{"id":10312,"date":"2011-03-06T10:45:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T10:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=10312"},"modified":"2011-03-10T07:21:45","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T07:21:45","slug":"reviewing-the-basics-volume-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=10312","title":{"rendered":"Reviewing the basics. Volume 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MlbHlSq\"The third volume of our Baseball Basics for Brits<\/a> series focuses on the career of a professional baseball player.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

It takes you through how the players initially join Major League organizations and their changing contractual status from then on throughout their careers.<\/p>\n

When I originally wrote this volume prior to the 2008 season, I was aware that this was an important topic to cover from a British perspective because many parts to it are very different to how things work in British sports.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are also plenty of complexities and exceptions to rules that you can go in to, so part of the task was trying to decide what not to write about.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to leave anything important out, but I also didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want it to try to cover so many points that none of them sink in.<\/p>\n

Reading it again three years on, most of the points mentioned are still factually accurate and remain the most relevant topics to focus on.\u00c2\u00a0 All these parts have needed was a little bit of re-wording here and there and some updated examples.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Out went Joe Blanton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pre-arbitration salary details and in came Joey Votto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00c2\u00a0 That change fortunately works particularly well in showing how a player\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s salary in their first few Major League years can be relatively low despite them playing extremely well (Votto made $525k in 2010, approximately \u00c2\u00a36,300 per week, while winning the National League MVP) and how it jumps when a player becomes arbitration eligible.<\/p>\n

Barry Zito\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free agent contract was removed from that example box and in its place came Jayson Werth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent mega-deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Both show how a player really cashes in when free agency comes along.\u00c2\u00a0 Both deals also show how much teams have to pay, or more accurately overpay, to get a player when he is finally able to listen to offers from all teams and make his own choice on where he plays for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n

This situation is precisely why more and more teams are looking to lock up their best young players with multi-year deals before they reach free agency.\u00c2\u00a0 I mentioned this briefly in the first version of the volume, but as it has become more common I thought it deserved greater emphasis now and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve included the example of Jay Bruce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s multi-year deal.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I considered mentioning the Colorado Rockies\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 offseason deals with Troy Tulowtizki and Carlos Gonzalez instead; however I decided that these deals were a little out of the ordinary and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reflect the general trend quite so well.\u00c2\u00a0 A team doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t normally lock up two young players for ten years and seven years respectively in such a dramatic way, and Tulowitzki\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deal would have needed a bit more explanation as he had already signed a multi-year deal prior to his ten year extension (that replaced the final three years, plus an option year, of the original deal).<\/p>\n

Aside from these minor changes, the biggest difference with the updated version is an extra 500 words or so on the amateur draft.\u00c2\u00a0 In the first version I noted that the topic probably deserved a BBfB volume on its own and only mentioned the basic points.\u00c2\u00a0 On reflection, it makes more sense to cover it in more depth here and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now what I have done.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also added in a section on how international players, including the odd European youngster, joins up with a Major League organization.\u00c2\u00a0 There has been plenty of talk about creating an international draft so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible that this might need to be re-written in a few years.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve included a short section on the Japanese posting system as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve updated the third volume of our Baseball Basics for Brits series, which focuses on the career of a professional baseball player<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-10312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10312"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10368,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10312\/revisions\/10368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}