March 26, 2015

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle:

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

posted by huddle to general at 06:00 AM - 4 comments

Would really like the next MLB collective bargaining agreement to get rid of the option to postpone the clock on a player's career by keeping him down for a month. Seems like every year the Spring Training buzz is about a Next Big Thing who we won't get to see. Maybe it gives people something to talk about.

Speaking of which, my daily baseball trivia calendar wants "four players who would be eligible for a Solar-System Team". I can ignore the weird hyphenation but disappointed them didn't buy my idea for Melky Way Cabrera.

posted by yerfatma at 01:33 PM on March 26, 2015

Yeah - it seems like a lose/lose for players and teams to have a rule that you can get around by sending a guy down for two weeks. Fixing it will be a battle, but once it's fixed it will be better for everyone.

The competitiveness of the big league game takes a hit for what could easily be a straight rule on whether or not a guy plays a particular year or not. Similar to the option rules, they often mean lesser players are in the bigs for roster management reasons.

Sure, there might be edge cases where a guy gets 10 at-bats, gets hurt, and then the team loses a year of eligibility, but in general simplifying these rules would make it more likely the right guys are the right levels for the right reasons.

posted by dfleming at 03:30 PM on March 26, 2015

my daily baseball trivia calendar wants "four players who would be eligible for a Solar-System Team"

Not sure if there are four specific players who are more correct than any others, but you could maybe knock out a complete answer with one response - Cassiopeia.

posted by beaverboard at 04:34 PM on March 26, 2015

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