Some housekeeping: We have Covid. All of us. So, lots to catch up on today, and then we’ll try to have extra notes this weekend, but no promises.
The Cubs are fielding trade offers for catcher Willson Contreras in advance of Tuesday’s deadline, and the situation is heartbreaking. Contreras continues to have nothing but the best things to say about his time as a Cub, about Wrigley Field, about Chicago, about Cubs fans. Cubs management, heartless and ruthless and (uncomfortably) making what might be a long-term winning decision, is cleaning out his locker. It’s like watching a parent fatten their child up for slaughter.
This is a Cubs problem—one that went down with Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Báez as well—and it could be avoided on the Cubs side of things, through sentimental turns in the souls of Cubs ownership and/or Contreras’s agents (an extension would have to be team-friendly, but each side does have a number). It’s also an MLB problem, though—one on display with Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, and reportedly soon Juan Soto—and it could be avoided on the MLB side of things.
Major League Baseball’s service time requirements are a gigantic problem for the sport of baseball. Attention is paid to them on the “service time manipulation” side of things—happenings like the Cubs holding Kris Bryant in the minors for a few extra weeks so he’d hit free agency a year later—but that’s a comparably small issue (and one that was addressed in the last CBA). Teams being incentivized to trade potential lifelong franchise icons, robbing players of that status and fans of that connection? That’s a bigger deal. That’s the kind of thing that makes kids less likely to fall in love with baseball.
The way service time works is that players need to play roughly six complete MLB seasons to be eligible for free agency. In the first few years of their time in the bigs, they earn a nearly flat salary (which is supplemented by signing bonuses, endorsement deals, and a new Bryant-rule pool for the top 100 players in this stage of service time). In the next few years, they’re eligible for arbitration, which doesn’t get them paid the market rate, but does get solid salaries. After that, they finally hit free agency and really cash in.
When this is examined as a problem, it’s often through the lens of players’ earnings, something that’s a legitimate concern (individual players create more value than individual owners, but individual owners keep way more money via their monopolistic system) but doesn’t really affect the romantic bits. Players could and should make more money in their arbitration and pre-arbitration years. Players are not, however, starving.
No, the real problem is that players don’t reach free agency until they’re already in their prime, or in many cases past their prime. Willson Contreras will reach free agency for the first time this offseason. Willson Contreras is 30 years old. The best understanding of baseball players is that they peak between 27 and 30, with a predictable post-30 decline for hitters that’s sometimes accelerated for catchers, like Contreras, because of the physical toll of squatting behind home plate, taking foul tips off the facemask, etc. Contreras wasn’t abnormally old when he debuted. He’s not abnormally old to be reaching free agency for the first time. Under the current service time system, teams get players at a discount up to and sometimes through the prime of their careers. Free agents are more expensive. Some—Cubs owner Tom Ricketts seemingly notably among this group—are asking why anyone would sign free agents when developing good prospects is so much more affordable when done well?
The answer to that last question—that free agents are more reliable individual players than prospects, and that they’re good for marketing as well—isn’t as much of concern as it is that the question has merit. The Rays have been one of baseball’s winningest teams the last few years. The Rays have tiny payrolls. You don’t necessarily need free agents to win. Extending young stars is often a luxury, and it mostly happens these days early in a player’s contract, when the immediate salary benefits outweigh the longer-term potential salary sacrifices. Were the service time requirement smaller, the decision would be forced. Do you want to pony up and pay your stars, keeping the favorites around? Or do you want to field a team full of guys 27 and younger?
Some would argue that small-payroll teams succeeding is a good thing. They’d argue that it’s fun to see the little guy win sometimes. That argument has its points, and I’d imagine that large-market teams wouldn’t be unhappy to see free agency come earlier, while I’d imagine small-market teams would be terrified by such a proposition (as Michael Lewis once illustrated well, small-market owners have way too much power in the baseball industry). Moving free agency up would also likely result in smaller salaries for individual free agents, as the pool of supply would be larger annually, something that presumably keeps the Players Association at bay on this. It would be a headache to implement changes, partially due to this last point—imagine players who’d nearly gone through the six years of service time suddenly watching the number drop to three and their market value drop alongside it—but the difficulty of implementation, the smaller notches on Scott Boras’s belt, and the subsidization of the Pittsburgh Pirates are bad reasons to not do something.
If Willson Contreras had hit free agency three years ago, it would have made all the baseball sense for the Cubs to extend him. Six years of service time is too long. Players hitting free agency as they exit their prime is wacky. The timeline’s all fucked up.
Kliavkoff Goes Off
We’d all probably benefit from treating conference realignment a little more like politics, at least in the specific way of interpreting everything the way we interpret political things, which is cynically, with the recognition that everyone has an agenda. The other ways we treat politics? Or at least the way the zealots treat politics? No, we shouldn’t treat conference realignment those ways. But the cynical side is a good one.
