To: JD Martinez From: CIP Really dude? EOM

OK, so it's not the end of the message.   However, JD Martinez's comments are so ridiculous that they don't merit discussion.   But let's have that discussion anyway.

From a recent article on Boston.com (https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-red-sox/2019/02/24/j-d-martinez-says-the-players-association-needs-to-counter-the-embarrassing-state-of-free-agency) we have this:

"Martinez told WEEI.com that players were getting paid fairly and the sport as a whole was thriving until 2016."

 Really, dude?

Hey, when I retired I was like two levels from the top of my company.   I didn't even make the major league minimum.  I was well-known and I think respected in my field.   The main problem:  Thirty thousand people didn't pay $50 a piece to see me do my job.

I get it.

However, my company was making a lot more money than what they were paying me, or my boss, or the CEO.   We were a piece of a whole and we didn't think just because the company had a good year that we should get proportionately more money.  

It was the company's money.   They were taking most of the risk, they were signing the paychecks.   They were funding the research, research that had no guarantee of success.  

Baseball players get paid enough once they reach the majors.

If you want the teams to share the profits how about making them share them with minor leaguers.   Minor leaguers, if that was their only income, which it seldom is, live under the poverty line.   Some way under.   Your child's high school assistant principle likely makes more than any but the highest paid minor leaguers and there ain't no one who will pay to sit in his/her office to watch detentions being given out.

JD, buddy, don't ask for a bigger piece of the pie.  That just makes the average joe mad and makes you look greedy.

 “They got away with it last year,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they do it again? What’s going to happen? Nothing. It’s embarrassing for baseball, it really is. It’s really embarrassing for the game.”

Got away with what, JD?  They got away with not succumbing to the outrageous inflation of top baseball salaries?

“It’s more of a race towards the bottom now than a race towards the top,” Martinez said. “You can go right now through everyone’s lineup and you already know who’s going to be in the playoffs. What’s the fun in that? We might as well just fast-forward to the end of the season.”

This is an old Scott Boras argument rehashed.   We should make the losing franchise spend more money.   Basically, the thought is that the more bidders there are for a guy the more likely he will get paid more because of a bidding war.   Just like Boras, JD Martinez doesn't given a crap if there is parity.   

"The 31-year-old pegged the number of teams intentionally trying to lose at 80 percent."  

You know, JD, I can't say you are wrong.   I just don't know, although your statement seems really ludicrous.  But, given your other comments, I know that you mean that they refuse to enter bidding wars for players which is necessary to drive up the player salaries disproportionately for the best players.  If you are correct, you want to know why that is?  It's because some teams have enough money to allow them to outbid other teams for players so those other teams just give up and spend their money elsewhere in player development and in trading major league assets for prospects, draft choices or international bonus pool money, hoping to catch the next wave of success once their prospects mature into stud major leaguers.   

But I do have a solution for you, JD.   Let's put a salary cap in baseball.   That will level the playing field and create parity so that teams won't have to 'try to lose' as the financial playing field will be more level.

If you want to get the Player Association "ducks in a row" for the next labor negotiation, start working on a salary cap that makes sense.   Let me give you a hand:

Team salary cap is $165 million
Each team has to have a major league salary of at least $125 million (NOTE: If you can't afford to pay your team $125 million in salary then sell your team)
Major league minimum will rise by 5% per year
Minor leaguers above low A ball will get $20,000 per player per year.  Obviously the split deals and other things that cause minor leaguers to still be able to get more than the minimum will still be in place.
No team is allowed to cut their number of minor league affiliates below their 2019 level for the entire length of the new salary agreement.  You can add minor league teams, just not subtract them.  Co-op teams can be eliminated.
Allow trading of all draft choices but limit the trading to the next baseball draft from when the pick is traded only and don't allow teams with losing records the previous year to trade their first round picks.
Finally, let's leave the draft bonus pools and international bonus pools in place.

While that won't drive up the salaries for the top players, which is really all you are concerned about JD, it will be good for all major league players and, to a lesser extent, all professional baseball players. Just like the bonus pools for the draft and the international free agents have worked, so will a salary cap and team salary minimum in baseball.

Finally, I have to quote one more of his comments:  "The game has to change. We have to incentivize to win, not to lose".  As I said above, I think that that a maximum and minimum salary cap will do that.   Aside from that, JD, I think the increased revenue teams make by making the playoffs and having themselves be considered as winning franchises which, in theory draw more fans, attracts better free agents and allow teams to charge higher ticket prices, seem to me to incentive enough to try to win. .

But you are the expert, JD.   Or at least you are the expert at hitting a baseball and milking the game for your obscene salary while minor leaguers struggle to make ends meet.   

Bullpen and Bauer

Well, the Indians have added intriguing veteran arms on minor league deals and minor trades in the past couple of weeks.   It's my favorite way to add players so I am good with that.  Maybe now we have a mass of bodies to get the job done.   But it is spring and we are in the desert so anything you see may be a mirage.  There is probably a reason these guys hung around as long as they did in free agency and so expect more towards the bottom of their recent performances instead of the top.   Then if they exceed those low expectations we all end up pleasantly surprised.

