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DaveSchmidt said:

Man, wouldn’t it be something if Pujols got to 700? Tonight he homered off his 450th different pitcher, passing Bonds in that department.

The way he's playing makes me wonder why he's retiring. I would prefer him as my righthanded bat off the bench instead of Darin Ruf. Or JD Davis for that matter.


I love that the MLBPA is talking about unionizing the minor leagues.  Thats about 180 players per team.  It is about time that those guys got some money.


DanDietrich said:

I love that the MLBPA is talking about unionizing the minor leagues. Thats about 180 players per team. It is about time that those guys got some money.

If I recall correctly, you, like me, are or were a member of a union. The article I read pointed out that the interests of major-leaguers and minor-leaguers often diverge. If the MLBPA ends up adding minor-leaguers, I wonder how that will play out.


Yes, I've been a member since 1992.  As I see the minor league system, there are only 5-6 real prospects per club at any given time, and all the rest of those guys are just there for them to play against.  They ought to at least have decent pensions and good health care.  


Pensions?  I read that the average minor league career is 2.7 years.   I mean I like the minor leagues but we're talking about something that the vat majority young men do for a few years and then move on, with memories of having dome something that the vast majority of people don't get to do.


Mostly because they can't make a living at it.  But there are plenty of stories about guys playing 15 years in the minors.  Those years ought to be worth something.  


Or you could have a freak injury like a guy I went to high school with. He had a shot at making the Yankees, but got hit in the arm by Posada on a throw trying to catch a runner stealing. His career was pretty much over with after that. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Jerzembeck

I loved seeing the story of the 31 year old outfielder on the Rockies finally making it. 


bub said:

Pensions? I read that the average minor league career is 2.7 years.

Pensions commonly require a minimum of three or five years of service before an employee is vested. And the sooner you leave after vesting, the lower your payout later. I'm sure something that's decent, the relative term that Dan used, could be arranged.

DanDietrich said:

As I see the minor league system, there are only 5-6 real prospects per club at any given time, and all the rest of those guys are just there for them to play against.

That's one of the conflicts I had in mind. It's in a minor-leaguer's interest to expand MLB rosters. It's in a major-leaguer's interest not to, so that the players' share of the revenue pie has fewer slices.


As compared to most of us,  "laboring" in AAA for a few years, or more, is exotic and enviable.  Many of us - definitely me - had gap years btwn college and real life career choices and made sh*t money during those periods in odds and end jobs of the kind that most of us are able to get and are much less cool than being even a minor league athlete.  Yet I remember those years fondly although I guess you could say they were "rough" compared to my adult middle class life.  The nature of the AAA thing is most of these guys, even the hangers on past their early 20s, know they are unlikely to make it and have to look in the mirror at some point and say "It's time to go to graduate school etc."  30 may be old in the sports world but its young in the world where we work and not a particularly late time to start your real career. No sympathy for the owners - let these AAA guys squeeze more money from them if they can.   I just depart from the notion that seems to have surfaced here that some kind of terrible labor injustice is taking place.


bub said:

I just depart from the notion that seems to have surfaced here that some kind of terrible labor injustice is taking place.

”Terrible labor injustice”? Where did that notion seem to surface here?

There are plenty of articles like this one to be found, though.

The Athletic spoke to more than 30 players from 20 major-league organizations, ranging from undrafted free agents to first-round picks with big-league experience, about their housing travails, past and present.

Players detailed living out of their cars, dealing with roach-infested apartments and piling multiple teammates in one- or two-bedroom apartments, with some men sleeping on lawn chairs, pool rafts or air mattresses.

With rare exceptions, minor-league players — who are paid only seasonally — are responsible for procuring and paying for temporary housing for a five-month season. Players get assigned a team, often at the very end of spring training, and get three nights — in a hotel paid for by the team — to travel there and figure out where to live.

https://theathletic.com/news/minor-leaguers-meager-living-conditions-most-stressful-part-of-low-paying-job/3QPQEa8vBLiK/


DaveSchmidt said:

That's one of the conflicts I had in mind. It's in a minor-leaguer's interest to expand MLB rosters. It's in a major-leaguer's interest not to, so that the players' share of the revenue pie has fewer slices.

Not so sure about the second part - the MLB players' union has supported enlarged rosters in the past - more jobs.


jimmurphy said:

Not so sure about the second part - the MLB players' union has supported enlarged rosters in the past - more jobs.

Maybe a reach on my part. Are there any conflicts that you can see?

ETA: Then and now, more MLB jobs = more MLBPA members, which was at least part of the incentive. That would become less of an issue if the union expanded into the minors.


Do they adjust the salaries based on where the teams are located? It has to be difficult to survive on a single A player's salary by the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium.


DaveSchmidt said:

Maybe a reach on my part. Are there any conflicts that you can see?

No


jfinnegan said:

Do they adjust the salaries based on where the teams are located? It has to be difficult to survive on a single A player's salary by the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium.

