Second opinion: 'Extra' looks at new rule | MiLB.com News

Fernando Tatis Jr., Joey Lucchesi, Erick Fedde and Blake Rutherford weigh in.

The rules make more sense for MiLB's use exclusively, from both a roster flexibility standpoint as well as the fact that minor league baseball is more about player development than Wins and Losses.

They cannot dip down a level and bring a guy up if they tax a bullpen in a 15-inning game like the big boys can.

I really don't want to be any Texas Tie-breakers deciding MLB games. It's travel ball stuff when games have to be decided quickly because another team is waiting to use the field next. In the WBC, there is the concern about using MLB assets (pitchers) before they have built up their workload.


from MiLB.com
Second opinion: 'Extra' looks at new rule | MiLB.com News:

By Benjamin Hill / MiLB.com | March 23, 2018 10:00 AM ET

On March 14, Minor League Baseball unveiled a new set of pace-of-play rules and procedures. One of them garnered a lot of attention since it marked a distinct shift from the way that the game has always been played. 

"At all levels of Minor League Baseball, extra innings will begin with a runner on second base."  

Why would extra frames begin with a runner on second? Minor League Baseball stated it aims to "reduce the number of pitchers used in extra innings and the issues created by extra-innings games, including, but not limitied to, shortages of pitchers in the days to follow, the use of position players as pitchers and the transferring of players between affiliates due to pitching shortages caused by extra-innings games."

Whatever the motivation, the new rule immediately generated an avalanche of incredulous, if not downright negative, fan-driven social media conversation. But what do those within Minor League Baseball think about it? To answer that question, MiLB.com's Sam Dykstra, Ben Hill, Josh Jackson and Tyler Maun surveyed individuals working at a number of different positions within Minor League Baseball's vast ecosystem. Their perspectives varied, but taken as a whole seem to suggest those within the game have more quickly embraced the rule than those outside of it.  

Player development staff

"I have full trust in the people in the Commissioner's Office to enforce this and see what's happening. I don't think it's something that they're going to thrust upon the country willy-nilly. The worst day of a farm director's year is the 17-inning game. You have guys that are generally on work limits. Some of these guys are the youngest players playing in what are, at times, career-altering moments. Nobody wants a position player throwing four innings. No one wants a kid stretching beyond what he's safe to do. I think people will like this. There is a fun element of strategy and explosiveness to it. For us, in terms of addressing the arm health issue, I think this is really more a player safety and arm care issue than it is pace of play." -- Jeff Graupe, Cincinnati Reds director of player development

"We had it in complex [Gulf Coast and Arizona League] baseball last year, and I didn't mind it. Now, obviously it's climbing up towards the Major Leagues. At the Major League level, I'm still fairly skeptical of this. And I'm skeptical of bringing it to the Minor Leagues, however, I'm a huge fan of executing situational baseball. We're big believers of that in this organization. We certainly believe that to be successful at the Major League level, you need to be hugely successful at scoring runs from second base. What a great opportunity to have a chance at that every single night, when it comes to extra innings. Obviously, it will add a little bit of excitement, I would like to think, for the fans that may be there. In terms of run expectancy and those types of numbers, I think this will be a test -- whether we're going to lay a bunt down here to get a guy over or we're going to take our swings and try to score him from second base. From that aspect, I'm excited to see how this plays out." -- Chris Getz, Chicago White Sox director of player development. 

"There's been times where we have needs at the Major League level the next day and we just played a 17-inning game at Triple-A. That creates real problems and problems that are unfair to the Major League team more than anything else. First and foremost, that's what we worry about and that's what's important, but from an injury standpoint, it is a saver. It's a game-saver. ... I'm not sure that I would've done it exactly the way it turned out, but I can tell you that there's going to be a lot less worrying for me to do, and that is a definite positive." -- Zach Wilson, Colorado Rockies farm director

"Clearly this is something to deal with games that go into a lot of innings and cause teams to get in some jams here and there. From a player-development standpoint, this is supposed to make that easier. We'll roll with it. ... It's not really anything we're going to spend significant time on. A runner on second with no outs, that's a situation we work on in drills anyways in terms of how to work cutoffs, relays, how to attack as pitchers. I think some of our managers are kicking around their own plans, and we'll talk some about how to approach it as an organization. But it's not something we'll have a whole big plan for." -- Dave Littlefield, Tigers vice president of player development. 

"We'll have to play within the confines of the rules and understand how to execute. From a pitching standpoint, we're going to have to work on how to handle that type of situation with runners on. We'll have to practice it here, and it'll be part of our program to work on these situations. Not just in Spring Training but as part of our fundamentals going forward." -- Mark Scialabba, Washington Nationals director of player development. 