So, the bullpen is looking better...but then there is Bauer.

The guy is outspoken which is not an unusual trait in people that are way ahead of the curve in terms of their abilities.   Bauer is that both as a pitcher and as a thinker about aspects of baseball.   The problem is the guy appears to have virtually no filter for what comes out of his mouth.

His recent comments about dating might, in some other era, be laughed off.   However, in the revelations about sexual harassment and in conjunction with the Me Too movement, Bauer thinks that it is OK to marginalize relationships in a very public way.   Hey, I can handle his handling of trolls as an effective way of handling trolls is to out-troll them.   Some people call it bullying but I call it giving back as good as you get.   So I get that.

But this marginalizing of women following on this troll-fest with a woman just won't sit well in today's world where people are, and rightfully so, standing up very strong against what some would say is just a different form of marginalization.

Hey, this guy is very astute and a very forward thinker from what I have read, not knowing him at all personally.  He will leave his mark in a number of ways, most of which will be very positive.  

However, why does he have to make it hard for people to like him and hard for his employers to like AND pay him?   Hey, he will get paid.   He puts his performance where his mouth is.  But he would be a lot more sellable and make a lot more money if he would just turn his filter up to "Max" and just play freakin' ball.

Plus, as an Indians' fan, it would increase my confidence that the Indians will keep Bauer on their roster or get a great return for him if they choose to trade him if he would just shut his mouth.  He doesn't have to.  It's a free country.   But, man, just put a lid on it!

Finally, Bauer remaining on this team with his off-the-field history, his on-field confrontational attitude and hia revolutionary on-field thinking, will likely directly impact whether Lindor wants to be hear.   How, you say?  Well Antonnetti recently called out Lindor indirectly with comments about the Indians wanting players who wanted to sign reasonable long-term deals and that players they would sign long-term had to be fits in the clubhouse for them to do such deals.  Do wither of those last two points sound remotely like Bauer?   I don't think so.

How could Lindor ever sign long-term with a team that pivots on their words the way the Indians are apparently doing with this Bauer situation?  Hey, I want both of them on this team.   But if I was forced to choose I would choose Lindor over Bauer 1 million times in a million attempts.

Please, Mr. Bauer, don't make the Indians make the decision that you aren't worth the headache.  I think it will only hurt the team if they have to make that decision and I am an Indians fan who wants to see this team as strong as it can be.

The strange case of the Oscar Mercado trade

The July trade deadline and the August waiver period are filled with a lot of veteran-for-prospect trades.  Rarely do you see a real baseball trade where major league talent is swapped for equivalent major league talent due to redundancies on both teams' roster.   Even more rare than that is a deadline deal involving all prospects.   There is generally no driving force for making that kind of deal at that moment.

So, when the Indians swapped Connor Capel and Jhon Torres to the Cardinals for Oscar Mercado it should have raised some eyebrows.   Besides the standard reporting of the trade I don't remember at the time that there was a lot of fanfare.

Here is my summary with details below: The Indians traded two legitimate prospects in Capel and Torres and got back a 4th outfielder type in Mercado.   Mercado, despite spending the entire year in AAA, is hardly even mentioned in discussions about who will make the Indians as an outfielder this year, something that doesn't bode well.   He appears to be nothing more than a slightly better version of Greg Allen and we don't need any more Greg Allens on our team or in our system.  Bottom line: Not a good trade at all or one that is likely to positively impact the 2019 Indians.

On the surface it appeared that the Indians were just moving the timeline up for incorporating another prospect into their major league roster.  By that I mean they were trading future major league outfielders who would be ready sometime in the next 3-4 years for one who would be ready in 2019.

Makes sense, right, given our competitive window and lack of outfield prospects at the high levels of the minors.

Plus the Indians were trading high on Capel who had exceeded all expectations with his power over the 1 1/2 years before the trade.   And Torres was nothing more than a lottery ticket, right?

Well, with time comes clarity and right now it looks like the Indians were robbed in this trade.

Mercado had a history of being a fringy hitter which made evaluators think he was nothing more than a 4th outfielder.  He was a good defender in CF but with little power but with plus speed.  Think Greg Allen with 5-6 more HRs a year.

The scary thing about Mercado is that virtually no one mentions him as an option to make the ML roster this spring.   If this guy was a good prospect wouldn't you think, after a full year at AAA, that he would be given more than polite mention in the few writers who were trying to be inclusive of all possibilities?  I would, which makes me wonder if he is really more than a AAAA player at this point.

Capel is still Capel with that power thing and that strong outfield arm and a tick above average speed.  He was, however, still a questionable hitter as his 2017 season was spent mostly flirting with the Mendoza line until a late season push left him closer to .240.  In 2018 he traded some of that power for better selectivity at the plate and a slightly higher average making me think that he might not profile as more than a tweener as he wasn't fast enough for center and didn't have the power for right or the BA for left.

