Dollars must make sense in baseball's offseason

As I watched the World Series last night, I found myself thinking what 2010 might hold for baseball. While some people might say I’m looking too far into the future, I would remind them that, even in early November, Major League teams must have their eyes on the season ahead.

The smart front offices do. They are focusing now on revenue – specifically, on how to grow revenue in an economy that has shown faint signs of a recovery. That’s also an important area for fans to concentrate on, because revenue concerns will explain the timidity in which teams they follow will enter free agency.

The odds of seeing a mega-contract such as CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira signed last offseason are about as good as the NFL changing its mind about allowing Rush Limbaugh to buy a stake in the St. Louis Rams.

Unless you root for the Yankees, you likely won’t see money flowing on talent. What you will see is your team packaging all sorts of come-out-to-the-ballpark incentives to get butts in the bleachers.

That’s not just my belief here; Forbes.com raised the same issue with Bob DuPuy, the No. 2 man in the Commissioner’s Office, when it asked him last Wednesday to discuss the state of the game.

DuPuy sounded hopeful.

Conceding the revenue challenges, he offered what might be the only solution the sport has if it intends to return soon to the salad days of the mid-2000s. Nothing is better for baseball than a good ol’ pennant race.

The lack of good races – and the economy -- slowed the turnstiles as the dog days of August rolled into September this past season. Most of the divisional races were locked up by then, and who would want to shell out top dollar to see small-market teams like the Indians, Pirates, Nationals, Royals, Padres, Reds, Orioles and Athletics play?

They weren’t the only bad baseball teams. They were, however, teams with the most economic limitations. None can do what big-market teams like the Cubs, White Sox, Tigers and Mets can: spend their way into contention. So the small-market teams will have to show creativity to draw crowds. Those teams can’t sell championship baseball, because they would be peddling a lie.

You never know about sports, though. Strange things have been known to happen; one or two of those small-market teams might surprise. They could pull off what the Tampa Bay Rays did in ‘08 and wind up in the World Series.

If they do, they won’t do it because they brought in a high-price free agent. They will have to rely on what they have in their organizations, which is young, cheap and unproven talent.

Unproven talent is a hard sale to fans who want to see stars in the lineup, if they can’t see a winning ballclub. So if they can’t have either, they’ll need a reason to go to the game.

And that’s the dilemma baseball faces, one that is uncomfortable for the lords of the game to discuss. But if they can’t discuss tense pennant races, what else is left?

They know what pennant races will do. They know what $1 hotdogs, fireworks and $5 bleacher tickets will do when fans are watching lousy baseball. Those promotions might draw some people to the ballpark, but promotions won’t full the place.

That’s the challenge in 2010 for DuPuy, a fact he’s mindful of. As he told Forbes.com: “Holding our own would be a good objective.”

DuPuy is correct.

Yet even that might not be possible next season with a bad economy and no decent pennant races to keep fans interested in spending money at the ballpark.

Will Valentine's day come early for Indians?

I don’t know much about Manny Acta – as a person or as a Major League manager. I’ve never interviewed Acta; never seen the man either. What I do know about him is the managed one of the worst teams in baseball last season. Now, managing the Nationals isn’t a fate the baseball gods should put in any decent man’s hands. The Nats are a hopeless lot in a league with other going-nowhere organizations like the Padres and the Pirates. Acta could have been Walter Alston, Connie Mack, Casey Stengel and Sparky Anderson rolled into one, and he still wouldn’t have been able to turn the Nats into a winner. He might develop into a Sparky-like manager -- someday. Yet I find it curious that Indians GM Mark Shapiro (and team president Paul Dolan) has kept Acta, 40, on a short list of candidates to replace Eric Wedge. Aside from being a Latino and bilingual, two plusses in baseball, Acta brings little else. In my opinion, he's a gamble. But managing in the Major Leagues isn't like playing roulette in Vegas, so Shapiro should go for a manager whose resume looks a bit more substantial than Acta’s. I saw that candidate on Shapiro's initial list: Mike Hargrove. And maybe if the Astros can think about rehiring Phil Garner, the Indians could have brought Hargrove back. He certainly knew the organization and Cleveland, a city where he played and managed. If Hargrove, 60, had rekindled the passion inside, I would have welcomed the man back. Hargrove, however, wouldn’t have been my first choice anyway. Shapiro has been looking at another candidate as seasoned as Hargrove in Bobby Valentine, a man fresh from managing in Japan. Valentine, 59, has never lost his passion. When the Mets fired him in 2002, Valentine chased managerial openings elsewhere. Nobody rush to hire him, despite the fact he had won with the Rangers and with the Mets. His only opportunity came with the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan, and Valentine took it. He’s back from Japan now; he’s ready for another go at the bigs. Shapiro should give it to him. He should pick Valentine because he’s an experienced outsider, someone who can judge the ballclub without appearing to be, as Wedge did, Shapiro’s footman. The organization seems to have enough Shapiro lackeys in the front office to last it a decade. He won’t be hiring a lackey in the frank-talking Valentine, whose enthusiastic candor might not keep him on Shapiro’s list. Still, Valentine's glibness would be a wonderful change, though, from the reticence Wedge showed he favors. In Shapiro's delusional world, the Indians are a ballplayer here or there from being a contending club. The organization is filled with players with high ceilings – talent that just needs to be nurtured. To him, bad isn’t as bad as it seems; just disregard the fact the Tribe finished light-years away from .500 last season. Shapiro won’t be able to sell Valentine this fiction. Valentine won’t let him. He also won’t let his players dodge responsibility – to the team, to the community and to the media. Keep in mind that Shapiro isn’t necessarily going to pick a manager who will warm to the media; he’ll pick a manager who can lead an inexperienced and rebuilding ballclub. The fact his choice might be able to curry favor with the media could be a bonus. What he needs is somebody who isn’t inexperienced like Dodgers bench coach Don Mattingly, a rumored candidate. If Shapiro's choice happens to be Mattingly or Valentine or Acta, the Indians will be better for it. The organization (and its flaws) will certainly be more transparent than it ever was during the Wedge years.

