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In recent years, there has been growing mistrust between the MLB and the MLB Players Association. The players’ union doesn’t like teams to tank, cut spending on free agents, and manipulate the duty time of their best prospects, among other things. The collective agreement expires in December and negotiations are expected to be controversial.
The manipulation of uptime is widespread but almost impossible to prove. Kris Bryant filed a grievance against the Cubs for manipulating his tenure in 2015, and lost the case because it lacked evidence. It’s an open secret that teams manipulate uptime (i.e., keep their prospects at minors long enough to delay free agency). Good luck proving it.
The best evidence is the candid comments from the other side and Seattle Mariners president Kevin Mather appears to have provided those comments earlier this month. During an event with the Rotary Breakfast Club Bellevue, Mather indicated that the club were not going to call their top prospects last season for service reasons, no matter what. A video of the February 5 event was posted to YouTube on Friday, but has since been removed. A full transcript is available at Lookout Landing.
“If our major league team had an outbreak of COVID or injuries and we had to call people from the taxi team, we were a bit short of players because there was no way you were going to see these young players at T-Mobile. Park, said Mather. “We weren’t going to put them on the 40-man roster, we weren’t going to start the service clock. There were all kinds of reasons. If we had had it. an injury problem or a COVID outbreak, you might have seen my big belly in left field. You wouldn’t have seen our young players, our prospects, playing at T-Mobile Park. “
Later in the video, Mather was asked about top prospect Jarred Kelenic, and said the club tried to sign him into a long-term contract similar to the six-year extension they gave Evan White on last year, before White even made his MLB debut. Mather then indicated that Kelenic would be called up this upcoming season after a few weeks in minors (which would delay his free agency). He said the same about top prospect Logan Gilbert.
“He’s a really good player and frankly we think he’s going to be a superstar,” Mather said of Kelenic. “We control his career in the major leagues for six years, and after six years he will be a free agent. We would like him to have some more minor league at-bats, probably at Triple-A for a month, so he’ll probably be in left field at T-Mobile for the next six or seven years, and then he’ll be a free agent. He won’t commit beyond his years as a free agent. “
And here’s some of what Mather said about Gilbert: “You won’t see him on April 1, but in mid-April you will see a young man named Logan Gilbert. That’s the real deal. “
Mather apologized in a statement Sunday evening, saying “there is no excuse for my behavior, and I take full responsibility for my terrible lack of judgment.”
Manipulating duty time is technically not against the rules, but it is a bad faith tactic that amounts to salary theft. Manipulating duty time is like delaying the player’s first big payday. George Springer had his service time manipulated in 2014. How much more does he earn as a 30-year free agent before COVID last offseason compared to the six-year, $ 150 million deal he received at 31 years old. winter? Probably a lot more. The manipulation of service time took money away from her and her family.
For a player with no MLB service time, like Kelenic (and Gilbert), all it takes is 15 days with minors to push free agency back a year. Several teams have chosen not to manipulate the serving time of their top prospects in recent years, notably the Padres with Fernando Tatis Jr. and the Mets with Pete Alonso, but they are in the extreme minority.
Kelenic, 21, was acquired in the Robinson Cano / Edwin Diaz trade with the Mets. He hit .291 / .364 / .540 at three levels in 2019 and MLB.com ranks baseball’s fifth-best prospect. Spending 2020 on the alternative site paved the way “for him to start reaching his potential as an All-Star very soon,” their screening report said.
In addition to comments on the hours of service, Mather complained about paying Hisashi Iwakuma’s translator and said prospect Julio Rodriguez’s English was “not great”. He also claimed that MLB teams lost $ 2.9 billion in 2020.
Rodriguez, a Dominican outfielder ranked No. 2 in the Seattle farming system, responded on Twitter shortly after the video made the rounds on social media.
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