Players

"It's going to be weird. The games are going to be shorter. They're going to take a little part of the emotion [out], but that's the new rule. I don't like it so far, but it is what it is." -- Fernando Tatis Jr., Padres infielder, No. 8 overall prospect.  

"Mixed feelings, I guess. Everyone in the Minor Leagues is there to get to the big leagues, more than to win games in the Minor Leagues. I guess I don't mind in the sense that they're trying to shorten it, so we don't get guys hurt playing 20-inning games and all the pitching gets stuck behind for the next week. ... The team can definitely tell. Some of us are thinking, 'Oh man, if I'm starting the next day, I've got to go seven or eight innings to save the bullpen.' It's one of those things you're never happy with, but it's part of the game.

[Starting with a runner on second is] going to be completely different. I did it international play when I was in college. We played that system, and it changes the game completely with bunts and how people are going to play that. You've just got to be super-aggressive and try to punch guys out. It's going to be interesting. It's really hard to say to see how it'll play out. -- Erick Fedde, RHP, Nationals No. 4 prospect. 

"End it in nine -- let's try to win it. You've just got to compete. You can't do anything about it. You can't complain." -- Joey Lucchesi, LHP, Padres No. 9 prospect. 

"[It's] going to take a little bit of the flair out of the whole extra-inning thing, but whatever's best for the game I'm all for. I guess that's their decision, and there's nothing we can really do or say about it, so it's whatever's best for baseball." -- Blake Rutherford, outfielder, White Sox No. 7 prospect. 

Minor League Baseball front-office staff

"As someone whose first-ever game working in baseball went to 21 innings, I'm very much OK with this change. Not only are the health of pitchers' arms in question, but from the front-office perspective, there are a lot of positives to increasing the pace of play in extra innings and overall -- city curfews, fireworks, weather, employee morale, fan egress, etc." -- Erin O'Donnell, Birmingham Barons vice president of marketing

"In our office, it was met with mixed emotions. Some of the most memorable times at the ballpark are the 17-inning games that seemingly come prior to a day game or at the tail end of a nine-game home stand. 

From an activation standpoint, we have immediately begun to have some good conversations with some partners about leveraging the 'Extra Innings' element with a runner starting at 'second base/ halfway home.'" -- Ryan Keur, Daytona Tortugas president

"Younger workers in the office -- and spouses and families outside the office -- are treating it with cautious optimism that maybe we'll get home earlier now. We generally understand the sentiment, especially dealing with things like seven-inning games whenever we host a doubleheader. While I've sat through a frigid April 18-inning game before, that's the exception and not the rule. Running extra promotions at that point becomes challenging, but it's often those weird, creative, off-the-cuff things like staff danceoffs and infinite t-shirt tosses that become a welcome distraction from the completely inert baseball game being played." -- Chris Rogers, Bowie Baysox promotions manager

"This certainly should end games a little earlier, which three-and-a-half hours into the seventh game of a homestand, will be nice. You go to the 10th inning of a game on a Wednesday in April. and before you know it, there's 30 fans in the seats and I've got a dozen [cleanup crew] people waiting for them to leave so they can start picking up empty popcorn boxes. When you've been at the ballpark for 14 hours and you're looking at extra innings, a guy standing on second ain't a bad look. At this level, with the idea that the player development comes before winning and losing, it makes sense." -- Philip Guiry, Charleston RiverDogs director of operations

"If a game could be played for 18 innings without any negative repercussions, that would be fine with me. The fact of the matter, unfortunately, is that there are repercussions. We're learning the proper ways to take care of a pitcher's arm health. Cutting down on extra innings to save a staff will matter in the long run. I would not mind if they did away with all extra innings entirely. Pitching arm health is too important. ... I am also in favor of an automated strike zone in the Minor Leagues, but that's neither here nor there." -- Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, Lansing Lugnuts broadcaster

Benjamin Hill is a reporter for MiLB.com and writes Ben's Biz Blog. Follow Ben on Twitter @bensbiz. Sam Dykstra, Tyler Maun and Josh Jackson all contributed to this report. This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.

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Minor League Players’ Wage Suit against Major League Baseball suffers a huge setback – HardballTalk

Like the Curt Flood example, you will not get redress from the courts. They will point the finger at Congress. You will not get redress from Congress, they are bought and paid for by entities more powerful, better connected and better funded than you and your union.

You might get redress from your union when they negotiate a new CBA with management. You might want to contact your player reps and see how much this means to the brethren..

History is a great teacher if only folks would listen and learn from it.

MLBPA where are you? MIA?

from nbcsports.com
http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2016/07/22/minor-league-players-wage-suit-against-major-league-baseball-suffers-a-huge-setback/

Minor League Players' Wage Suit against Major League Baseball suffers a huge setback

A judge handed minor leaguers looking to hold Major League Baseball liable for underpaying and exploiting them a huge setback today, ruling that the case cannot go forward as a class action. Minor leaguers who want to sue over their pay and treatment still can, but they'll have to do it individually. The ruling saps the minor leaguers of their leverage, as Major League Baseball would likely be able to fend off individual cases which, by themselves, might only amount to several thousand dollars per claim.