Today, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff aggressively criticized the Big 12 at Pac-12 media days, referencing Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark’s line that the Big 12 is “open for business” regarding expansion when he said, “As for the Big 12 being open for business, I appreciate that. We haven’t decided if we’re going shopping there yet,” and adding, “That remark was a reflection of the fact that I’ve been spending four weeks trying to defend against grenades that have been lobbed in from every corner of the Big 12 trying to destabilize our remaining conference…I understand why they’re doing it. When you look at the relative media value between the two conferences, I get it, I get why they’re scared, why they’re trying to destabilize us. I was just tired of that.”
Is the Big 12 scared? Maybe. If they’re smart, probably yes. Everyone should be scared right now except for the healthiest brands in the sport, the Notre Dames and Ohio States and Georgias of the world. Even those should maybe be scared. It wasn’t long ago that UConn was a basketball powerhouse. Then they went and played in the AAC for a few years, and while they won an NCAA Tournament in the AAC and have been good since, had they not navigated their way back into the Big East—which wasn’t a sure thing until it happened—they’d be a mid-major right now. Newton identified no law saying the same can’t happen on the football side of things.
Is the Big 12 trying to destabilize the Pac-12? Hopefully, as a fan of a Big 12 school. A Big 20 featuring the twelve soon-Big 12 schools and the eight Pac-12 schools that aren’t Washington State and Oregon State appears, on paper, to be a healthy league, and by the overly simplistic measures used to evaluate conferences (playoff bids, NCAA Tournament bids, top-25 teams…), it would excel.
More likely than not, Kliavkoff is terrified right now, knowing that the sooner the hard TV revenue numbers come back on a proposed expanded Pac-12, the sooner Washington bolts, either with Stanford or Oregon, and the sooner the other six schools of value follow, either to the Big 12 or the ACC. Kliavkoff, like any politician in a time of conflict, projected strength, but there appears to be little strength in the Pac-12 unless they really are going to try to mine the Big 12, which is possible but flawed because the Pac-12’s two worst brands are such deader weight financially and competitively than the Big 12’s worst, who can’t even be easily identified, and because two of the Pac-12’s three best brands are very clearly seeking better homes, which isn’t true of the Big 12, partially because the Big 12’s best aren’t as unique in their value as the Pac-12’s two best.
In other words, the Pac-12 has a real problem in its value gulf. The Big 12 may have some strength because its programs, at least in the post-Texas/Oklahoma iteration, are similar in value. The Pac-12 ranges from Stanford, a world-class institution with one of the best all-around athletic departments in the country playing its sports in a premier media market, to Washington State and Oregon State, last among Power Five public schools in revenue in the pre-Covid days and largely noncompetitive in big-money sports (we love you, Washington State and Oregon State, but you’re in a terribly tough position). It’s hard to keep those schools together, because while compiling conferences based on geographic similarities is tradition, organizing them based on similar interests makes a lot more sense. This is kind of the pivot we’re seeing happen: Texas and Kansas State? Not a lot in common. Oklahoma and Alabama? If Baker Mayfield had held off Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl, they might pass for twins. USC and Oregon State? Some history, but not much besides that. UCLA and Michigan? Ringers for one another in a lot of meaningful ways. The Pac-12 could certainly do what the Big 12 did last summer and reload, then sign a short Grant of Rights, as Brett McMurphy reported was the expectation should the Pac-12 indeed survive this. That, though, acknowledges the disparity, because a short Grant of Rights is definitionally a short-term deal, and short-term deals are there to keep options open for those who want options to be open. Unless Washington State gets a lot better or Stanford decides to drop to Division III on grounds of principle, those schools cannot coexist as conference-mates in the modern world of college sports. I’m not sure Washington State and Washington can even coexist.
Why, though, did Kliavkoff single out the Big 12? Well, Yormark has been less coy about expanding than most commissioners are, so it may be as simple as that. It could also be that Kliavkoff is resentful towards the Big 12 for not ‘taking the high road’ like the Pac-12 did when Big 12 schools wanted to join it last summer (though that was likely a financial decision: our impression is that revenue-per-school in a Pac-12 with USC and UCLA trumps that of the new Big 12 trumps that of a new Pac-12). There was also the side of the Big 12/Pac-12 “failed merger” leaks where each side seemed to want to have been the one that said no. Regardless, it’s clear the Big 12 is under Kliavkoff’s skin, and the question is why the Big 12 is more under Kliavkoff’s skin than the ACC is, and the answer to that question is either that Kliavkoff is just annoyed by Yormark or that Kliavkoff finds the Big 12 to be an actual threat while the ACC’s whale of a TV rights package has rendered it unable to poach.
