In recent years, there has been growing distrust between MLB and the MLB Players Association. The players union doesn’t like teams refueling, scaling back their free agent spending, and manipulating the service time of their best prospects, among other things. The collective bargaining agreement expires in December and the negotiations are expected to be controversial.
Time manipulation is widespread, but almost impossible to prove. Kris Bryant filed a complaint against the Cubs for manipulating his service in 2015, and lost the case because he had no evidenceIt is an open secret that teams are manipulating service time (ie keeping their prospects with the minors long enough to delay free agency). Good luck proving it.
The best evidence is the other party’s candid comments, and Kevin Mather, the Seattle Mariners president, appears to have provided those comments earlier this month. At an event with the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club, Mather indicated that last season the club had no intention of calling up their best prospects anyway for service reasons. 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 a COVID outbreak or injury and we had to call people from the taxi team, we were a little short of players, because there was no chance that you would have these young players at T-Mobile. see. Park, ”Mather said. “We wouldn’t put them on the 40-man roster, we wouldn’t start the service timer. There were all kinds of reasons. If we had an injury problem or a COVID outbreak, you might have my big belly right there in left field. You wouldn’t have seen our young players, our prospects, playing in T-Mobile Park. “
Later in the video, Mather was asked about best prospect Jarred Kelenic, saying the club was trying to sign a long-term contract with him, similar to the six-year extension they gave Evan White last year, before White even made his MLB debut. . Mather then indicated that Kelenic will be called up next season after a few weeks in minors (which would slow down his free agency). He said the same about top pitcher Logan Gilbert.
“He’s a really good player and we honestly think he’s going to be a superstar,” Mather said of Kelenic. “We control his Major League career for six years, and after six years he will be a free agent. We would like him to get a few more at bats in the minor leagues, probably for a month with Triple-A. “He’ll probably be in left field at T-Mobile for part of the next six or seven years, then he’ll be a free agent. He won’t commit after his free years as an agent.”
And here’s part of what Mather said about Gilbert: “You won’t see him on April 1st, but in mid-April you’re going to see a young man named Logan Gilbert. He’s the real deal.”
Service manipulation isn’t technically against the rules, but it’s a bad faith tactic that is tantamount to wage theft. Manipulating service time is tantamount to delaying the player’s first major payday. George Springer had his military service rigged in 2014. How much more will he get as a 30-year-old free agent before COVID last off-season compared to the six-year $ 150 million deal he received as a 31-year-old. winter? Probably a lot more. Time manipulation cost him and his family money.
For a player who doesn’t have MLB service time, like Kelenic (and Gilbert), it only takes 15 days in the minors to cut free agency a year back. Several teams have chosen not to manipulate the service time of their top riders in recent years, including the Padres with Fernando Tatis Jr. and the Mets with Pete Alonso, but they are an extreme minority.
Kelenic, 21, was acquired in the Robinson Cano / Edwin Diaz trade with the Mets. He hit .291 / .364 / .540 on three levels in 2019 and MLB.com ranks him in fifth place in baseball. Spending 2020 at the alternate venue paved the way “for him to reach his potential as an All-Star very soon,” their scouting report says.
In addition to the comments about the time of service, Mather complained about paying Hisashi Iwakuma’s translator, saying 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 ranch system, responded on Twitter shortly after the video made the social media rounds.