably does, and I don't know why anyone would fault the Blue Jays for doing it.
Last year, the Atlanta Braves were in a similar situation with Ronald Acuna, Jr. He wasn't called up until late April for the very same reason, yet he still won National League Rookie of the Year and the Braves made the playoffs. He was a huge reason why they were so surprisingly good, and no one remembered the few weeks he missed at the beginning of the year.
It isn't just Guerrero who will be in this situation either. Fernando Tatis, Jr. will most likely begin the year in the minor leagues before the Padres call him up, and the White Sox will do the same thing with Eloy Jimenez. Those three are arguably the top three prospects in all of baseball and all three of them seem ready to play right now. Is keeping them in the minor leagues to begin the year really doing them a massive disservice though? If you are looking at the situations from the realistic perspective of their teams, the answer is clearly no.
The Padres just signed Manny Machado to a ten year contract for $300 million. Obviously, that means they are planning on contending sooner rather than later. But that ten year deal doesn't mean they are planning on contending in April of 2019 either. They still need to add some pieces before they can legitimately challenge for a title, so isn't having Tatis for seven years instead of six worth it? Yes, it is. And like Acuna proved last year, even if a top prospect doesn't make their debut until late April, it doesn't mean that they can't greatly impact their team that year.
In the NFL, teams that take a quarterback with their top pick in the draft aren't drafting for immediate returns. They are drafting with their eye on the future. Getting a top level prospect at quarterback is the base for what that team hopes will become a contender year in and year out. The case with these prospects is basically the same.
The Blue Jays likely are not as good as the Red Sox or Yankees with or without Guerrero this season. Could they surprise and end up in the playoffs? Sure, of course they could. But don't they have a better shot at competing with those teams seven years down the road than they do now? Yes. Absolutely.
The White Sox tried to spend big money to lure Machado and Harper to Chicago this offseason, but they weren't able to do so. In the present, that was a disappointment for the team and the fans. However, with an extra year of control of Jimenez, he could certainly help them contend in the long run. The same goes for Tatis and the Padres. They didn't sign Machado to a one-year deal. They signed him to a ten year deal. That means they have their eyes on contention in the long-term as opposed to contention right now.
These teams are still going to sell tickets. They aren't going to be playing in front of empty stadiums for the first two weeks of the season. In fact, the anticipation of the debuts of these prospects will almost certainly boost ticket sales when they do actually get called up, and if things go according to plan, those tickets will continue to sell more and more if the teams get better in the future.
Despite what opponents of this might want you to believe, the problem here isn't with the Blue Jays or the Padres or the White Sox. The problem is with the rules and the system that made those rules. Until rules are implemented that make it so that sixth and seventh year of team control isn't based on the Opening Day roster, I don't know why anyone could find any fault at all with these teams. That is something that can be collectively bargained too, and negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players will hopefully begin sooner rather than later, because the current CBA will expire in 2021.
Collective bargaining is always about each side agreeing to concede on points they believe are less important and stand strong on points they believe are most important. If the MLBPA feels like this service time is something very important to them, then they can push for it in upcoming negotiations. If they have other things on their list that they deem more important, then maybe the rules on this will remain.
As it stands now though, the teams are not doing anything that violates current rules. Therefore, I will not criticize them at all for simply following the rules, even if those rules might seem unjust in the eyes of some people. And like I said anyway, if Guerrero wins Rookie of the Year and the Blue Jays are able to win a World Series a few years down the road with him as the best player on the team, no one is going to care that he missed two weeks of games in April of his rookie season. His Hall of Fame eligibility isn't going to be impacted by not playing in the big leagues on April 5th of his rookie year.
If these guys live up to the hype and turn into superstars, none of this will matter one bit.
Daily Giants Update: The team just announced that it would not use the franchise tag on Landon Collins, because they believed that the price tag would be too high. At this point, it seems more and more likely that the chances of Collins remaining with the team are getting worse, and that is not a good thing.
Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers suffered a bizarre loss to the Capitals in a shootout yesterday when it was ruled that Alexandar Georgiev threw his stick at Alex Ovechkin as Ovechkin was trying to score. I thought that what Georgiev did wasn't really on purpose, and he was looking to poke the puck off Ovechkin's stick and just lost control of his own stick, but I do understand how it could have been interpreted the way it was. It was another tough loss in a season that has seen more tough losses than tough wins. When Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes were traded, it seemed like the team was waving the white flag on the season, and while they do still technically have a shot at the playoffs, the odds are not in their favor. It isn't over yet, but it is getting pretty close.
Daily NBA Update: Even though this league has become more and more of a soap opera over the past few years, it seems like that is becoming the case to new and unseen levels day by day and game by game now. The Warriors are still the best team in the league, but all I hear about is off the court drama, and I think that is really a bad look for the game. However, I seem to be in the minority, because the league is arguably more popular than it has ever been, so there must be a lot of people who love the drama of another season that, in my eyes, is going to end the same way it has ended the past two years.
Daily MLB Update: We are less than a month away from Opening Day, so I will have to publicly rant about the offseason of the Diamondbacks soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment