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How to get your MLB fix during the coronavirus close-down

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The official announcement on Thursday that MLB’s Opening Day, plus Great Britain’s World Baseball Classic qualifier in Arizona, would be postponed was as sad as it was inevitable.

Few can doubt the necessity of the decision given the frightening escalation of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe this week. Outdoor mass gatherings of people may not necessarily have a huge impact on the spread of the disease, but logic suggests it will have some impact and it simply doesn’t seem right to accept the risk for the sake of playing a game.

However, we all know that describing baseball, football, cricket or whatever other sport you follow as ‘only a game’ does it a great disservice. Who wins or loses doesn’t really matter in the end, despite at times it seeming to matter more than anything, but the sport as a whole means a huge amount to millions of people. As I tweeted earlier on Saturday:

MLB is unlikely to get going again until May at the earliest and that will feel like an eternity, not least because so many other parts of our daily lives are going to be affected in the weeks and months ahead too. It’s at times like this that we all need to support each other, as friends, families, work colleagues and as an online community.

Tim Collins, the baseball commentator who does such a great job covering games in Europe, immediately stepped up with an act of kindness that we can all appreciate.

The Reddit thread that Tim mentioned can be found here.

It says a lot about MLB’s maddeningly inconsistent approach to online content that I read this with only cautious optimism, fearing that this may have been something that MLB had done in the past but then closed down.

Thankfully I can confirm (at time of writing!) that is not the case.

The first place to bookmark is the MLB Vault: https://www.youtube.com/user/MLBClassics/videos . Click on the videos tab and you’ll find a sweet shop (candy store, if you prefer) full of treats, predominantly games from the last 20 years but some classic play-off games and historic performances (such as Tom Seaver’s 1978 no-hitter) from earlier too. The number of Japanese titled games (generally involving Ichiro) show it’s not something MLB really markets to its core US audience, and therefore not something they put much time into, but sometimes MLB not paying close attention to something actually works out better for us!

The bulk of the Reddit thread reveals that since 2009 games have been fed through MLB’s range of YouTube channels, the current one being https://www.youtube.com/user/MLB, and that you can find them so long as you follow the thread’s guidance on how to search for them.

As the Reddit thread notes, not all games are available, but the vast majority are. For obvious reasons, current season games are never available this way as you can (and definitely should) buy an MLB.TV subscription to watch those live and on-demand. A quick bit of searching suggests games are there up to 2018, so we’ll have to wait and see when the 2019 ones become available.

Looking through it all, I still can’t shake the feeling that it is too good to be true and MLB will suddenly come along and take them away; however, even MLB wouldn’t be crazy enough to do that during this pandemic period. Hopefully, anyway!

Watching back on-demand games isn’t quite the same as live, of course, but it’s still lots of fun baseball to enjoy. That’s especially the case if you are part of the ‘Baseball on 5’ generation like me and became hooked on the sport in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Sure, watching some of those classic World Series games loses something without it cutting back to Jonny and Josh (or Todd or Dave) in their tuxedos at 3am, yet going back and seeing those games again is going to be a whole lot of fun.

In fact, as I type this, the idea of doing some live watch-backs, plus maybe some shorter reaction videos, for the A’s UK YouTube channel, sounds like a good one. Keep an eye on my Twitter account for details soon.

Playing or going to watch baseball games isn’t worth risking a life over, but the joy we get from baseball is one of the many things that makes life worth living.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: 15 March. MLB is getting into the spirit of things by making a classic game for every MLB team available to watch for free. The article about it links into the MLB Vault channel so that bodes well for them not getting rid of it any time soon.

Yelich gets $215m Beer Money from Brewers

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Christian Yelich and the Milwaukee Brewers brought hope to many a so-called small-market fanbase this week in coming to terms on a new nine-year, $215 million contract. It’s a 7-year extension on top of his current deal and could keep him with the Brew Crew until he is 37 years old.

It’s fair to say that, had Yelich continued his recent MVP-type form over his remaining seasons before hitting free agency, he could have made a lot more money. But by all accounts it was Yelich who sparked the talks. 

“It’s a large sum of money and people are always going to ask the ‘what-if’s’ — did you leave [money on the table] or not? — but I play the game to win, and to be a part of a place that I feel comfortable and I take pride in representing. For me, this is that place.

“That’s how I made this decision. It wasn’t one that I took lightly. I spent a lot of time talking about it with my family and my representatives. At the end day, we felt that this was right.”

Yelich, as reported on MLB.com.

There are two parts to the story, of course. One is in the Milwaukee Brewers stepping up to lock down a true franchise player, and you have to give some credit to their principal owner Mark Attanasio in being prepared to do this, as the team has ‘had a go’ in previous years such as in the CC Sabathia and Zack Greinke trades. 

But the main story comes back to Yelich and what he wanted to do in being prepared to accept less money to stay somewhere he and his family are happy, in the knowledge that the money he will earn should still be more than he’ll never need. 

It doesn’t mean other players are wrong to look at it differently and want to get top dollar at free agency. Because they have the fortune to play this great game for a living, it’s easy to overlook that for almost all players free agency is the first time they’ve had any say whatsoever in where they get to play their baseball. 

Had Francisco Lindor ended up with the Dodgers or the Yankees as a prospect years ago, with no say himself on it, he wouldn’t have had to worry about a home-town discount on a contract extension. He’s hardly being greedy to think ‘if I was with another team I could get $100m more, so why not go to free agency in two years’ time’. However, the Yelich deal does add another factor to the situation.

We can all look askance at billionaire ownership groups coining it in and we should constantly hold them in suspicion when they start pleading poverty. But is it really true to say ‘every team’, including the Brewers, Indians, A’s and Rays can afford your Bryce Harper style $330m deal, or Gerrit Cole $324m? Maybe it’s not just carrying water for the owners in saying no, however, a multi-year deal such as Yelich’s ($215m with some deferrals) absolutely is possible for every single team. 

If the player, such as Lindor, wants to get full market value then I’ve no issues with that whatsoever, but if you love where you are from a playing point of view and a personal point of view and they offer you $200m+ guaranteed, it’s a big decision to turn that down.

More on the White Sox, AL West, and NY Yankee injuries

I will be a complementing my Weekly Hit Ground Ball columns with a regular video series on our Oakland A’s UK YouTube channel looking at news from around the Majors, or as I like to refer to it, “The Other Lot”.

The videos will cover the main news story or comment piece written about here, the Yelich contract extension in this case, with some additional commentary on other topics that caught my eye from the past week.

Sometimes they will be pre-recorded productions, as with this debut episode, and sometimes they will be recorded as a live-stream on our YouTube channel on a Sunday morning. Subscribe to the Oakland A’s UK channel to be notified when new videos are published and when live-streams begin.

Here’s the first video, handily embedded below:

World Baseball Classic Qualifiers in March

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This time of year is always exciting for baseball fans. Pitchers and catchers started to report to MLB Spring Training camps yesterday and British baseball teams are stepping up their pre-season training ahead of their 2020 campaigns.

We have even more reason to be excited this year, though, as Great Britain will be competing in a World Baseball Classic qualifier in Arizona at the end of March.

The only problem is, there still isn’t a huge amount of detail about the event barely a month before it is due to begin.

Although rumours of the qualifiers had been out there for a while, the event was only announced officially on 28 January. The published details confirmed that 12 teams would compete across two six-team tournaments to determine the final two qualifiers for the full 2021 WBC event. Both tournaments will be staged at the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson, Arizona.

Pool 1 takes place between 12-17 March and will consist of the following teams:

  • Brazil
  • France
  • Germany
  • Nicaragua
  • Pakistan
  • South Africa

Pool 2, the important one for us, follows this up between 20-25 March:

  • Czech Republic
  • Great Britain
  • New Zealand
  • Panama
  • Philippines
  • Spain.

Predicting international tournaments is always a challenge due to the fluid shape of the rosters from event to event and that’s especially the case for the WBC, where some Minor League prospects are released by their parent MLB team to compete.

The Great Britain programme has done an impressive job in recent years of creating an environment in which MLB teams trust them to provide a level of professionalism in how they will take care of the players. Liam Carroll’s team has benefited from some quality additions to the roster as a result in recent WBC qualifiers, not least shortstop Jazz Chisholm who was ranked by MLB Pipeline recently as the 66th best prospect in baseball.

Work will be going on behind the scenes to piece together the strongest group of Lions possible, mixing some MLB-affiliated talent with stalwarts of the Great Britain and domestic British baseball scene.

The full tournament format details can be found on MLB.com. Each pool will be comprised of a nine-game double elimination competition.

Great Britain’s first game, against the winner of Spain vs. New Zealand, will be on Saturday 21 March, although it is an evening game in Arizona and will actually start at 3.30 am for us. That’s 3.30 am on a Sunday though, which is supposed to be a day of rest and in this case can serve as a day of rest following an early start! The rest of the schedule will be determined by whether GB win that game or not.

The last two WBC qualifiers that Great Britain have been involved with have been streamed live for free on MLB.com, so hopefully that will be the same for these two events as they should provide some great action to liven up the Spring Training period.

Frustratingly, the official website still states that ticket details “will be available soon”. I’ve been contacted by several people over the past week or so, people in Arizona or those heading out there, eager to know more and having failed to receive information from other official sources. You do get the sense that this is all a bit ‘last minute’, which is a real shame considering how much these events mean to the baseball communities of the countries involved.

Fingers crossed that clarification will be forthcoming soon and, whether from Arizona or the UK, we can start planning how we can follow Great Britain’s progress.

MLB.TV Subscriptions 2020

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This article has been an annual tradition for many years, rounding up the MLB.TV offerings for UK-based fans. Yesterday’s announcement of the 2020 MLB.TV packages meant I needed to write up this year’s edition; however in truth, the excitement in doing so is not what it once was.

That’s not to suggest any reduction in my love for the service, or for baseball more widely. As I’ve written many times before, there are a lot of things I would give up if money was very tight before I even gave a thought to maybe cancelling my auto-renewal.

No, the issue here is that MLB.TV is so good that there is little scope for improvement.

Ten years ago this part of the pre-season was eagerly anticipated because we were waiting to find out what new features would be introduced. From promise of a potential HD-type quality, to Mosaic allowing you to watch multiple games at the same time, there was always something to get excited about. There were a few mis-steps along the way, such as the switch from Adobe Flash player to Microsoft Silverlight that soon gave way to HTML5, but generally the changes worked out for the better.

MLB Advanced Media were so successful in their development of their streaming capabilities that they become a lucrative world leader in the technology. For MLB.TV, they aced their refinement of the service over the first 10 years or so (2005 was the first year I bought it) so that, beyond technical tweaks behind the scenes and support for new connected devices, there isn’t much that they can add.

What do you want for your money? The ability to watch MLB games live or on-demand at a good video quality for a fair price. That’s exactly what we’ve had for years and that’s what we’re going to get in 2020. (And, just to be very clear, this is not a complaint!)

I’m sure there will be extras that could be introduced in the years ahead, especially in regard to incorporating StatCast data and graphics; however there’s nothing that the service really lacks. The biggest issue is the black-out rules in North America that block access to games depending on your location, often to a ridiculous extent. That situation has evolved slightly in recent years with some Regional Sports Networks allowing streaming access to the games if you are paying for their TV package, yet there is still plenty of way to go in knocking down what feels like an arcane policy.

It’s not a policy that applies to us, though, so we’ve always been able to access the full list of games, and that’s the case again in 2020.

This year, the US price has increased by $3 to $122. We have to add 20% VAT on to that so it works out at approximately £112.70 GBP, just a couple of pounds more expensive than last year.

It’s not yet entirely clear if the single-team package ($94, so approximately £86-£87) will be a North America-only product, but that’s been the (annoying) situation in recent years so I would assume so unless and until MLB officially confirms otherwise.

No great fanfare, no amazing new features, no complaints.

Just Spring Training games, every one of the 2,430 regular season games and all of the play-offs too live and on-demand for approximately £113.

Electronic Strike Zones and VAR

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I’ll start this column by referring you on to someone else’s. I had jotted down some notes on this topic a week ago, but didn’t have the chance to write up the article. Then Jayson Stark, one of my favourite baseball writers, published a column on The Athletic looking at what the 2020s might bring in MLB and included some of the points I was going to make.

This does mean that the column can serve two purposes: one in explaining my own thoughts on the issue of electronic strike zones and two in recommending The Athletic as a great value subscription website, which I planned to do anyway given the news this week that their baseball writing staff added ex-ESPN prospect expert Keith Law to the roster.

Anyway, I can bring another angle to the seemingly inevitable change in MLB that, at some point in the next few years, balls and strikes will cease to be called by the Home Plate Umpire and instead be left to a computer. That angle comes in the form of the scourge of the 2019/20 English Premier League season: VAR (Video Assistant Referee).

The basic element of offside, with a few caveats as explained in the laws on the FA’s website, is that an attacking player is ruled offside if “any part of the head, body [not including hands and arms] or feet is nearer to the opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent” at the precise moment a forward pass is played.

Whilst referring to someone as being “just” on or offside is commonplace, sticklers have always noted that this is not true. The ruling, as per the letter of the law, is absolute: you’re either onside or offside.

This is the same as baseball: we may refer to a high strike, a borderline strike, a pitch “just a bit outside”, but when it comes to the laws of the game it is a binary position: a strike or a ball.

The thing is, the application of what is a black-and-white decision when written in black-and-white has never been black-and-white in practice.

It is impossible to apply the offside law with exacting precision, not through a “human element” of mistakes but that the fluid nature of the game means the assistant referee is rarely able to be exactly in line with the defenders, that the act of the infraction (exactly when the pass is played) is in another part of the pitch (i.e. you can’t look at both at once) and that the assistant referee is usually in motion at the time too.

All of this has meant that whilst the law is absolute, its application and, most importantly, how it affects the game has always had a level of tolerance built into it. The practice in the EPL of applying the law exactly using VAR, pausing the footage at the precise moment the pass is played and then accurately plotting points on the bodies of the attacking player and the defender, has proved that this unwritten tolerance is an essential part of the law functioning as intended.

Consequently, it is probable that the law will be amended in the summer to correct this, either in amending the offside law overall or in defining what a “clear and obvious” mistake amounts to in the context of a review for a potential offside.

That brings us to the electronic strike zone and Jayson Stark’s comment that its ultimate introduction likely will be done in conjunction with a change to the definition of the strike zone.

Presently the zone is specified in the Definition of Terms section of MLB’s Official Baseball Rules (annoyingly published as a pdf) as follows:

“The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball”.

Right from the off, we should accept that the definition is more fluid than that of football’s offside, not least because the actual area changes based on each individual hitter’s height and batting stance. What we end up with, though, is a definition of a strike zone that, when you really consider it, doesn’t seem like the strike zone we are all used to. For example, the top of the zone is usually judged (not just by the umpire, but those playing and watching) as just a bit above the belt.

None of this is to rail against the use of technology: if it’s cost-effective and reliable then why not take advantage of that for things like the strike zone and offside which are ‘yes/no’ decisions rather than requiring an element of judgement?

The point is, applying the written rule with electronic precision will fundamentally change the strike zone as we have always known it. Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but, as Stark notes in his article in referring to the trials that have taken place so far, it should not be underestimated how significant the impact will be. Pitches that have never been called strikes, and what players and fans have never thought of as being a strike, will suddenly become so.

Just as we’ve seen with offside in the EPL, decisions are going to be ‘right’ but the effect they have will feel wrong. And whilst there are usually only a handful of significant offside decisions to review in a single football game, there are usually a couple hundred ball/strike calls (taking out fouls and swinging strikes) to make in a baseball game.

Even though pretty much everyone is unhappy with the way VAR is ruling on offsides, or how VAR is being used incorrectly in the eyes of the International Football Association Board (Ifab), it’s equally accepted by most that changing anything mid-season would be wrong. That’s a fair and logical position to take, although if you think of it that way in regard to an electronic strike zone it becomes painfully clear how disastrous it would be for MLB if they had to stick with a zone no one likes for a full season when it is introduced.

The lesson learned here for baseball is that full and effective testing is of paramount importance. In particular, they shouldn’t underestimate the potential need to adjust the strike zone definition as part of implementing the system so that the end result is something that looks and feels ‘right’.

They’ve got years of pitch data, the type that is already used to assess umpires, so that should be the first part of the process to determine how the average zone is called and how the current definition needs to be adjusted to make it match.

They should then ensure MLB players have ample opportunity to trial the zone, installing it in big league ballparks (if it doesn’t use technology already there) so it can be used in pitcher side-sessions and batting practice-type scenarios, and so that they can provide feedback. We all know there will be biases within that – pitchers wanting a bigger zone, hitters wanting a smaller one etc – but this would at least tease out where there’s broad consensus of anything that stands out.

It also needs to be trialled for fans and the media. As we’ve seen in the EPL, if the vast majority of people vehemently hate what they’re seeing, piously telling them the decisions are correct doesn’t solve the matter and, in fact, only means the benefits are wiped out and and leads to a clamour for the system to be scrapped entirely.

The best way to do that would be to use the system in the couple of exhibition games teams play in MLB stadiums in between Spring Training ending and the MLB regular season beginning. Ideally you’d do that the year before (e.g. exhibition games in 2023, refine it behind the scenes during 2023, then launch in 2024 – years chosen just as an example rather than an expected timeline).

And the final lesson MLB can learn from football is not to give the new system a name, like VAR. Sport is a great way to bring people together, but rival fans uniting to provide an expletive-ridden soundtrack to games about the new technology probably isn’t quite the way authorities would like to see that being demonstrated.

Christmas shopping spree

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A week ago I wrote the following:

“The MLB Winter Meetings have begun in San Diego and plenty of people are speculating about what big free agent news will be announced over the next few days (likely very little, based on recent years)”.

You could say I was a long way off the mark with that comment, although maybe I can latch onto the final caveat to save a bit of face.

Over the past two off-seasons there has been considerable discontent among players as to how the free agent market has failed to develop in the way they expected. Both times the fall-out descended into an argument with teams on one side and players and agents on the other. It takes two sides to make a deal. Whether it was the players being greedy or the teams being cheap depended on which side of the fence you were shouting from.

The first month and a half of the 2019/20 off-season can’t help but make you lean towards the players and agents on this one.

Take Mike Moustakas as a prime example. He had to accept one year deals in each of the previous two off-seasons due to finding no multi-contact offers to his liking. This time around he’s signed a four-year contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Whilst we do have to take the qualifying offer, and resulting loss of a draft pick, into account, that doesn’t go far enough as an explanation as to why he suddenly is now worthy of a multi-year commitment. The difference this time is in a greater number of teams looking to add a quality infielder.

It comes back to a topic I discussed just over a month ago, that of the essential element of competition that drives a free agent market. The impasse in the past two off-seasons has come from teams not upping their offers because they knew that they didn’t have to as part of winning the bidding, whilst players and agents were waiting for better offers that they thought should come, but never did.

This year, things have changed.

The Philadelphia Phillies were one of the few teams to make a big push a year ago, not least in the Bryce Harper contract, and the end result was making it eight consecutive seasons without a play-off appearance. The Phillies were never going to stand still after that disappointment and they’ve acted by bringing in Joe Girardi as manager to replace Gabe Kapler and then signing Zack Wheeler to a five-year, $118m contract and Didi Gregorius to a one-year, $14m contract.

Their NL East rivals, the Washington Nationals, were not going to take their foot off the gas after winning the World Series either. Having lost Harper last year, and rightly expecting to lose Anthony Rendon this year, there was no way they were going to let Stephen Strasburg be tempted by another team’s offer. That was why they blew everyone else out of the water with their seven-year, $245m contract offer that Strasburg accepted on Monday. It’s a huge commitment in a pitcher who has had injury problems in the past and, by all accounts, was not looking to leave Washington anyway, but the Nationals were not prepared to take any chances. They could afford to offer that contract, so they did.

This immediately ignited the market for Gerrit Cole. Strasburg’s deal took the other outstanding starter off the board and also helped to set the parameters for the contract Cole clearly was going to command.

A year ago, everyone was waiting for the New York Yankees to jump in and ramp up the bidding stakes for Manny Machado and Bryce Harper. There was no waiting around this year. The Yankees’ record of making the World Series at least once in every decade from the 1920s on came to an end in their ALCS defeat to the Houston Astros. With no Bronx Fall Classics in the 2010s, and a team with a great offence and bullpen but questionable starting pitching, there was no way that the Yankees would allow Cole to go anywhere else. No messing about: they put the largest ever contract for a pitcher on the table, nine-years, $324m, to make sure he became a Yankee.

And that then put the LA Angels on the clock. It was already a source of embarrassment for owner Arte Moreno that his team had squandered the first eight full seasons of Mike Trout, genuinely in the running to be considered the greatest player of all-time by the end of his career, by turning it into just one Division Series defeat. Having given Trout the most lucrative contract ever (12 years, $426.5M) to stay with the team for years to come prior to the 2019 season, there was no way that the Angels could get through this off-season without signing a big-ticket free agent.

With Strasburg and Cole off the market, the Angels immediately offered Anthony Rendon a seven-year, $245m contract. Just as the Nationals couldn’t let Strasburg leave and the Yankees couldn’t let Cole sign elsewhere, the Angels were prepared to offer whatever it took to make sure they didn’t miss out on Rendon.

This is what happens when teams with big pockets are motivated to out-spend each other to win now. Whatever Rob Manfred may try to claim, that has not been the context in which the free agent market has played out over the past two off-seasons.

It’s made for an exciting Winter Meetings and sets up the rest of the off-season perfectly.

Villar faces the Baltimore Chop

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As the Thanksgiving weekend continues in the States, spare a thought for Jonathan Villar.

On the one hand it looks like he’s about to lose several million dollars; on the other it looks like this is because he’ll be cut by the Baltimore Orioles.

To give thanks or not to give thanks, that is the question.

Villar was one of the very few positives to come out of the Orioles’ dismal 2019 season. After being acquired in a trade with the Milwaukee Brewers at the 31 July 2018 deadline, he seemed to find some new life in Baltimore and put together a season this year that called to mind his 2016 campaign with the Brew Crew.

He kept producing whilst everything was going wrong around him, most notably in trading groundballs for flyballs. Looking at his batted ball percentages on Fangraphs, Villar went from 55.9% grounders and 24.4% flyballs in 2018 to 48.9% and 31.3% respectively whilst his line drive rate stayed almost exactly the same (19.7% then 19.8%).

With it came a career high in home runs (24) and also in strike-outs (176) and when you consider his base-running exploits (40, 3rd most in the Majors, but being caught 9 times) you get the sense that he thought, if the team’s going to lose anyway, he might as well get plenty of healthy hacks and take some chances on the basepads in for his own sake.

Villar’s problem is that he played well enough to earn a sizeable raise from his $4.8m salary of 2019 in his final year of salary arbitration. MLB Trade Rumors estimates that Villar would get in the region of $10.4m and the Orioles have no interest in paying him that much money.

In a familiar refrain from recent articles here, you can understand the logic from the cold financial perspective. Despite Villar’s contributions, the Orioles still lost 108 games in 2019. To put it flippantly, they will still be perfectly capable of losing 100+ games in 2020 without Villar so why not save the money?

It would be more palatable if Baltimore had been able to find a trade partner for Villar’s services, as they attempted in recent weeks, as that way the player would still get his arbitration-driven salary and the Orioles could at least justify it as a baseball decision. However, the route they are now taking really has nothing to do with baseball.

As Baltimore couldn’t find a trade partner, their options were to keep hold of a good MLB player and look to trade him in the months ahead as new opportunities emerged (e.g. as a result of injuries on other teams) or to simply decide they’re not interested in having to pay a good MLB player a good MLB player-type salary and to get rid of him.

Villar is not an ex-Oriole just yet, he’s currently been put on waivers so that other teams can make a claim for him, although the most likely way it will play out is that he’ll become a free agent. In fairness to Baltimore, their reluctance to pay Villar $10m+ obviously is shared by other teams and reflects his season-on-season inconsistency, but looking at the situation from some other perspectives does once again turn the attention back to the non-competitive landscape in MLB right now.

The Orioles will have significant revenue coming into their coffers, in particular from local and national TV deals, regardless of how bad their team is in 2020. There is no threat of relegation or incentive to finish higher up in the standings (e.g. prize money based on your win-loss record), you can be as terrible as you like and still reap the rewards.

Where their bottom line is affected is in game-day revenue. Funnily enough, getting anyone beyond the die-hard loyal fans into the ballpark when you’re not fielding a competitive team is somewhat tricky.

In 2019, only the two Florida teams got fewer fans through the turnstiles. Baltimore drew 1,307,807 over 80 home games (16,347 average). That has been part of a downward slide in attendance as the team has racked up losses in recent years. In 2016 the Orioles earned a Wild Card with an 89-73 record and placed 20th in MLB in attendance at 2,172,344, an average of 26,819 in the 81 home games played. In 2017, Baltimore slipped to 23rd (2,028,424 total, 25,042 average), then to 26th in 2018 (1,564,192, 20,053 – technically only playing 78 home games with 3 single-ticket double-headers).

Put it together and across the four seasons the Orioles have seen their average attendance drop by 10,500, with approximately 800,000 fewer ticket sales.

Again, their low attendances in 2019 came despite the likes of Villar playing well and one or two players of that ilk are not going to make a huge difference to whether a family decides to spend some of their hard-earned money going to Camden Yards. Yet, there is a difference between making a few individual player decisions like this and taking an overall decision essentially not to bother even trying to put a watchable team out on the field for seasons on end.

You can also look at it from Villar’s point of view. He was traded to Baltimore without any say in the matter. We can’t replay the season and see what might have happened had he gone to a team that was competitive in 2019, maybe he wouldn’t have got to play so regularly, but if he had performed like this on a team more in the play-off mix then they likely would accept paying him the money to keep him around for 2020.

It’s one of the curious aspects of how MLB works that players are locked into the system, through their initial 6 MLB seasons at least, and their fate is not just determined by their performances but on which team they end up on.

We’ll see where Villar ends up next and what he makes of the opportunity that comes his way, but what we don’t need to wait for is an assessment on what it means for Baltimore’s approach. Whilst MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred does not like it being put to him that teams aren’t trying to win, it’s hard to argue with the claim when teams so blatantly show that they have no interest in paying for Major League talent.

A $26m question

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New York Yankees fans have been front and centre in hunting down video evidence for the ongoing investigation into the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing. This public service, surely not motivated by any bitterness towards their ALCS opponents, has helped to put the Bronx Bombers on the side of the good in the ongoing saga.