No


jfinnegan said:

Do they adjust the salaries based on where the teams are located? It has to be difficult to survive on a single A player's salary by the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium.

Starting this year, teams are supposed to be providing housing for minor-leaguers, but there are still problems like these:

https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/phillies-minor-league-housing-hotel-20220531.html

Additional interesting overall context from a former No. 1 draft pick:



DaveSchmidt said:

Starting this year, teams are supposed to be providing housing for minor-leaguers, but there are still problems like these:

https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/phillies-minor-league-housing-hotel-20220531.html

Additional interesting overall context from a former No. 1 draft pick:


The Inquirer article is behind a pay wall.


jimmurphy said:

The Inquirer article is behind a pay wall.

Sorry, I thought they still allowed 3 free views a month. In a nutshell, the Phillies dispute is that the only housing they provide is hotel rooms, which, among other things, makes saving money by cooking meals a challenge.


bub said:

As compared to most of us,  "laboring" in AAA for a few years, or more, is exotic and enviable.  Many of us - definitely me - had gap years btwn college and real life career choices and made sh*t money during those periods in odds and end jobs of the kind that most of us are able to get and are much less cool than being even a minor league athlete.  Yet I remember those years fondly although I guess you could say they were "rough" compared to my adult middle class life.  The nature of the AAA thing is most of these guys, even the hangers on past their early 20s, know they are unlikely to make it and have to look in the mirror at some point and say "It's time to go to graduate school etc."  30 may be old in the sports world but its young in the world where we work and not a particularly late time to start your real career. No sympathy for the owners - let these AAA guys squeeze more money from them if they can.   I just depart from the notion that seems to have surfaced here that some kind of terrible labor injustice is taking place.

this is the attitude that corporations love.  A group gets together to try to improve their conditions, and your attitude is that you were poor once so they should be, too.



Baseball serendipity last night.

Flicked on the TV, which had last been abandoned earlier in the day while showing the Phillies on their way to a loss, and there was Ohtani on the mound in the eighth inning of a 1-1 game against the Astros, with Altuve on second and one out. He gets Gurriel on a liner to left and then, with his 111th pitch, Bregman on a shallow fly to right.

Bottom of the eighth, Trout walks with two outs to bring up Ohtani — a chance to knock in the winning run of his own superb start. So he grounded out. So what. Watching a single player take the dual role in such late-inning drama was absolutely stirring. (The Angels prevailed, 2-1, in 12.)


Philadelphia Eagles fan homering in his seventh straight game.

(Argh. The tweet embed isn’t working.)

https://twitter.com/mlb/status/1569470368242614273?s=21&t=A4TgFPZ7ISN47TEVHl50-g


In another thread, Juan Soto’s performance with the Padres was described as pretty bad. Since the trade, his wRC+ — a ballpark-adjusted measure of run creation and therefore a premier stat for offensive value — is 119, or 19 percent above the MLB average. While that’s well below Soto’s wRC+ of 150 this season before the trade, it happens to match the career wRC+ of the Mets’ right fielder (whose wRC+ this season is 134).

Soto’s 0.9 bWAR with the Padres prorates to about 4.5 over a full season, which is very good and is just shy of the pace he was on with the Nationals.


The FanGraphs website allows you to compare any player with all other major-leaguers who ever played the same position at the same age. J.T. Realmuto’s fWAR of 5.6 already ranks 7th all time among catchers in their age 31 season, and he could end up fourth, behind only Campy, Carter and Berra.

A Phillies fan on the Inquirer website noted that the top 9 in this category all played in either New York or Pennsylvania (Campanella, Carter, Berra, Russell Martin, Posada, Piazza, Realmuto, Dickey and Daulton).

If you rank the hundreds of catchers who played at this age by BsR, the baserunning stat, the highest they get is 1.8 — except for Realmuto at … 5.9. My lord.


For a random comparison, the Mets’ fWAR from catchers this season is 0.9.


Good defensive catchers who can hit are a real asset.  Pretty rare.  Realmuto is the real deal.


Speaking of BsR, I keep reading how the 4.5-inch reduction in the basepaths between the large bases may abet stealing a little, but it seems to me the greater impact will be on all the other base-to-base plays like beating a force-out, going from first to third (a 6-inch advantage) and tagging up from second. Think of how much difference 4.5 or 6 inches would have made in all the replays you’ve seen. I’m bracing for a noticeable change.


Anyone who actually knows baseball who is arguing that Judge should win MVP over Ohtani should be banned from watching and/participating in baseball.  I don’t care if he breaks the fake record or not, Ohtani is the most valuable baseball player in either league.  Maybe ever,


Yes on Ohtani. No on the gratuitous ban on arguing over, participating in and/or watching baseball.


it's largely the old fogey argument that an MVP can't come from a losing team. Sometimes that's a good argument when you're comparing two similar players. But I can't buy that argument for Judge over Ohtani. Ohtani is my MVP every year that he plays at an elite level as both a pitcher and a hitter.


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