One last note, while we’re talking college football: Reporters are saying a 16-team playoff is a big possibility, but quieter reports have firmly indicated that conference championship games aren’t going anywhere (which passes the logic test with flying colors in a world where two conferences are the most powerful entities in college sports). Those two things don’t work together unless the regular season is shortened by a week (or more) or teams are willing to risk making 18-year-olds play as many as 17 games. I really think we’re going to land on twelve, possibly with a shortened regular season by a week, with the recognition that it’ll be very rare for a non-bye team to make the national championship and actually hit that 16 or 17-game max. There’s so much attention on playoff expansion, but that’s not the exciting thing that it was last offseason. Realignment is much more impactful for the future of the sport.
Sorry, actual last note: Malachi Nelson, the USC commit who recently passed Arch Manning in ESPN’s recruiting rankings? He’s going to visit Texas A&M. I would love to see the NIL numbers thrown around on that visit.
Omaha Is Iowa State’s
Not exactly a rekindling of the Nebraska rivalry, but Omaha Biliew (from Waukee High School), a 6’8” forward and the 12th-ranked recruit nationally, is coming to Iowa State. He’ll be a freshman in the fall of 2023.
Biliew is a gamechanger for an already strong Iowa State class, which now ranks third nationally. Some important caveats on that ranking: A quick spot check of the top ten and top 25 recruits reveals roughly half haven’t signed yet, so a lot of the cake is yet to be baked. More importantly, though, basketball recruiting rankings aren’t as telling as football recruiting rankings because of 1) the higher importance of individual players in basketball, where rosters are smaller and 2) the higher prevalence of impact transfers in college hoops. In football, recruiting rankings say a lot because they capture the pure athleticism present within a program. In basketball, it’s just so much more about the players themselves. Which still makes Iowa State’s spot in the rankings a great thing. They’ve got the 12th-ranked prospect. That’s enormous.
Is Biliew a potential one-and-done player? Yes. Anyone in that stratum could, if things go right, go pro after one year. More importantly, Biliew could follow in Tyrese Hunter’s footsteps and play in a safer, more comfortable environment in Ames his freshman year before moving on to a bigger program. This might sound bad, but it’s a great thing for the Cyclones. Would you rather have the Omaha Biliews of the world never come to Ames, or come and depart after a season? Those might be your realistic choices.
Packers PUPdates
Two previously unknown knee surgeries. First, there was the one for Christian Watson, who said he had lingering soreness after OTA’s and was going to need the surgery eventually but chose—with the Packers—to have it before camp, exchanging practice reps for full health.
The second one is more concerning: David Bakhtiari had another surgery. The third since his injury happened. It’s still possible he could play Week 1, and then play the whole season, but uncertainty is the overarching theme with this and him, which means just about anything is on the table.
Elsewhere, Dean Lowry’s been activated. Sammy Watkins was briefly on the Non-Football Injury list, but he’s back active.
In some of the bigger NFL news (or at least what probably should be on the bigger side—the Kyler Murray “independent study” clause mostly just sounds like further confirmation that the Murray/Cardinals situation is an odd one), Julio Jones is a Buccaneer. The Bucs are kind of like the Traveling Wilburys at the skill positions, but with a rotating cast. Elsewhere on the Bucs, Ryan Jensen hurt his knee and will miss the whole season. Finally, Ryan Kerrigan is retiring.
To take things back to the Pack, Green Bay was evidently in on Jones but didn’t come away with him. The fact they were in on him makes it sound like they’re still trying to add a wide receiver, which is reassuring especially with Watson somehow an even bigger unknown than was previously the case. A one-year deal like Jones’s for a reliable receiver would be the ideal, but there are downsides with everyone. For Jones, there’s the recent string of injuries. For anyone the Packers might get, it could be that, it could be age, it could be needing to give them more than a year.
**
The plan is for more notes tomorrow—we’ll see what’s been going on in the NHL and the NBA, and we’ll catch up on baseball beyond the zoomed-out, state-of-the-sport kind of thing we covered today—but for now, tonight’s viewing schedule, with the second-screen rotation in italics:
- 6:40 PM EDT: New York (NL) @ Miami, Bassitt vs. Alcantara (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Cleveland @ Tampa Bay, Bieber vs. Springs (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Milwaukee @ Boston, Woodruff vs. Davis (MLB TV/ESPN+)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Seattle @ Houston, Ray vs. Verlander (MLB TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Minnesota @ San Diego, Ryan vs. Snell (MLB TV)
- 10:15 PM EDT: Cubs @ San Francisco, Stroman vs. Cobb (Apple TV+)