So it was gracious of the Yankees’ Front Office to restore normal order this week by engaging in some classic Evil Empire behaviour.

When the Yankees signed outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury to a 7-year, $153m free agent contract in the 2013/14 off-season it had the feeling of being a potential Part 4 in Boston’s Reverse the Curse of the Bambino story. Parts 1-3 were the ultimate acts, winning World Series championships in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Ellsbury was a key contributor to the 2013 triumph, having got a ring in his 2007 rookie season too, and it was all-too obvious for the Yankees to take him away from their AL East rivals when he hit the free agent market that off-season.

Ellsbury had certainly earned his standing as a leading free agent during some very successful years in Boston and the Red Sox likely would have been happy to keep him on a less-substantial contract. The Yankees were determined to make him a fixture of their outfield for years to come whilst taking him away from their rival, much as they had done with Johnny Damon during the 2005/06 off-season, and so splashed-out on a lengthy and lucrative deal to get their man.

And so Part 4 was brought into effect. Not that anyone thought the Yankees had bought a lemon, just that Ellsbury was the type of speedy player that tended to be more affected by the passing of time than most. It’s probably a stretch to pin the last two seasons lost to injury on that, injuries can happen to any player, but the way his contract has played out (okay for the first 4 years, not so for the rest) has not come as a complete surprise.

The majority feeling was that the Yankees had over-committed as part of exerting their power in taking away a key Boston player. It was a deal that always looked likely to come back to bite them, and so it has.

However, the Yankees are doing their best to fight the forces of fate. ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that they have ripped up the final year of his contract, plus the buy-out clause on an option year for 2021, due to Ellsbury “receiving unauthorized medical treatment”. In other words, the Yankees think they’ve found a way to wriggle out of paying the $26m they still owe him.

The claim is set to be challenged rigorously by the Players’ Union, not just for Ellsbury’s own case but as part of the precedent it may set in allowing a team to renege on a contract.

The full details haven’t been disclosed, so, joking aside, it’s fair to reserve judgement at this point. For all it looks like the Yankees are trying to pull a fast one, if they have clear evidence that the treatment Ellsbury underwent has made his condition worse then there may be grounds to justify their actions.

It’s an interesting case more widely within the ongoing debates around Minor League pay and plans to reduce the number of affiliated Minor League teams.

In a British sporting context, there’s a clear starting point that you are contracted to a football team, for example, and therefore your grounds to seek independent treatment, or even independent coaching, are not great. That doesn’t mean you don’t get a say, especially when it comes to getting second opinions on medical treatment and potential surgical procedures, but it rightly has to come with full disclosure and involvement with the team that is paying your wages.

Whilst it’s not exactly the same in the States, that same principle would apply to Jacoby Ellsbury’s case. The Yankees can’t force him to do whatever they like, yet as the organisation paying him a (supposed) guaranteed $21m a year to play baseball they undoubtedly have the right to a strong say in anything affecting that, and equally in Ellsbury being obligated to involve them in any such decisions.

However, what obligation should players have lower down the pecking order, such as in the Minor Leagues? A team can trade you with no notice or say at all, and even decide to terminate your contract at little financial cost, so why would you not follow your own path if you thought it best for your career?

The answer, of course, is that the 30 MLB ownership groups don’t give you a huge amount of choice. Where else are you going to go, other than taking your chances in the Independent League or hope for one of the small number of opportunities in Japan or Korea coming your way? This is the way the system works and if you want to play ball then, to a large extent, you have to play ball with whatever your current organisation wants you to do.

Ellsbury has earned millions already so he is not going to garner a lot of sympathy from the masses, even though being denied an expected $26m is a substantial issue irrespective of how much money you’ve already got in the bank.

The devil will be in the detail as to exactly what treatment he had, the effect of it, what he told the Yankees and why he went down the route of seeking alternative provisions outside of the Yankees’ control. Going against the wishes of the Yankees’ medical professionals behind their backs, if true, would be something that the team, or any other team in that situation, would be within their rights to take action against.

The case does prompt wider questions though at a time when the entire eco-system of Major League and affiliated Minor League Baseball is an ever-increasing battleground.

Like anyone else, players have obligations to their employers that they have to abide by, knowing that not doing so can put them in breach of contract. The reasonableness, and ultimate lawfulness, of those obligations in a business that is effectively a monopoly of 30 employers is an altogether more complicated matter. The antitrust exemption that MLB teams have operated under since 1922 gives them a huge amount of power in controlling the employment opportunities and rights of people wanting to play baseball professionally in North America.

