Blink and You’ve Missed Them

I got real enjoyment following Jared Koenig‘s recent major league shot with the Oakland A’s. I had noticed Koenig back in 2018 when he had a big season in the fly-by-night Independent-A Pacific Association, truly the bottom of the professional baseball barrel. The start of the Covid pandemic in the early Spring of 2020 killed off the Pacific Association after six seasons of play, apparently for good.

Koenig struck out 140 batters in 96.2 IP for the 2018 San Rafael Pacifics, which earned him a promotion to the Frontier League in 2019, where he struck out 133 batters in 104.1 IP and posted an excellent 2.24 ERA. He continued his terrific 2019 campaign with six well-pitched starts in the winter Australian League.

The Frontier League and the Australian League are still a long, long way from the Majors, but they are at least leagues where someone might take notice if you play as well as Koenig had. The Oakland A’s clearly took notice because they signed him in December 2019 and brought him back in 2021 after the Covid pandemic prevented Koenig from playing in 2020. It certainly did not hurt that Koenig had once been a 35th round draft pick by the Chicago White Sox out of an Arizona JC in 2014, even if he hadn’t pitched well enough subsequently at four-year schools to get drafted again.

Koenig had a strong season at AA Midland in 2021, and started the 2022 season at AAA Las Vegas, a tough place to pitch. In eight starts and nine appearances, Koenig posted a 2.21 ERA and a pitching line of 53 IP, 39 hits, 4 HR and 15 BB allowed and 61 K, earning a shot in the worst-in-the-AL A’s’ starting rotation.

Koenig was not surprisingly overmatched in his first taste of MLB action at age 28. Although the A’s won two of his four starts, Koenig had only one effective start and 6.38 ERA. He did earn a major league victory, which I am certain made all the toil for peanuts Koenig went through to earn that moment worth it in his own mind. His peripheral numbers suggested he needs more time working on his pitching at AAA, and the A’s sent him down on June 26th.

2022 has been a great year for the Pecos League’s business model. The Pecos League is a pay-to-play league where players have to pay to submit an application and then get paid a stipend of $550 for a compressed 11-week season. That’s $50 a week, and not enough to feed a hungry young athlete.

The Pecos League is for undrafted college players not impressive enough to sign contracts with the better and more established Indy-Leagues (the Atlantic League, the American Association and the Frontier). The business models of the best Indy-A leagues still requires each team to fill at least a third (usually more) of their rosters with players with no or only one season of prior professional baseball experience in order to stay below each team’s salary cap amount. Thus, the players in the Pecos League are all guys who just want to give professional baseball a try even if they have to pay to do it.

By my count, at least five players who played in the Pecos League’s first ten seasons from 2011 to 2020 have subsequently made the majors. Jon Edwards (2011) has probably had the most successful pro career of anyone starting his career in the Pecos League. He pitched 49 games in parts of four major league seasons, enough to earn his MLB pension, and then pitched two years in Japan for NPB’s Hanshin Tigers, where my sources say he earned a total of 160,000,000 yen, which amounted to almost $1.5M when Edwards earned it in 2020-2021.

Chris Smith, who pitched all of four games for the Blue Jays in 2017, also pitched in the Pecos League in 2011, after one unsuccessful relief appearance in the Frontier League in 2010.

April 2021 White Sox phenom Yermin Mercedes played in the Pecos League in 2014. Mercedes had played three years in the Dominican Summer League as a Washington Nationals prospect, but failed to stick and used the Pecos League for his age 21 season as a way to get more professional experience and keep himself in the eyes of MLB scouts. It worked, as the Baltimore Orioles signed him to a contract in 2015.

Jared Koenig pitched in the Pecos League in 2017, pitching well enough to earn a five-start look from the American Association’s Salina Stockade later in the summer 2017 season. The best performers in the Pecos League typically get shots from American Association teams as soon the 11-week Pecos League season ends. Most do not stick in the American Association on their first attempts, as the jump in competition is steep, probably the equivalent of jumping from the Dominican Summer League directly to a full-season MLB-system A league. That’s how Koenig ended up pitching in the Pacific Association.

