Daily News New York City. March 29, 2020

74 Sunday,March 29, 2020 DAILY NEWSNYDailyNews.com

BILL MADDEN

BASEBALL

S

o much uncertainty.

Baseball’s owners

and the players union

ha v e r e a c h e d a n

agreement on critical

salary and service time as

well as other issues, like the

draft, in the wake of the co-

ronavirus crisis. The most

important issue of all —

when the season will start —

is still very much up in the

air, and so, too, is the di-

lemma for hundreds of high

school and college players

fa c i n g a r u d e f i n a n c i a l

squeeze if they are not se-

lected in a draft shortened

to five rounds.

On the surface, you’d

have to say the players got a

major concession from the

owners on the service time

issue: If they are active for

the shortened season, they

still get a full year of service

ti m e. S o p l a y e r s l i k e

Mookie Betts, J.T. Real-

muto, Trevor Bauerand

Marcus Stroman are still

gu a r a n t e e d t h e i r f r e e

agency come November no

matter what happens with

the season. For the Dodgers,

who gave up outfielder Alex

Verdugo, with great poten-

tial, and a top prospect in

Jeter Downs for Betts, it

may be just tough luck for

them if they get only a lim-

ited season (or none) for

him. They made the trade.

They have to live with it.

Besides, they were always

the most likely team to sign

Betts as a free agent anyway.

One of the big trade-offs

for the owners, besides

agreement from the union

not to sue them for their full

salaries if there’s no season,

was the union agreeing to

limit the draft, which is now

slated to be moved from

June to sometime in July

and limited to five rounds.

For those players who are

dr a f t e d , n o t h i n g m u c h

changes other than their

bonuses being deferred into

July 2021 and 2022. But for

the hundreds of players not

drafted, they can be signed

for $10,000 or less.

This will represent an

enormous savings for the

owners who, even before

the coronavirus pandemic,

were looking to limit the

number of players in their

organizations by eliminat-

ing 42 minor league teams

and drastically shorten the

amount of rounds in the

draft. It does seem very un-

American that hundreds of

high school and college kids

who were looking at decent

six-figure bonuses if drafted

in the first 10 rounds, could

ha v e t h e i r n e g o t i a t i o n

rights bargained away by a

third party — the Players

As s o c i a t i o n — w h i c h

do e s n ’ t e v e n r e p r e s e n t

them.

Those kids are about to

find themselves in baseball

limbo. If they want to play

pr o b a s e b a l l t h i s y e a r,

they’ll have to settle for a

token $10,000. As one play-

er advisor/rep told me:

“The amateur players are

being railroaded. They get

to be the only Americans

who can be paid less than

the minimum wage.”

The high school kids can

merely opt to go to college,

or if they want to get drafted

next year, perhaps go to a

junior college. But what

about the college juniors

who choose to stay in school

and may lose part of their

sc h o l a r s h i p s w h i l e a l s o

risking having a bad year or

getting hurt and losing all

th e i r l e v e r a g e b e c a u s e

they’ll be a year older?

I’m told most of the clubs

already have prepared 75%

of their drafts through all of

last year’s scouting of the

high schools, colleges, Per-

fect Game tournaments,

Cape Cod League etc. plus

all the video at their dispos-

al. Still, as one scout told

me: “Even with all the info

we have, we’ll be kinda

drafting blind, having not

seen these kids this year,

which is why I’m sure is one

of the reasons they wanted

to limit it to five rounds.”

Last week, MLB sent out

amemorandum to all the

clubs informing them that

their scouts were prohib-

ited from having any con-

tact whatsoever with ama-

teur players under the pen-

alty of the scouts being fired

and the club losing a draft

pick. It’s understandable

that MLB is a little sensitive

about cheating these days.

P

e r h a p s o n e g o o d

thing that’s come out

of all this uncertainty

is the negotiations

between MLB and

MiLB over MLB’s proposal

to e l i m i n a t e 4 2 m i n o r

league teams now being on

hold indefinitely. There are

too many issues far more

important, and quite pos-

sibly a few minor league

clubs might not be able to

survive losing half their sea-

son or more. But even after

the coronavirus crisis has

passed and MLB gets back

to normal — and right now

even normal looks like a

season extending into No-

vember, quite possibly with

pl a y o f f g a m e s i n w a r m

weather or domed stadium

neutral sites — does MLB

really want to push this mi-

no r l e a g u e c o n t r a c t i o n

scheme and throw hun-

dreds more Americans out

of work?

Aside to Mr. Manfred:

That would not be a good

look.

BILL

MADDEN

BASEBALL

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred made some big moves this week amid coronavirus shutdown. AP

Prospects to

feel the pinch

Shortened draft due to shutdown

will cost prep and college players