Thanks, Ron. That was really, really interesting.
“Ultimately, we turned what were some pretty generic Zoom calls into essentially video review sessions with the players,” Kantrovitz said. “We were able to talk through at-bats with them in real-time, assess their recall, their thoughtfulness and just general awareness of their mechanics.”
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I wonder what kinds of constraints there are on compensation for free agents, guys taken after round 5? I assume there are plenty of rules in place, either from the past or perhaps newly added, to keep teams from finding workarounds to make signing more appealing to $20K-bonus guys. But I was just kind of wondering.
For example, months before the pandemic and the revised draft, there was some discussion about the low pay-scale for minor leaguers, and whether the Cubs could/should raise theirs.
*So, for example, could a team say, "Hey, we can't offer more than $20K; but we're going to triple the minor-league salary scale that we used last year!"
*Or, "meal-allowance was $25/day? We're going to now make that $100, and what you don't spend you can keep".
*Or, "we've provided housing for rookie league and Northwest league players, but full-season guys have always paid for their own apartments. We're going to provide $2K/month for housing...."
Just wondering whether there will be any creative workarounds to increase the $$ incentive beyond the $20K threshold?
*For HS or JC guys, could they really strengthen the college scholarship offers? Full room-and-board, even if it's an expensive private school?
*How about performance-based incentives? "If you perform well enough to move up the full-season leagues, $40K bonus each for reaching A, AA, and AAA?"
I assume baseball has ways to prevent any such incentives. And I assume in a competitive game where other teams have pushed well beyond ethical boundaries into "cheating" areas, I'm guessing the Cubs are pretty by-the-book and not likely to dabble into anything cheater-ish.