However, Koenig is not the only 2017 Pecos League/Pacific Association pitcher to pitch in the major leagues this year. Logan Gillaspie pitched 10.1 innings in 11 relief appearances for the Orioles this season in May and June before the O’s sent him down to AAA Norfolk on June 18th.

Gillaspie’s 4.35 ERA for the Orioles wasn’t bad, but his peripheral numbers were much less impressive. However, Gillaspie has pitched well in 19.1 AA and AAA innings this year, and, like Koenig, could return to the Show later this year if he can continue to pitch effectively at the AAA level.

Gillaspie was only 20 when he played in the Pecos League, apparently coming out of a JC in Oxnard. Although he also failed to stick in a brief opportunity with the Salina Stockade and finished the season in the Pacific Association, he had the advantage of being younger than most of the players coming out of four-year schools in the Pecos League and received a contract with the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization before the 2018 season began. There is no substitute for tender age when it comes to getting a minor league contract from an MLB organization.

For a league like the Pecos League, having two veterans reach the major leagues in the same season is pure public relations gold. The league can continue to pay its players peanuts for years to come on the proven-not-impossible (but still extremely unlikely) dream that playing in the Pecos could be a stepping stone to the majors.

Other than Koenig and Gillaspie, the only other Pacific Association veteran to reach the majors that I could find is now-former Tampa Bay Ray Chris Mazza. After being released by the Marlins’ organization, Mazza, a Diablo Valley product, was able to turn effective pitching for the San Rafael Pacifics in 2018 into a contract with the Mets’ organization and reached the majors only a year later.

Mazza pitched briefly for the Mets, Red Sox and Rays over the last four major league seasons, but the Rays released him on June 22nd. At age 32, Mazza may have to return to the Indy-A leagues if he wants to keep his professional career going. At least, he has earned his MLB pension with more than a year of credited major league service.

The Pacific Association was only able to attract about half a dozen former major league players in its six years of operation, perhaps most famously Jose Canseco when he was in his early 50’s.

As a final note, the San Rafael Pacifics joined the Pecos League as a franchise for the 2021 season, and the Pecos league also has a franchise in Martinez, California, where I saw my one and only Pacific League game in 2018.

Brad Strauss, Indy-A Star

A player I did not mention in my last post on the Best Foreign Players in CPBL History is Brad Strauss. He led the Taiwan Major League (“TML”) with a .387 batting average in 1999, his third and final TML season.

Strauss is the rarest of rare birds: an American player who found success in Asia, who did not play even one game in the MLB minor league system. He played 11 seasons in North America entirely in the Independent-A Leagues.

He came out of Catawba College, a school that more famously produced Johnny Temple and more recently Jerry Sands. A big 1996 season for the Minot Mallards of the fly-by-night Prairie League (it lasted only three 80-game seasons) in which he batted .365 and blasted 27 HR in 79 games somehow caught the attention of a TML team.

Just as mysteriously, Strauss left the TML after his league-leading 1999 campaign for a presumably much more modest Atlantic League paycheck. He played eight years in the Atlantic League, mostly for the Camden Riversharks for whom he led the best of the Indy-A Leagues with a .331 batting average in 2003.

Clearly, Strauss could hit a little. Unfortunately, while he likely earned some money playing in the TML and wowed some Taiwanese baseball fans, it’s just about impossible for anyone who can’t read Chinese to find those stats and learn of his exploits. There isn’t a lot of renown for even the greatest of Indy-A stars, although we here at Burly’s Baseball Musings like to shine a light on forgotten baseball stars when we can.

Minor League Strikeout Kings

I recently saw a couple of twitter posts claiming that Nelson Figueroa is the “All-Time” Minor League Strikeout King with 1,505 minor league strikeouts. Figueroa was a fine Minor League star of the modern era, but he isn’t even in the top ten all-time in terms of Minor League strikeouts.

