OC Register: Solving baseball’s service time manipulation problem might only treat the symptoms

[AngelsWin.com]

Baseball’s peculiar problem with winning has a face now. Actually, it has a few faces.

Toronto Blue Jays prospect Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. is still a minor leaguer despite having no minor league games left to play in 2018. So is Chicago White Sox uber-prospect Eloy Jimenez. So is Byron Buxton, a veteran of 306 major league games, whose absence from the Minnesota Twins’ roster is a perverse punishment for the “crime” of not having enough service time to qualify for free agency.

Service time might be the two most underrated words in baseball. The number of years and days a player spends on a major league roster form his ability to qualify for salary arbitration, and free agency, and pension benefits. Fans don’t always want to be reminded that professional baseball is big business; concepts like “service time” shatter the illusion of sports as mere pastime. But sometimes a reminder is necessary.

Guerrero, 19, batted .381 across four minor-league levels in the Blue Jays’ system this year. Fans of the Jays, who will not see playoff baseball for the 23rd time in 25 seasons since their team last won the World Series, would love to see such a talented player in Toronto.

Jimenez, a 21-year-old outfielder, is being heralded as one of the faces of the White Sox’s future. For now, he is the face of the Charlotte Knights, a Triple-A team for whom Jimenez batted .355. The Knights’ season ended Sept. 3, while the White Sox still have more than a week left in their season.

Executives for the Blue Jays and White Sox cited the defensive skills of Guerrero and Jimenez, respectively, as reasons to delay their major league debuts. Buxton won a Gold Glove Award last year. His general manager, Thad Levine, publicly cited service time as a reason to keep Buxton in Triple-A. It was a rare moment of honesty.

By keeping each player in the minor leagues while the major league team is out of contention, executives can delay the players’ ability to reach free agency without spoiling their chances of winning a championship. The Blue Jays, White Sox and Twins are effectively trying to extend their “team control” over their prospects by another year. Most executives would rather not admit this on the record. Feeding fans excuses for not fielding your best roster is a bad look.

This is not a new phenomenon. It happened to the Braves’ Ronald Acuña in April, and to the Cubs’ Kris Bryant in April 2015. It will happen again – unless baseball’s Collective Bargaining Agreement changes and the value of winning outweighs the value of suppressing service time. “It’s a service-based system,” one player agent told me this week.

I recently scratched out what seemed like a palatable solution to the problem, something that would benefit front offices at marginal cost to the players. I ran it by a few players who serve as their team’s player representative to the MLBPA.

The idea goes like this: for the small handful of teenagers each year with the ability to play in the major leagues, each day on an MLB roster counts as a quarter-day of service time. When they turn 20, that quarter-day becomes a half-day. For players who signed as international free agents (like Guerrero and Jimenez), they begin to accrue full days at age 22. A former high school draft pick (like Buxton) begins to accrue full days at 24. For collegiate players like Bryant, the full day kicks in at 25.

Only a small percentage of players would be affected by these changes. You can count on one hand the number of teenage players in MLB in any given year. High school and college draftees rarely spend a full year in the majors before age 24 or 25, respectively. Most players would still accrue full days of service time, while teams would have more incentive to bring up an MLB-ready player who isn’t gaining a full day toward free agency.

In the case of Guerrero and Jimenez, each player could have been recalled a quarter of the way through the 2018 season and still hit free agency at age 27 – the same age they will become free agents if they are brought up roughly a month into the 2019 season, as is expected. In theory, Bryant and Acuña would not have lost the first month of their rookie years under my proposal.

Some players would never go for such a system. Bryce Harper, the rare college draft pick who reached the majors at 19, would have lost up to three years off his free agent clock. But I figured most players would see the upshot: Players who deserve to earn major-league money and benefits get major league money and benefits.

“That’s a horrible idea,” said one player.

Wait, what?

“Teams are going to do anything they can to win if they’re winning,” he said. “The real problem is teams that tank. I’m not so worried about service-time manipulation. I’m worried about teams being incentivized to lose games.”

His point was this: the Braves suppressed Acuña’s service time by about a month, but it was only a month. The same was true for Bryant. Their teams were trying to make the playoffs. The Blue Jays, with a 69-82 record through Tuesday, are closer to the number-1 overall draft pick than a postseason berth. They have arguably more incentive to lose than win. The same logic applies to the White Sox at 59-91. Eliminate the incentive to lose, and the best players will be in the major leagues.

“I think it would greatly resolve the problem,” he said.

In other words, my solution treated the symptom and not the disease.

Another player was loathe to accept any idea that ate into his potential service time, saying the long-term benefits of reaching salary arbitration, free agency and a full pension outweighed the benefits of earning the minimum major league salary a year earlier. Any plan that would prevent anyone from reaching free agency before age 27 would not be popular within the union.

“I don’t think fans understand the value of service time,” he said.

In a service-based system, service time isn’t a bullet point the players seem willing to concede. Is there a simple fix, or is this conflict the substance of a potential work stoppage?

One player offered what seemed like a simple solution. It was less complicated than mine and it treated the disease: Reverse the order of the first 20 picks in the amateur draft. Playoff teams still draft in chronological order of elimination, from 21 to 30, but the team with the worst regular-season record drafts 20th. The team with the next-worst record drafts 19th.

“So you’re incentivized to win all the way up to the end,” he said. “If you’re the 11th-best team, you get the first pick. And if you have the worst record, the lowest you can pick is 20th.” The race to the bottom would not be a race at all.

If any sport could radically restructure its amateur draft, it’s baseball. Unlike hockey, basketball and sometimes football, the first overall pick is never expected to make an immediate impact. The draft itself is not a ratings machine for the league. It is less sacred and therefore, maybe, more negotiable.

Ultimately, this is a debate for 2021, when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires. Maybe this is one step toward a solution.

Eloy Jimenez, a Chicago White Sox outfield prospect, stands in the dugout before throwing out a ceremonial first pitch before a game between the White Sox and the Cleveland Indians last September in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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