The background: in 2014, former Miami Marlins player Aaron Senne sued Major League Baseball, Bud Selig, and three major league clubs claiming that minor leaguers are underpaid and exploited in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. He was later joined by former Royals minor leaguer Michael Liberto and Giants farmhand Oliver Odle. Eventually others joined and the suit had been expanded to 22 teams as defendants.

The upshot of the case is that, while the minor league season lasts only part of the year, players are required to do all sorts of things outside of merely playing games for which they are not compensated. Training, meetings, appearances and the like. When all of that time is added up, the players claim, their already low salaries are effectively far below minimum wage in violation of the law. Major League Baseball has countered this by claiming that minor leaguers are basically part time seasonal workers — like landscapers and pool boys — who are not subject to federal labor laws.

Last year the judge gave the case conditional certification, allowing the players to try to establish that it should go forward as a class action. This would streamline the case from the plaintiffs' perspective and give them the power of collective action by asserting hundreds or more similar cases into one proceeding. The judge's ruling today, however, was that the cases really weren't factually similar and thus collective action was not appropriate because figuring out how many hours each player worked and what was required of him varied too greatly among the players.

From his order:

"The difficulties associated with determining what activities constitute 'work' in the context of winter training are compounded by the fact that there appear to be no official records documenting these activities. Because it may be impossible to determine from official records the types of conditioning activities in which the players engaged, membership in the state classes based on winter training would depend largely upon the players' ability to remember, with a reasonable amount of detail, what they did during the off-season (often for multiple years and for many, several years in the past) to stay fit."

The judge said that, in light of this, each case would be unique and would require "individualized inquiries" to find damages and liability. That phrase –"individualized inquiries" — constitutes magic words which sink would-be class actions. If a company overcharges all of its customers by $8 due to an error repeated a million times, it's easy to look at one set of facts and judge them together. If you had to look at a million different wrongs, that's no class action. And so it is not a class action for the players.

As many courts who have dealt with these sorts of cases have noted, for many plaintiffs, a class action is the only practical method of adjudicating Fair Labor Standards Act cases because individual plaintiffs are frequently unable to bear the costs of separate trials. They are, by definition, (allegedly) exploited workers. They're not going to be able to pay legal costs and fight off a multi-billion dollar business in order to collect the few thousand dollars they were underpaid. At the same time, however, the defendants have rights too and, if the facts of each players' treatment truly differ (e.g. the Yankees make their minor leaguers do more than the Brewers do) it's not fair to bind one defendant's defense to the acts of another.

So, where does this leave the players? Not dead. Not yet, at least. Their claims have not been dismissed on the merits. They have only been denied the right to act collectively. The individual plaintiffs can now file separate lawsuits against their former employers and Major League Baseball under the same theories. It would be harder to land a big blow in such a scenario, but if enough do, it could end up being death by a thousand cuts for the clubs and the league. Their legal fees might go up and, eventually, if they lose enough of these cases, more might be filed. There are a lot of former minor leaguers, after all, and once there's some blood in the water, more of them — and their lawyers — may enter the frenzy. Decertification is certainly a win for the league right now, but it's not necessarily a permanent win.

There are likewise some other quasi-collective forms this case could take such as multi-district litigation in which the cases, while individual, are coordinated in a loose fashion. That could lead to some efficiencies for suing players even if it's not as robust as a class action.

We've written quite a bit about minor league pay and treatment in this space by now, so you probably know where we stand on it. We believe that minor leaguers are exploited and underpaid and we believe that Major League Baseball has been happy to exploit and underpay them for some time. Ultimately we believe that this state of affairs cannot and will not persist and that eventually, somehow, baseball will either see fit to pay its workers fairly or, more likely, will be forced to do so by a court or by collective bargaining of some fashion.

Today, however, was a big setback for the minor leaguers. Today's ruling will give Major League Baseball and its clubs more time and more comfort in which to underpay them. There's no doubt about it.

Follow @craigcalcaterra

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Minor League Baseball Players are About To Get Screwed - McCovey Chronicles

Of course they are....they are in out of their league when it comes to playing the game called politics. There is nobody fighting for them including the MLBPA. If you want to rail at somebody in all this, rail at them.

Minor League salaries are abysmally low in order to allow guys like Bryce Harper a shot at ringing the register for $400 million dollars. The NFL players union caters to the stars, the NBA players union caters to the stars. Nobody advocates for the lesser lights.