The misconception that Figueroa is the minor league strikeout GOAT is mainly due to the fact that Baseball Reference’s minor league stats prior to 1946 are woefully inadequate. The actual all-time Minor League Strikeout King is either Oyster Joe Martina or George Brunet, depending on whether you consider the summer Mexican League a “minor league.”

According to my mid-1980’s copies of Minor League Stars Volumes I and II published by SABR, Oyster Joe struck out 2,770 minor leaguers in a pro career that ran from 1910 to 1931, mostly for the Beaumont Oilers in the Texas League and the New Orleans Pelicans in the Southern Association. By today’s standards, both leagues would probably classify as AA with the Southern Association being the better circuit during the years Martina played in them.

Oyster Joe spent only one season in the major leagues, as a 34 year old rookie for the 1924 World Champion Washington Senators. He went 6-8 with a 4.67 ERA. His main utility was eating up 125.1 IP, fifth best on the team, and he pitched one shutout inning in the World Series against the New York Giants.

George Brunet went 69-93 across parts of 15 major league seasons, most notably for the California Angels in the late 1960’s. When his major league career ended at age 36, he pitched in AAA until age 38 and then pitched in the Mexican League until age 49. He last pitched professionally in 1984.

Brunet struck out 3,175 minor league batters, well more than 1,000 of those in his last 11 or 12 seasons in Mexico.

Another minor leaguer worth mentioning here is Kewpie Dick Barrett (he was only 5’9 and 175 lbs and even then that was small for a right-hander). Barrett struck out 1,866 Pacific Coast League batters in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when the PCL was the best of the what we would now call the AAA leagues. Most of Barrett’s major league career took place between 1943 and 1945 between the ages of 36 and 38, when most of the best major league players were serving in the military.

Barrett’s 1,866 Ks in the PCL are the most by a pitcher in a single top minor league, what we would now call AA and AAA.

San Francisco Giants 2020 Draft Picks

The Giants selected seven players (Overall Nos. 13, 49, 67, 68, 85, 114 and 144) in this Covid-19 Striken 5-round draft.

13.  C Patrick Bailey (NC State, age 21.)  Bailey looks like a legitimate 1st round pick, at least in terms of his bat.  In roughly 2.25 college seasons, he has a career slash line of .302/.411/.568, certainly fine numbers for a backstop.

There has been some comment regarding Bailey’s selection, given that the Giants used the No. 2 overall pick two years ago on catcher Joey Bart.  Giants President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi responded that you draft for ability, not need, and you can’t have too many good catchers.  Zaidi is certainly right that a team is foolish not to draft the best available player at their first round draft spot, because the odds of drafting even a 5+ WAR MLB player after the first two selections of the first round is less than 50%.

Bailey is a switch-hitter, whom the scouting reports like best for his power and plate discipline and less for his hit tool.  The scouting reports also seem to think he’s a true catcher and not a bat-first player who might get moved out from behind the plate as a professional.

49.  3B/RHP Casey Schmitt (San Diego State, 21.)  Casey Schmitt was a surprise to be taken this high.  He has a career college slash line of .295/.366/.408, with an .865 OPS as a sophomore and an .837 OPS in only 16 games as a sophomore.  That doesn’t look a future major league hitter to me, but his pitching numbers are better: a 2.48 career college ERA with 17 saves and pitching line of 87 IP, 70 hits, three HRs, 29 BB and 78 Ks. Schmitt’s batting and pitching numbers in the Cape Cod League in summer 2019 reflect his college numbers.

Zaidi apparently like Schmitt as an all-around good baseball player, and I certainly hope he will be developed as both a pitcher and third-sacker as a professional.

67. LHP Nick Swiney (NC State, 21.)  Swiney went 15-1 in college, and, while his 3.51 career college ERA wasn’t overly impressive, his 174 Ks in 115.1 IP sure is.  He was wild as a sophomore, but looked really good in four starts this year before the shut-down.  Some scouts project him as a major league relief pitcher, but the Giants are apparently hoping his fastball will gain velocity if he adds weight to his 6’3″ 187 lbs frame.

