Feb 18

Open Thread #8, 2022

The only thing new about the negotiations between players and owners is the brevity of yesterday’s meeting: 15 minutes. From SB Nation:

ESPN’s Jeff Passan has some details of the MLBPA’s proposal. The union backed off its request for salary arbitration for all players with 2+ years of service time and instead requested 80% of the players. The players also requested an increase in the pre-arb bonus pool from $100 million to $115 million. Remember the league offered just $15 million for the bonus pool in their latest offer.

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports that the league consider’s the union’s most recent proposal of changes to the arbitration system a non-starter.

In other unhappy news, Calvin Jones has died of cancer. He was 58. He was the Dodger scout who studied and advocated signing Clayton Kershaw back in 2005-2006. Published six years ago at Bleacher Report, it’s a good story.

A couple of things about the 2006 draft: it had some very good pitchers in it. Here are the six players who went ahead of Kershaw:

  1. Luke Hochevar
  2. Greg Reynolds
  3. Evan Longoria
  4. Brad Lincoln
  5. Brandon Morrow
  6. Andrew Miller
  7. Clayton Kershaw

Then, three picks later, the Giants selected Tim Lincecum. Right after that the Diamondbacks picked Max Scherzer.

Not a bad draft, huh?