from Amazon
Friday, March 26, 2010
Service Time leveraging
As Neyer says:
I wouldn’t have blamed the Braves the tiniest iota if they’d held him down. Players take full advantage of the sport’s financial structure; why shouldn’t teams? There’s nothing ethically or morally wrong with a club manipulating service time within the rules (as loosely defined).
Agreed 100%. My issue is when the teams are asked about this, they are deceptive. Maybe some teams are not, as apparently the Braves are breaking camp with Heyward, and their front-office guy says:
I don’t think it enters into it at all. In the four years I’ve been with the Braves I’ve never heard talk about service time, super twos, arbitration eligibility… any of that. It’s never factored into any decision we’ve made since I’ve been here. I know a lot of people said that about Tommy Hanson last year…
Maybe the Braves are the exception, or maybe they are the rule. Or maybe I read too much into the coincidence of another team that manages to get star player after star player at just under the threshhold of service days that they fall into the lower tier.
So, yeah, follow the rules, because the MLBPA is so short-sighted as to allow the existence of tiers to exist. If J.J. Hardy wasn’t the wakeup call veterans needed to make a change, then players truly don’t care about each other. Workplace safety rules? Pension benefits for oldtimers? Service time leveraging? Free agency as late as age 35? Whatever, to them. We’ll see what Weiner does with all this.
The NHL has it pretty simple: more than 10 games (20 MLB-game equivalent), and that season counts for one year. Maybe just make it 40 service days = 1 year. Couldn’t be easier. Of course, everything is a negotiating point and the players will never want to retreat on something, even if they can advance on something else.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date