68.  SS Jimmy Glowenke (Dallas Baptist, 21.)  The Giants sure like Glowenke more than anybody else did.  MLB’s Draft Tracker ranks him only 171st.  He slashed .340/.433/.506 mostly against second-tier Missouri Valley Conference competition.  He did bat .296 (but with only a .727 OPS) in the Cape Cod League last summer.  MLB.com doesn’t think Glowenke has the range to stay at SS and sees him eventually being moved to 2B, because his arm doesn’t suggest 3B except in a utility role.

85.  LHP Kyle Harrison (De La Salle HS (Concord CA), 18.)  MLB.com liked Harrison more than MLB teams did, but he could be a good pick at 85 overall.  He’s also a local boy.  He’s listed at 6’2″ and 200 lbs.  MLB.com says he’s especially tough on left-handed hitters, although his stuff may limit his ceiling.  He’s a UCLA commit, but I expect the Giants will offer him enough money to get him signed.

114.  RHP R. J. Dabovich (Arizona State, 21.)  Dabovich had a 4.04 ERA and 64K in 64.2 IP in parts of two seasons with the Sun Devils.  MLB.com describes him as a two-pitch pitcher with a 97 mph fastball, so he’s likely to be a reliever at the major league level.

144.  RHP Ryan Murphy (Lemoyne College, 20.)  Pitched effectively at a small four-year school — career college 3.40 ERA with 215 K in 203.2 IP.  He pitched well in the New England Collegiate Summer League in 2019, but he’s small for a right-hander at 6’1″ and 185 lbs.  The Giants may be hoping to save some money on his slot signing bonus to offer to high schooler Harrison.

Steve Dalkowski Passes

News on mlbtraderumors.com is that Steve Dalkowski, aged 80, died today of the coronavirus.  Dalkowski is one of the most famous players in baseball history who never reached who never reached the majors.

Dalkowski was a smallish lefthander (5’11”, 175 lbs) who threw incredibly hard but had no idea where it was going.  Many players who played against him said he threw harder than anyone they’d ever faced.

In his first season in a 1957 Class D (rookie) league, he struck 121 batters in 62 innings pitched but also walked an incredible 129.  He was certainly the scariest pitcher many players ever faced because he just might kill you.

Three years later, he both struck out and walked 262 in 170 IP in what was then the Class C California League (an full season A league in today’s game).  He walked 196 and struck out 150 in 103 IP a step up the minor league ladder in 1961.

Dalkowski had his best minor league season in 1962 at age 23 for the Eastern League’s Elmira Pioneers, which played at what we’d call AA level today.  He only went 7-10 but had a 3.04 ERA and, while striking out 192 batters in 160 IP, he walked a modest for him 117 batters.

Earl Weaver, before his great Orioles days, was Dalkowski’s manager in 1962.  He told Dalkowski, a starter, to throw just the fastball and slider and to throw every pitch at the middle of the plate.  Even Weaver said Dalkowski threw harder than Nolan Ryan, and he saw plenty of both.

A 2013 article says, “On a $5 bet, Dalkowski threw a baseball through a wooden fence. On a $10 bet, he threw a ball from the center-field fence over the 40-foot high backstop screen behind home plate.”

The 2013 article says that “Nuke” LaLoosh from Bull Durham was based on Dalkowski, and Kevin Cosner’s “Crash” Davis was based on Dalkowski’s roommate and former SF Giants and  manager Joe Altobelli.  “Alto once quipped, ‘I didn’t room with Dalkowski, I roomed with his suitcase!'” which is an old, old baseball line.

However, Dalkowski’s control really hadn’t improved, it’s likely he blew out his elbow tendon in 1963, and he was a hard drinker, so he was out of organized baseball by the end of the 1965 season at age 26.  Aside from being small, Dalkowski had a compact delivery, but it didn’t improve his ability to throw strikes or diminish from his fastball speed, at least until after the injury when his fastball dropped to 90 mph.

