SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Things you hear hanging out in the lobby at the Omni Scottsdale Resort and Spa on the third day of baseball’s annual GM meetings:
• Commissioner Rob Manfred remains optimistic that a new collective bargaining agreement will be reached before the current deal with the players union expires Dec. 1, but in the interim he acknowledged the lack of a deal was impacting the free agent market.
“There’s been a lot of public comment to the effect that the absence of an agreement creates a certain amount of uncertainty,” said Manfred. “As we’ve learned on a broader scale over the last couple of days, markets don’t like uncertainty and that’s just something we have to deal with. It’s a natural product of the expiration date that we have and have always had in this agreement, and I think the union understands that, as well.”
• A prime focus on that uncertainty revolves around the luxury tax threshold, which is currently set at $189 million with penalties for offenders escalating from 17.5 per cent to 50 per cent on any overage. Boston Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski said earlier this week that “we don’t know what rules we’re playing under yet with the basic agreement, that’s also a very important ingredient. … You wouldn’t want something thrust upon you that surprised you that there were penalties attached you didn’t like or you may like. It’s better to know all the rules, and right now we don’t know them.”
Some agents feel that uncertainty is impacting the bigger free agents available at the moment, although the qualifying offer process is another question mark at play.
“Every club asks us and we ask them,” said powerful agent Scott Boras. “Whenever there’s something like that in the air, I think it impacts a group of teams and obviously it’s helpful for them to know and helpful for us to know because some of them operate around those barriers. But for most teams, it hasn’t really been that big of a subject thus far.”
• What happens if the old CBA runs out before a new deal is in place?
“Legally, the agreement remains in place until Dec. 1 and we operate under terms of that agreement,” said Manfred. “Under the National Labor Relations Act, post-expiration and absent an impasse, the old terms and conditions of employment remain in place, meaning we would continue to operate the old system absent some sort of economic self-help.”
And if rules change in a new CBA?
“Presumably the new agreement would deal with the transitional issues associated with people who are already out there on the market,” said the commissioner. “That’s what happened the last time.”
• The Toronto Blue Jays’ approach?
“We’re operating as if the rules as they exist [will continue],” said GM Ross Atkins. “That’s the direction we’ve been given.”
• Francisco Liriano went from posting a 5.46 ERA over 21 starts in Pittsburgh to a 2.92 ERA in 10 games, eight of them starts, for the Blue Jays after his acquisition at the trade deadline. Pittsburgh Pirates GM Neal Huntington isn’t surprised.
“Changing leagues was going to be a huge impact for him,” he explained. “[Russell] Martin is obviously tremendous, and I’m sure Russ had some impact, I’m sure their pitching coaches had some thoughts, but we believed changing leagues was going to help Francisco a ton because they had stopped swinging at him as much in the National League. In hindsight, if we had a National League team, we probably should have kept him in the National League because the National League had kind of figured him out.
“He made some adjustments in his pitch sequencing, and he made some adjustments in his pitch usage and again, testament to Russ or to Francisco or the staff there, but a big part of it is they had stopped swinging and stopped chasing in the National League. We thought there was going to be a point in time where that was going to happen, we were hoping it was later next year and not early this year, but he still has great stuff, he still has great weapons, he’s an unbelievable guy. It was a hard one. But with us, with the amount of dollars we had invested in him and where we thought it was going, we weren’t sure that we had the solution because the league had figured him out.”
Liriano is due to make $13.667 million in 2017.
• Atkins says right now the Blue Jays “are optimistic” Devon Travis will be ready for spring training. The second baseman suffered a bone bruise with a small flap of cartilage caught in his right knee joint during the ALCS against the Cleveland Indians and the expectation was he’d need surgery. That right now is uncertain.
“We’re trying to put him in the best possible position for not just this year and spring training,” said Atkins. “We feel good about him being in spring training but we want to make sure we have crossed every single T and dotted every I before we set a plan forward.”
• Josh Donaldson, who played through hip troubles in September and October, isn’t going to need surgery.
“He’s in great shape, feels great, feels strong,” said Atkins.
• Only two teams in the majors averaged game times of less than three hours in 2016 – the Oakland Athletics at 2:56 and Kansas City Royals at 2:59 – and that’s caught the attention of commissioner Manfred.
“Pace of play is one of those topics that’s going to be a constant ongoing, year-after-year challenge for us,” he said. “I really mean this, I think our players’ hearts are in the right place, but because we play 162 times in 183 days, it’s easy to lose focus on that issue and I think we lost a little bit of focus this year. We’re going to look for mechanisms to try and keep it in the front of people’s mind as we go forward with a new season.”
The Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers were next quickest at three hours while the Arizona Diamondbacks played the longest games at an average of 3:14.
• Toronto tied for the eighth most replay challenges in the majors at 49, but had the lowest success rate in the majors at 38 per cent, as only 19 times were calls overturned. The Miami Marlins had the most calls overturned at 34 in 52 challenges.
• The day after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the U.S. election, Manfred began his visit with reporters like this: “It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. The Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Donald Trump got elected president. Pretty interesting all the way around. Here we are.”
