Under The Knife 6/16/23

Baseball wants a salary cap … on the front office. Discussion and rumor on this has been around for a week, but Evan Drellich at The Athletic had the first open story on it I’ve seen. Put aside how ridiculously underpaid most staffers in a front office are and limiting what a team can do in terms of salary and numbers of staffers is the ultimate self-own for owners.

Front office staffers already make significantly less and do much more work than they would in the private sector. Limiting the number of them is going to make things worse, or it’s going to force the kind of outsourcing that I thought would happen ahead of the minor league CBA. Biomechanics? Either teams will dump it or just take what they get with Statcast/Hawkeye. Sports medicine is already a barebones, with two or three - usually two - Athletic Trainers that travel with the team, then some physical therapists (often outsourced), and an S&C staff that is usually one per affiliate with a couple at the top.

Inside the front office, analysts of all types have been doing all sorts of work, often being the balance between payroll and results. The Rays have hired, built, and graduated a high number of these and in large part, the relatively small amount of money that Stu Sternberg has put into that staffing has a better return than what they’ve put into free agents. Other teams have tried to follow, or have just hired the Rays’ best away, though putting the whole system in place is difficult.

For those already trying to outsource, we’ll see if that becomes an advantage. The Dodgers’ venture capital arm has put out Zelus Analytics and Breakaway Data, two areas that would likely be limited. Would other teams jump in on companies funded in part by the Dodgers, even if they’re best of breed? Would a team just hire Wake Forest to work with their pitchers rather than build a “Gas Station” type of facility? Why not just send all a team’s players to CSP or Exos in the offseason, the way the NBA does with P3?

This plan is the opposite of what baseball should be doing. Results are what should count, not capping expenses. If a billionaire doesn’t want to own a team and invest in it, there’s plenty on the Allen list that do.

Deep breath, and on to the injuries:

ANTHONY RENDON, 3B LAA (bruised wrist)
GIO URSHELA, IF LAA (bruised hip)
ZACH NETO, SS LAA (strained oblique)

It wasn’t a good night to be an Angel. I’ve often talked about the “injury stack” here, where an injury at a single position forces a team to drop down the depth chart and can have a negative effect on the construction of a roster. Even in today’s 26 and taxi rosters, the “need” for 13 and 14 pitchers makes it tight for most teams. Most teams don’t end up with three players in a stack going down on one night either. Anthony Rendon and Zack Neto would be backed up by Gio Urshela, who’s functionally the backup for every infielder. Now, one is already on the IL and two are very much in question.

The simplest issue is Anthony Rendon, who must have some sort of permanent place in the training room by now. He was hit on the wrist by a pitch, but because of the lack of players, Rendon had to stay in the game despite not being able to swing. He went 0 for 3 with 3 K, reasonably, and had imaging done after the game. That’s not a good sign and there’s whispers that the team is worried Rendon will need an IL stint. Even if he can avoid the IL, he’s unlikely to be available for a day or two with the bruising and swelling, so the traveling secretary has to be scrambling to get two, maybe three players from Salt Lake or Huntsville.

Zach Neto is on the IL, as the rookie strained his oblique on a warm up throw in the first inning. He had to be removed and the IL decision was quick. The quick-moving rookie has been durable throughout college and his short minor league career, so this appears to be one of those things, but extremely bad timing. Andrew Velazquez will take his place on the roster, though how the Angels deploy him and Luis Rengifo remains to be seen.

As for Urshela, he had a very awkward fall over first as he tried to beat out a double play. Nice hustle, but he was on crutches afterwards, with Phil Levin acknowledging he was headed for the IL. The move hasn’t been made officially, because he was headed for imaging after the game, with more worries that this will be an extended absence and an IL stint at the very least. The biggest concern is that there’s soft tissue injury inside the hip, perhaps a labrum from the bone being jarred into the joint space.

By the way, what Shohei Ohtani is doing isn’t just historic, it’s almost unimaginable. Leading the league in home runs is partially due to the injuries to Aaron Judge and Pete Alonso, but neither of them pitch. Give him the MVP now.

LANCE MCCULLERS JR, SP HOU (strained forearm)