In separate games in his career, Dalkowski struck out 21 and walked 21.  He is said to have thrown a pitch that tore of a batter’s ear, but he didn’t actually hit that many batters, a season high of nine in 170 IP in 1960.  Hitters were “loose” when they got into the box against “White Lightning,” meaning they were every bit ready to get out of the way.

Dalkowski had a hard life after baseball.  He still drank hard, which took his mind prematurely.  It says something about modern medicine that he lived long enough to be felled by the coronavirus.  He was 80 and had lived in a care home in New Britain, Connecticut for many years.

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The Only Game in Town

Professional baseball is back — in Taiwan.

We are now six games into the 2020 CPBL season with the games being played in empty stadiums but broadcast on TV.  It is surely better than nothing for a baseball hungry world.

The best game pitched so far was former New York Yankee and half-season KBO ace Esmil Rogers‘ effort earlier today.  He allowed one run, earned, on six hits and a walk in seven innings pitched with 11 strikeouts.

I had questions about how Rogers would pitch in the extremely hitter friendly CPBL.  Despite the past KBO success, he’s now 34 and got hit pretty hard in the Mexican League in 2019, which was also an extreme hitters’ league.  CPBL teams love foreign pitchers with a history of success in the KBO and/or NPB, and so far so good for Rogers.

Former Seattle Mariner and SoftBank Hawk Ariel Miranda and former Toronto Blue Jay and KBO ace Ryan Feierabend both looked good on opening day, but neither reached the seventh inning nor got a decision.  Former San Francisco Giants farmhand, brief Houston Astro and former KBO ace Henry Sosa looked good in his first CPBL start of the young CPBL season, allowing one run in 7 IP on four hits and a walk while striking out five.

[Kudos to baseballreference.com — they are publishing CPBL stats for the first time this season — maybe my two emails over the last three or four years had some effect… but probably not, at least not by themselves.]

CPBL teams decided to spend more money on the four foreign pitchers each of the league’s four franchises can sign (three on the major league squad and one in the minors, with the ability to promote and demote foreign players without having to release someone for the first time this season) this past off-season.  CPBL teams decided to do this in part to get more attention from the baseball world, but more because the Lamigo (now Rakuten) Monkeys have completely dominated the league the last few seasons because they have a disproportionate share of the best Taiwanese hitters.  The other three teams realized the only way they can compete is by spending more money to get better foreign pitchers.

Even though the CPBL is going to lose money this season because fans probably won’t be attending any games this year, as the only pro game in the world as I write this post, teams’ decisions to spend more money to put on a better product may well pay dividends when a coronavirus vaccine becomes widely available.

The best game pitched by a Taiwanese starter so far is the three earned run, six inning outing with seven Ks thrown by the Brothers’ Huang Enci (黃恩賜) — the translations provided by Google Translate for Chinese names are not necessarily the conventional ones.  He’s 24 this year and appears to be a work in progress.

33 year old former Cleveland Indian C.C. Lee has six Ks in 3.1 innings pitched in two relief appearances, but he’s also blown a save, which happens a lot in the CPBL.  21 year old rookie (he pitched 18.2 innings CPBL major league innings across 16 relief appearances last season) Wu Jun-wei (吳俊偉) has struck out seven in three scoreless relief innings

Former Detroit Tiger Ryan Carpenter and former Padre/Mariner/Cub Donn Roach got hit pretty hard in their first ever CPBL starts.  I had my doubts about the Roach signing after a rough 2019 AAA International League season, but one start doesn’t prove much.

The big story at the plate so far is last season’s home run champ Chu Yu-Hsien (朱育賢), who hit five home runs in his first two games this season and is currently batting .692 (9 for 13) with a 2.538 OPS.  Aside from his league leading 30 dingers last season, he batted .347 with a .605 slugging percentage, which were only good enough for fifth and fourth best respectively, in the hit-happy 4-team circuit.  Here’s video of two of his 2020 home runs.