Shut loophole on international free agents

Baseball is a crazy game. Or, some might argue, a stupid one.

I often find myself leaning toward the latter category. For stupidity is the only thing I can point to for why baseball officials refuse to seal a loophole as big as Alex Rodriguez’s ego.

This time the issue is talent, not the inequity in market profitability, though profits, I suspect, do weigh heavily in this situation as well. At the center of it, as with most things in baseball, is money, which Aroldis Chapman stands to make a pile of.

Who is Aroldis Chapman?

Unless you know baseball well, the 21-year-old Chapman isn’t on your Fantasy League radar. But for those unfamiliar with him, they should file his name away, because he’s a ballplayer who should someday be making headlines in the Majors. He’s the latest defector from Cuba, a country with a deep pool of baseball players.

Now, Chapman is on the open market. His handlers are pimping his talent to the baseball world. They should fetch a handsome return, as they rightly should.

People who have scouted Chapman, a 6-foot-4, 180 pounds of arms and legs, claim the man’s as good as any pitcher his age. He has a fastball that routinely hits 100 mph. It's the kind of velocity that should make him a top-of-the-rotation starter, a rare commodity in an era in which quality pitching has proved scarce. Teams never have too much of it.

A free agent like him comes at a high price. Already, the typical suspects have lined up to throw millions Chapman’s way.

The Yankees are interested; they’re interested in any player who can make them better. The Mets, the Angels and the Red Sox are interested, too. That means the paupers of baseball will be watching this auction of prime talent from the sidelines.

And here’s the loophole: Why isn’t Chapman in the June draft?

Baseball does its fans and its weaker franchises an injustice when it allows talent like Chapman to avoid the draft. But all players from Latin America and Cuba and Japan and Korea and Australia and China avoid it, which keeps clubs like the Royals, the Pirates, the Nationals, the Padres, the Indians, the Marlins, the Rays and the Indians, as well as a few others, from participating in high-stakes auctions.

The advantage goes to the Yankees and the Red Sox, who can afford to miss or overpay for a can’t-miss prospect no matter what he’s asking for his services.

No other sport gives rich teams such an advantage, and if you listen to what baseball officials say, the loophole can’t be closed. No way, they claim, can baseball hold a draft of international players. It would be too complicated, too costly and too unwieldy to work.

To believe what baseball officials and general managers say is to partner with the stupid. They have no more difficult a task in putting together a worldwide draft than hockey or basketball do. A good scout can find talent in the Arctic Circle, if boys are playing baseball there. If the player’s name is registered for the draft, someone will figure out if he can play -- or if he can’t.

The issue is: Should players like Chapman be free to peddle their talents without rules. If so, why? If they can, then why not let a Minor League player who can’t find his niche in one organization do likewise? Why keep him on a treadmill going nowhere?

A team with a deep farm system shouldn’t be allowed to hinder the progress of a ballplayer.

The concept of letting a franchise hold a player’s rights for more than a season might have outlived its purpose. In today’s world, a player in the Minor Leagues should be able to pursue free agency after each year. He should be allowed to do what Chapman will do: post a for-hire sign.

That will keep teams from stockpiling talent. It won’t, however, stop the Yankees and Red Sox from outbidding rivals for the CC Sabathias and the Manny Ramirezes, but even the Yankees and the Red Sox can’t find a place for all the young players in the game.

Those players will have to go elsewhere first, perhaps honing their baseball skills on the cheap in Kansas City or Pittsburgh or San Diego.

At least then, fans there will have a window for success, which is more than what they have now. For a talented player like Chapman, if he’s as good as people say he is, could give any of these teams hope, and I see hope as a good thing for people who have spent the past decade watching their favorite team dwell in the cellar.