Break off a piece of that action and sprinkle it across the minor leagues and then tell me more about fairness and equality. Why do I feel like some these guys who advocate this position drive around with Bernie Sanders bumper stickers? Clueless....

MLBPA where are you? MIA?

from mccoveychronicles.com
https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2018/3/21/17146268/the-prospect-round-up-3-21-18-minor-league-baseball-players-are-about-to-get-screwed?ref=digest

The Prospect Round-Up 3/21/18 - Minor League Baseball Players are About To Get Screwed

Kevin J. Cunningham

Design by Kevin J. Cunningham

TRIGGER WARNING: I'm about to talk Politics.
I know I'm going to get some comments or replies on this saying to "Stick to Sports". Oh well. This is about sports.

I hate it when the sport I love does something that makes me want to stop supporting it, writing about it, and move on to something else. But it's doing it right now.

The organization of Baseball (comprised of both the Major and Minor Leagues) is attempting an end run around legislation subcommittees and lawsuits, by including a rider on a massive government spending bill that exempts minor league players from federal labor law protections.

Omnibus subplot: Effort afoot to write labor-law exemption for minor league baseball into spending bill, quashing players' wage claims.https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/spending-bill-could-quash-minor-league-baseball-players-wage-claims/2018/03/18/d31cd76e-2b0a-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html …— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) 10:48 PM - Mar 18, 2018 The ultimate in inside baseball. MLB billionaires working to secretly get an exemption from minimum wage laws so they can continue to pay minor leaguers nothing during spring training and $4 per hour during the season. https://twitter.com/mikedebonis/status/975564643157463040 …— Garrett Broshuis (@broshuis) 11:30 PM - Mar 18, 2018

By doing this, they will skip various subcommittees that are there to discuss labor matters in full. It will just happen. And the travesty of how minor league players are paid and kept in poverty will remain.

Garrett Broshius, former Giants prospect and the lawyer helping to lead the lawsuits against Minor League Baseball for their payment of players, has been vocal about this latest version of the bill. He shared this letter written by a prospect who left baseball, and explaining why.

Here's a legit MLB prospect walking away from the game because of financial woes. He made under $8,000 last year at the upper levels of the minors. But yes, let's give MLB an exemption from minimum wage laws.

http://www.stlsportspage.com/CARDSBASEBALL/tabid/91/entryid/12071/economics-of-playing-in-minors-prompts-cardinals-prospect-to-retire.aspx#sthash.clydCl4S.4AQExARk.dpbs …— Garrett Broshuis (@broshuis) 11:26 AM - Mar 19, 2018

It takes a while for him to get to the financial side of it, but it's worth reading. The fact that teams pay players as "Seasonal Employees" when they are expected to maintain rigid offseason workout programs and report their progress in, but not be paid to do so nor have those facilities to do it in, is insulting. Minor League players are also not paid for Spring Training.

Baseball insists that minor leaguers should view their employment as a "Stepping stone" rather than a career, and compares them to fast food employees in that regard, according to an interview published by Baseball America.

They continue to push the argument that raising the salaries of minor leaguers will essentially destroy minor league baseball, throwing those clubs into debt and closing them, ending the jobs of thousands of other workers at those stadiums who are protected by minimum wage law. This is complete BS, since minor league players are paid by their major league team, not the minor league ownership. I have yet to see anyone try to get the organizations of baseball to explain this argument further.

O'Conner says "We're not saying that it shouldn't go up," in the Post article…and yet, they spend millions on these lobbyists rather than making minor league salaries go up.

I feel strongly about this. I feel disgusted by the people who run this sport that I love and that I write about (for free). This is my opinion. But if it is yours as well, now is the time and try and get those in Congress to do something. This isn't a party issue; both Democratic Leaders and Republican Leaders seem to support this bill.

If you want to, you can use this website to help find your constituents. I would also suggest contacting the four Congress leaders: Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Tell them you believe Minor League Baseball Players are more than interns. Ask them how they can allow workers to be asked to work year-round and not get paid. Ask them why it's minor league organizations that are being threatened when the pay of the responsibility of Major League clubs. Ask them why they think this deserves to skip the methods other labor rules have to take. Ask them why baseball gets to be the exception.
Ask them why, just because it's a game played by kids, does it not protect its players like adults.

Okay, that's my political rant. I won't do that often, but I feel very strongly about this issue. If players don't get paid in the minors, they can not be in top shape. They can not stay healthy or well-fed. They can not support families that they are kept away from for months at a time. And, ultimately, it causes players to leave the game, or young athletes to choose other sports.

This will hurt baseball. Not tomorrow. But in the long run. And it will hurt real people tomorrow.
This is a baseball issue. I'm not a fan of the Player's Union, but this is cheap baseball owners trying to save a buck rather than invest in the players who will (in their near-future) compose the teams they make their bucks on. It's frustrating.