It’s worth noting that the Monkeys have scored 9, 15 and 11 runs in their three 2020 games so far.  Not surprisingly, they are 3-0 in spite of having allowed 8 and 10 runs in two of the games.  You know what they say — the best defense is a good offense.

Best Foreign Pitching Prospects for Taiwan’s CPBL 2020

Last off-season I had fun writing a post on the best foreign pitching prospects for Taiwan’s CPBL.  Henry Sosa was the one of many players I name-checked in the article, and I predicted he’d sign with a Mexican League team.

The point is there are so many pitchers available with the right talent level and potentially in the CPBL’s price range that it’s kind of a fool’s errand to try to predict who exactly CPBL teams will sign, unless you are reading reports out of Taiwan in Chinese coming from sources that actually work for one of the CPBL’s four teams.

Nonetheless, it’s still fun to identify some pitchers most MLB fans have never heard of but who still have enough left they could be stars in the CPBL earning at least $150,000 to start if they can last a full season. There were a flurry of foreign pitcher signings in the CPBL last week, but there still appear to be as many as four remaining roster spots available for foreign pitchers as I write this.

Former foreign KBO pitchers are always very popular with CPBL teams.  Christian Friedrich (32 years old in 2020), Joe Wieland (30), Deck McGuire (31), Felix Doubront (32), Pat Dean (31), Ryan Feierabend (34), David Hale (32), Tyler Cloyd (33) and Scott Copeland (32) are all over age-30 former KBOers who are still looking for a contract somewhere.

Christian Friedrich is my favorite as a potential CPBLer.  He hasn’t pitched in the MLB-system since 2017 due to an arm injury.  In 2019, he split the season between the Atlantic League and the KBO and pitcher very well in both places.  He’s not returning to the KBO to start the 2020 season (all the KBO roster spots for foreign pitchers are now filled), and at age 32, he might find it hard to get a call from an MLB organization.

Also, by my calculation Friedrich only earned about $160K last season, which is an amount a CPBL team could easily afford.  Almost all of these pitchers would be a good bet for a CPBL team, so long as any of them are willing to pitch in Taiwan for what the Rakuten Monkeys or the 7/11 Uni-Lions are willing to pay.  The ChinaTrust Brothers and the Fubon Guardians spent big on foreign pitchers this off-season, but their roster spots are now filled.

I like Feierabend too, because as a knuckleballer, he could still potentially pitch for years in the CPBL even though he’s already 34.

Pitchers who pitched well in the Caribbean Winter Leagues are a good bet for CPBL teams.  Teddy Stankiewicz (26) , who pitched well at AAA for the Red Sox last year and in both Mexico and the Dominic Republic this winter, would be a great prospect, but I expect an MLB organization will eventually get around to signing him.  David Kubiak (30) pitched so well in the Dominican Republic this winter, he deserves another shot in the CPBL.

Eric Stout (27), Jason Garcia (27), Justin Nicolino (28), Jake Paulson (28), Giovanni Soto (29), Mitch Lambson (29), Forrest Snow (31), Joe Van Meter (31), Hector Santiago (32) and Mitch Atkins (34) round out a list of pitchers who were good this winter and are still looking for summer 2020 jobs.

CPBL teams like AAA pitchers who have aged out and didn’t quite pitch well enough the previous season to receive a contract for next season.  The current possibilities include Dan Camarena (27), Dillon Overton (28), Tyler J. Alexander (28), Ryan Merritt (28), Parker Bridwell (28), Daniel Corcino (29), Drew Hutchison (29), Dietrich Enns (29), Erasmo Ramirez (30), Kyle Lobstein (30), Seth Maness (31), J.J. Hoover (32), and Logan Ondrusek (35).

