Great discussion, guys. I really appreciate the thoughts and insights.
As to Craig’s point, service time manipulation is not “within the contract.” If it was, the teams would just say player x is being sent down so we can control the player through 2024 or whenever. They don’t admit to that because it would breach the contract. Otherwise, they would have no problem saying what Dave said in his posts. But, they come up with unconvincing “baseball-related” reasons. Not a coincidence"
That's an interesting argument. Again, I'd never thought of it like that, so thanks. I had just assumed everybody knew this was a thing, it was obvious for obvious reasons, and for most of the dozen cba's since FA that union leaderships had accepted it and not considered it worth negotiating away. Normally when guys get sent down, the team doesn't rationalize why, unless asked in a press conference. I guess until your explanation, I'd perhaps naively assumed everybody who really cared or thought about things understood this was a thing, and that the occasional verbiage in a press conference was maybe more for unsophisticated fans who didn't realize it was a thing, rather than to deceive the union who obviously understood it was a thing. But yeah, the idea that it wasn't to actually confuse or deceive anybody, unsophisticated fans or union, but was just to avoid cba violation and legal culpability is an insightful take on it.
Teams didn’t do this much until about 10 years ago. My hunch is that has to do with all the super-competitive Ivy Leagues types running clubs who simply realize that a cost-benefit analysis tells us that a full year of control is worth one month in AAA. Even the old school anti-union types of years ago didn’t stoop to this. They thought baseball more than cost/benefit.
That's an interesting observation, reb. I wonder how true it actually is, though? Hasn't this been a thing forever? It's maybe just been more talked about now than in past?
-A lifetime ago I lived in Pittsburgh when Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Andy Van Slyke, Doug Drabek, John Smiley, and Jay Bell were young. I was young and even more unsophisticated then, so when I heard some friends who were smart sophisticated big Pirates talking about this, I'd never thought of it before. I assume if they talked about it, management probably had too? 30 years ago.
Last millenium Kerry Wood had a spectacular camp, but went down. Geramis Gonzalez, Terry Mulholland, Ben Van Ryn, and Amaury Telemaco made the staff, two of them in the rotation. Wood had a single start for Iowa, then debuted April 12. Wasn't that all the same thing?
I guess I'm kinda wondering whether this hasn't been around for ≥30 years, and teams and union both haven't been both fully aware?
I'm sure the union leadership never liked it, but were they unaware? Yet for a dozen cbas, the union leadership never negotiated it away.