Torres is another story.   At first I thought he was just a throw-in on this deal.   However, he is so much more than that, being the #2 prospect in the AZL this past season and, although he played less than a month after being traded to the Cardinals, he was the #5 prospect in the GCL.  Basically, he was one of the highest rated prospects the Indians have ever had in the AZL.  Here is the list of all of our prospects that made the top 20 list for the AZL:

2017 - None
2016 - Justin Hillman (12), Gabe Mejia (15)
2015 - Bobby Bradley (3), Justus Sheffield (4), Yu Cheng (12)
2014 - Clint Frazier (1), Francisco Mejia (7),

I could go on but you get the idea.   Being the #2 prospect in a league when you don't even play the last month there and then being the #6 prospect in a league where you play less than a year is a big deal.  While Torres is not a top 10 prospect for the Cardinals by MLB or Baseball America, he is still far from being a throw-in on this deal.

A look at the off-season now.

The Indians needed to dump payroll and I think they did that masterfully.  Yes, it cost them production in their lineup and YES, it made made it so they couldn't re-sign their big name free agents (and even some lesser ones who might have helped the team this year).

Still, they had a plan and they followed through on it.

So, if you exclude the trades that involved Gomes, Encarnacion and Alonso (and the resultant acquisition of Bauers, Santana, Johnson and Rodriguez and the loss of Yandy Diaz and Cole Sulser) here is what is left and my thoughts:

Chih-Wei Hu for Gionti Turne

Walter Lockett for Ignacio Feliz

Jordan Luplow and Max Moroff for Erik Gonzalez, Tahnaj Thomas and Dante Mendoza

In looking at these moves I still don't see the need for Lockett and Hu, especially given that we are signing relief pitchers.   I also don't see the need for Luplow and we are about to find out how much we are going to miss Erik Gonzalez now that Lindor is likely to be out for awhile.

Look, I totally understand the salary dumps and the gamble that Diaz will not learn to hit for power and will be a less than adequate defender at third base.   But I don't understand the other trades.   We brought in a bunch of guys who hit .200 or so in the majors and lost prospects in doing it.   None of that saved us any money.   None of that made the 2019 Indians better.  

I just don't get it and I hope it doesn't come back to bite us in the butt.   Given that there are still good quality guys out there to be had on minor league deals, the panic jump for Hu, Lockett, Luplow and Moroff early in the off-season and even the dump of Gomes  so early could lead us to be a weaker organization without strengthening the ML team this year.

As I have said many times, I just don't get those moves.

Odds and Ends 2-6-2019

First, about Antonnetti's comments that seemed to be directed at Francisco Lindor:

WTF?!?!?!!??

I have to say that someone in his position has to pick his words carefully, especially when he is in the old game of telephone where what you say has to be interpreted by multiple people, sequentially, before it gets to us.   If any of these comments were truly addressed at Lindor than Antonnetti is an idiot.  Minimally it lessens Lindor's trade value.   Maximally it impacts his ability to put out full effort for a team that doesn't value his services.

So I am at a loss to see what is going on here.

Second, this time of year has historically sucked for Tribe fans.   At least in recent history.   By that I mean that this is the time of year where we sign veteran minor league free agents who have no chance to help the ML team this year.   In fact, these guys very rarely have a positive impact on the record of Columbus!   This is not an opinion this is a fact based on the performance of these guys after the Indians have signed them.

Now, I am not talking about the Oliver Perez type guys who have a history of major league success and just couldn't find a major league deal so had to settle for a minor league deal and a wink and a nod that they would most likely make the opening day roster.   We are talking about the Robert Zarate, David Lough, Jarret Grube, Travis Barnwart kinda guys.  

Look, this team has holes in the bullpen, at utility infielder and in the outfield.   Yet we are not even signing guys to MiLB deal at those positions.   Not that I miss wasting time on the types of guys mentioned above but it is a bit frustrating when I see other teams signing guys to minor league deals when are signing no one who could actually help our team like Perez did last year.

Looking at it from a player and agent standpoint, there are plenty of holes on this team and the agents should see that and pitch their clients to the Indians and the players should want the shot to make a playoff-contending team.  

The fit should be perfect.  However, we are seeing none of this with the Indians.   Could it be that the Indians are really stupid enough not to have any backup plans on the middle infield except for Yu Chang and Eric Stamets?  No additional veterans to be AAA depth for the bullpen?  Could they really be telling these agents 'no thanks, we have enough' when they come peddling their clients on a minor league deal?   I don't even see us having enough depth at Columbus to even field a team without signing some minor league free agents.

Hey, I love the youth movement and not wasting money on guys when you have in-house options, especially when those minor league veterans really don't add value to your organization, at least not on the field.   Play the kids first has been my mantra for 30 years.   So if that is what is going on I am all for it except that we don't seem to have the minor league depth at any position except for starting pitching to be that bold.  Given that, I see this as a very weird time for the Indians to take a hard line when they had more depth in the past and STILL signed these AAAA players.