I still like Tyler Alexander and Kyle Lobstein, whom I listed last off-season, as potential CPBL pitchers, but any of these pitchers would be good bets.  J.J. Hoover pitched in the Australian Baseball League this winter, which is great back door to the CPBL, because it’s easier and cheaper for CPBL teams to scout players Down Under than in the Americas.  Thomas Dorminy (28) and Rick Teasley (29) are two former CPBL pitchers pitching in Australia this winter, who, I bet, would jump at the chance to pitch in Taiwan again at CPBL salaries, even at the low end.

CPBL teams like Mexican League pitchers too.  Matt Gage (27), Andre Rienzo (31) and Dustin Crenshaw (31) are current Mexican League pitchers who might be available this off-season.

Needless to say, many of the pitchers I’ve listed will get minor league offers between now and the end of Spring Training, or they will elect to pitch in the Atlantic League or the Mexican League in the hopes of working their way back to the MLB system.  Even so, there are lots of options out their for CPBL teams, if they are willing to turn over every stone and kick a few tires.

Indy-A CanAm and Frontier Leagues Have Merged

I only just discovered (the move was announced about a month ago) that the independent-A CanAm League and Frontier League will merge for the 2020 season.  Five Can-Am League teams (the New Jersey Jackels, Quebec Capitales, Rockland Boulders, Sussex County (NJ) Miners and Trois-Rivieres Aigles) will join nine Frontier League teams (all but the River City Rascals) will form two seven-team divisions.  As you might have guessed, the River City Rascals had the Frontier League’s worst overall attendance in 2019; however, the possibly now defunct Ottawa Champions had attendance better than three of the merging CanAm League teams.  You can read more about the merger here.

What I find interesting about the merger is that the two leagues have traditionally featured different levels of Indy-A play, with the Frontier League featuring more 23 year old college grads who went undrafted by MLB, while the CanAm featured older players and was more in line with the higher American Association level of play.  In fact, for a number of years the CanAm League had a relationship with the American Association whereby the leagues would play a certain number of inter-league games each season.

However, CanAm league attendance never approached that of the better drawing American Association teams, but was able to maintain a high level of play because it was seen as the best place to get noticed by MLB scouts if you weren’t quite good enough to get an Atlantic League roster spot entering the season.

The Frontier League draws slightly better than the CanAm League, but also traditionally had lower total payrolls in accordance with playing generally younger players.  Will the quality of merged league play be closer to the CanAm League or the Frontier League?  That remains to be seen.  The finances suggest that former CanAm League teams will sign more 23 and 24 year olds than previously and play at closer to a Frontier League level, however.  The merged league hopes to expand further, perhaps to a 16- or 20-team circuit, but that remains to be seen.

The merger will probably mean fewer jobs for older players cut loose from the MLB system.  Both the American Association and Atlantic League have roster limits on the number of older veteran players, and the attendance for the weaker teams in each circuit don’t suggest that either league can afford to pay for more older veteran players unless the vets can be forced to take a class pay cut — players are in both leagues are usually paid a flat monthly salary based on years of professional experience.

It’s possible that a few vets will be willing to play for less money in the fly-by-night Indy-A leagues like the Pacific Association and the Empire League, but again, that remains to be seen.

Hiroshima Carp to Post 2B Ryosuke Kikuchi

NPB’s Hiroshima Toyo Carp have announced their intention to post their slick-fielding 2Bman Ryosuke Kikuchi for MLB teams this off-season.  I don’t think this Kikuchi has the bat to draw major league interest, but we’ll have to wait and see.

mlbtraderumors’ post on the subject notes that Kikuchi is an absolutely terrific defender and provides numerous video clips to prove it.  I’d guess that Kikuchi would prove an elite defensive 2Bman even in MLB.

However, Kikuchi just does not get on base enough to hold a major league regular position for long.  The last three seasons, his age 27-29 seasons, Kikuchi has posted on-base percentages of .311, .301 and .313.  I feel with near certainty those NPB numbers would translate to less than .300 in MLB.  Kikuchi has some pop, hitting 13 or 14 HRs each of last three seasons, along with between 27 and 36 doubles.  However, the home runs are likely to all but disappear in MLB’s larger ballparks against better league-average pitching.