How responsibly they are wielding that power is up for debate; a debate that those who fall under that power are becoming increasingly motivated to challenge.

British Baseball Hall of Fame 2019 Elections

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Four new members join the British Baseball Hall of Fame

The 2019 elections to the British Baseball Hall of Fame have introduced four new inductees, increasing the class to 38.

Ryan Bird, Jason Holowaty and Darrin Muller were inducted from the modern ballot, with Alan Asquith being elected by the historical vetting panel that was introduced in 2016.

Hall of Fame Chair Matt Smith commented: “I’m delighted to see four such worthy candidates joining our Hall of Fame, all with different stories to tell but sharing a true commitment to the game in Britain and excelling at what they did.

Ryan Bird and Alan Asquith had memorable playing careers in different eras, with Ryan representing the Richmond Flames and Herts Falcons and Alan being a pillar of the strong Humberside baseball community.

Jason Holowaty combined a playing career that brought four national championships with a long tenure of service to baseball at MLB and BaseballSoftballUK. As for Darrin Muller, for many years he has been one of the most widely recognised and respected representatives of British Baseball at home and abroad, both as a coach and particularly as an umpire.

The task of electing figures who represent the best of British baseball is both a difficult challenge and a hugely rewarding process.

There are so many players, coaches, umpires and officials who have left a mark on our game over the decades and, in contrast to the process Stateside, the full depth of their achievements is rarely packaged neatly through comprehensive statistics or biographical data. However, for us, this is part of the fun. The work that goes into researching potential candidates and writing their stories goes largely unseen but is, to us, as important as the final balloting process that determines who among that year’s list of candidates shine through the most.

Thanks to the Great Britain national team programme, we were able to honour the 2018 class at an event over the MLB London Series weekend back in June, and we will hopefully be able to do something similar in June 2020 for this year’s class. Beyond this, the contributions of Ryan, Jason, Darrin and Alan will be there for all to see on the BBHOF website as we continue to document and celebrate baseball’s rich history on these shores”.

Ryan Bird

Over eight seasons in British domestic play, South African-native Ryan Bird etched a place in the history books as one of British baseball’s greatest hitters. At the time of his retirement, Bird, whose career ran from 2008-2015, posted the highest career batting average (.508), on base percentage (.578) and slugging percentage (.822) in modern British baseball history. He was named the country’s most valuable batter three times (2008, 2009, 2013) and led the National Baseball League in RBI in 2013 and home runs in 2009. He was also recognised as the best fielding first basemen in 2012. All told, he tallied 15 HRs and 119 RBI over the course of 385 plate appearances for the Richmond Flames and Herts Falcons.

Jason Holowaty

Both on offence and defence, Jason Holowaty shined in a distinguished British playing career. He was a key player for four national championship teams – Richmond (2006), London Mets (2007, 2008) and Southern Nationals (2011). Off the field, Holowaty contributed to baseball in the UK and, more broadly, in Europe and Africa, as a key game development executive for Major League Baseball in the region from 2002 to 2016. He has also worked for BaseballSoftballUK in a game development capacity. A lifetime .423 hitter, Holowaty not only earned a batting title as a member of the Richmond Flames in 2006, but also nabbed a Gold Glove award as the best defensive second baseman for the London Mets the following season.

Darrin Muller

Darrin Muller has had a long-ranging and successful involvement with British baseball over many years. His accomplishments in particular include numerous successes as coach and then one of the most impressive umpiring careers of any British umpire. Darrin has umpired in more than 2250 games. They include 17 National Baseball Championships and 13 Youth National Baseball Championships, 445 International games, 11 ISST’s (International High School) European Championships, 4 Pony Baseball European Championships, 2 Pony World Series, 6 Little League European and African Nations Regionals, the 2016 Little League Junior World Series, 12 CEB European Tournaments and the 2009 IBAF World Cup.

Alan Asquith (Historic Committee)

In 1974, the leading British baseball journal of its day, Baseball Mercury, described Alan Asquith as “for years, the country’s leading pitcher.” Indeed, for more than a decade Asquith was a leading light in the Humberside area in particular and one of the best nationwide. In both 1966 and 1967 he received the award as the top pitcher in the Northern Division of the National League, but his 1968 season may have been his most rewarding. Asquith pitched his club, the Hull Aces, to a national title by winning both the semi-final match against the Liverpool Tigers, and the finals versus the Hull Royals. He allowed just a combined five hits while striking out 17 in those two games.

Further information

Full details of the four new members, and the other 34 individuals previously elected to the British Baseball Hall of Fame, can be found a: www.bbhof.org.uk