Under The Knife 8/31/22

Unionize

The story broke over the weekend, but I sat out the initial round of debate about the MLBPA’s attempt to add minor league players to their membership. I’m largely in favor of labor over ownership on most issues and on issues of pay and housing, ownership has let down the game by pinching pennies. Even owners that have tried to do the right thing have been hounded by the worst of baseball’s misers to get back in line and “standardize”, which is just another word for being cheap.

I’d always hoped an owner would come in who either had a strong enough sense of “do the right thing” or saw the huge advantage of improving the development environment, but that hasn’t happened. Unionization won’t be a quick fix for that, and will set up some fights and potentially some give backs.

Two things that interest me - how will MLB players keep a majority of the voting power and how would a successful unionization affect ownership of minor league teams? The Endeavor rollup was a quick failure and there’s no guarantee that we won’t see contraction, both strategically and from economic forces.

On the other hand, beyond the simple - better pay - the conditions really aren’t bad. The Selig-era stadium boom trickled down. Coaches, medical facilities, and more are the best they’ve ever been. If the ask is pay and the owners don’t get anything back for it, the easy solution for MLB is to simply say “We don’t choose to pay that, so we’re cutting back.” Single-A becomes a single level, cutting 30 teams. The complexes get bigger and more important, since they’re a fixed cost. The draft drops to 10 rounds. The unintended consequences here might get big. We might also see some innovation, as with what the White Sox appear to be doing.

I don’t pretend to know and on labor issues, I am more apt to listen to the experts like Eugene Freedman, Maury Brown, and Joe Sheehan. With several teams for sale, Manfred’s not going to make sense on the issue and doesn’t have to. He’ll start up his “save the game” and hope that his media partners stick to sound bites and hot takes rather than the kind of long form, explanatory journalism this requires. God, I miss Bob Ley.

For now, on to the injuries:

TONY GONSOLIN, SP LAD (strained forearm)

So much for the six man rotation. Before Clayton Kershaw could make it back officially, one of those six went on the IL. Tony Gonsolin has a flexor tendon strain that I’m told is being “treated aggressively.” That usually means anti-inflammatories and biologics, but there. I explain a bit more in this video I did with Jeff Spiegel just after the news was announced:

The “caught it early” is a bit worrisome. It implies that this is a chronic issue, like a tire losing rubber, and it’s not necessarily that. A small strain can be because there was a single event, just a little too much force. The Dodgers haven’t clarified this, but the phrase was making the rounds as early as Monday, including in the video.

Regardless of how it happens - and it’s important since it goes to root cause and care to not have it happen again - the healing process is the focus now, along with watching the calendar. If Gonsolin can heal quickly and fully, he can be right back in the rotation and the six-man can happen as planned. The longer it goes, the tougher it is to integrate.

One solution if this goes into mid or even late September is to tandem Gonsolin with Kershaw. It’s a good match, both could go four innings or so, but it might hurt Gonsolin’s chance at 20 games won, if that’s even plausible at the stage he comes back.

JUSTIN VERLANDER, SP HOU (strained calf)

The Astros got a bit fancy with the terminology in explaining why Justin Verlander was heading to the IL. “Fascial disruption” is simply a small tear in the fascia, which is the thin layer that surrounds and contains a muscle rather than the muscle itself. Fascia is something of a container, but isn’t directly involved in the movement and force production. In the practitioner world, there’s a lot of controversy about what fascia can do and how it can be manipulated, so I’m staying out of that one entirely.

This video explains a bit more about what it is:

For Verlander, he said it was a best case scenario and it is close. The fascia should heal the small tear and he should be back with a short period of rest and healing. The best guess is that he could come back at or near the 15-day minimum, avoiding any sort of rehab start, though Sugar Land and Corpus Christi are handy. Even if this extends a bit beyond the minimum, it’s unlikely that Verlander will miss much more than a couple starts and opportunities to make his Cy Young case.