Could Kikuchi be worth a two-year, $2M guarantee from an MLB team to be a middle infield super-sub? Maybe.  I will note that with all the infield shifting and launch angle swinging in today’s game, Kikuchi’s 2B defense probably isn’t as valuable to an MLB team as would be to an NPB team.  I don’t see him having the opportunity to make as many plays in MLB as he has in Japan, not least because he’s no spring chicken going into his age 30 season.

The Carp are posting Kikuchi because the team feels fairly certain they will lose Kikuchi next off-season when he gets his domestic free agent rights.  It would not surprise me to see Kikuchi get at least a three-year $12M offer from one of NPB’s wealthy teams next off-season, and he’d be worth it to those teams.  I don’t see him being worth that kind of money to an MLB team, where glove-tree middle infielders are a dime a dozen.

As a completely unrelated note, the Padres just released RHP Eric Yardley.  He pitched pretty well for the Friars last year in ten relief appearances as a 28 year old rookie, but, again, he’s no spring chicken.

What is interesting about Yardley is that he’s one of those extremely rare players who started his pro career in the Independent-A Pecos League but ultimately reached the majors.  Players only earn $50 a week to play in the Pecos League, and they are almost exclusively players who just finished a four-year college career, aren’t good enough to make even a Frontier League roster, but just can’t give up the pro baseball dream.

The Pecos League website lists all of 20 players to have reached even the affiliated minor leagues in the Pecos League’s nine year history.  Chris Smith also accomplished the feat of eventually reaching the majors, but I’m not sure there are many (or any) others.  I hope another MLB team picks up Yardley in time for the start of the 2020 season, but guys with Yardley’s Indy-A ball roots usually don’t get much respect from MLB organizations.

MLB Proposes Eliminating 40+ Minor League Affiliates

As part of the negotiations between MLB and minor league teams over a new Professional Baseball Agreement set to take effect after the 2020, MLB is proposing major revisions to the current minor league system, including, most significantly, the elimination of up to 42 mostly lower minor league teams, amounting to about one-quarter of all existing affiliated minor league clubs.  Here’s a post from mlbtraderumors.com about MLB’s proposals.

MLB wants minor league facilities (i.e., ballparks) to conform to higher standards, and it wants to geographically re-organize the existing leagues in order to put minor league affiliates closer to the major league clubs, to reduce travel for minor league players and presumably to reduce travel costs, although travel costs are probably payed by the mostly independently owned minor league teams.  MLB also wants to increase minor league pay, probably to head off minimum wage violation lawsuits brought by minor league players.

MLB’s proposals are merely a starting point for negotiations, based on MLB’s desire to compel minor league teams to fund improvements to  their facilities and contribute to higher salaries for minor league players.  However, as part of the package of proposals MLB is also suggesting that the short-season rookie and low-A leagues be eliminated, and the MLB Draft be moved back to August and reduced to only 20 or 25 rounds.

Undrafted players would then have the option of playing in the Independent-A leagues or playing in a proposed “Dream League,” which would be a joint MLB-MiLB quasi-independent-A league.  All major league teams would be allowed a maximum of five minor league affilitiates in the United States and Canada, the four full-season levels and a rookie league where teams play in each organization’s Spring Training complex in Arizona or Florida.  Teams would be limited to 150 minor league contracts, plus the 40 players on the 40-man roster.

The proposed changes are the most dramatic since the minor leagues were reorganized in 1962.

The proposals are at their core clearly about MLB reducing its current player development costs.  However, they might in the long run be penny-wise and pound-foolish.  Minor league teams generate a lot of interest for both major league and professional baseball in cities without major league clubs.  The value of this good will and interest aren’t easily quantifiable, but at a time when baseball seems to be losing popularity among large segments of the American public in a way that football (at least so far) and basketball are not, dramatic cut-backs to affiliated minor league teams doesn’t sound like a good idea.  Such dramatic changes are also likely to generate large numbers of lawsuits, which may further tarnish MLB’s image.