DrungoHazewood

At what point does Harvey have to be on the MLB roster or they risk losing him? Folks are talking like he might not be up until 2019... isn't that about the point where he absolutely has to be up or he's a Rule 5er?

The money is also what keeps players from throwing games. Who's going to risk never getting that free agent payday to take what's almost certainly less money from underworld scum? It's hard to pay off someone to lose when they're pulling down an average of $25k a game.

He's been between .288 and .310 every year from 2011-on. .338 was probably an anomaly. It's a big leap to trust BA-driven value spikes.

He's a guy with an 87 mph fastball who had his best years as a low-K flyball pitcher in the Oakland Coliseum. I'm not seeing how he's an upgrade over what's on hand. Vance Worley has better ERA/FIP/xFIP, K rate, and 2/3rds the HR rate.

He should get a bonus for risking his season for the good of his teammates.

It's related to the fact that 60 and 714 were sacred, 61 and 755 and 762 are meh, and nobody has the slightest idea how many of anything Sammy Baugh ever did back a million years ago.

Ha! I'm sure the law firm of Peter Angelos would have a field day with that. "Of course we knew nothing about this, we highly encourage all of our employees to strictly adhere to all laws and regulations and therefore have no responsibility for a player's alleged indiscretions."

When you start sorting players on criteria like "second basemen with .150+ ISO through age 24" you get a lot of all stars.

I don't like the idea that the clubs escape all blame and get to benefit from PED-enhanced performance right up to the moment someone is caught, then they get out of the entire contract. Right now it's nearly certain that teams sign players they suspect of cheating knowing they don't have to pay during suspensions, this just removes all responsibility from the clubs. The league would be telling the clubs to sign anyone, take advantage while you can because you have total protection from that contract, it's 100% on the player.

Quite a coincidence that Bonds has gotten involved in one of the 30 MLB organizations that have PED users.

A 30-year-old middle reliever with <100 innings in the majors.

Yep, yep. Once again the sign of PEDs is a homer spike. Gordon had half his career round-trippers in 2015.

I'm more kindhearted. I think some people aren't cheating but there's no way to tell one way or the other.

But his indy league manager said he was healthy and throwing 97!

Rights don't apply to people making a lot more than me!

I think there need to be limits and a balance of testing vs. intrusiveness. But also get the feeling that popular opinion might side with getting the rich baseball player out of bed at 3am and canceling his family vacation so we can be extra sure he's not taking HGH.

If long-term payments concerned 23-year-olds we'd have far fewer sales of $60k monster trucks.

They had one in the late 80s and early 90s. Earl managed, Dan Boone threw knucklers, and tens of fans showed up.

I don't know... would that be meaningful to a 20-something guy who might not gross that much in 20 years if he doesn't make the majors? A player's take might be "who cares about a $1M fine, soon I'll be making that every month in the Majors."

The minimum would have to be quite high. Currently it's about 14 league minimum players to equal one year of a 1-win free agent. Let's guess there are 300 minimum-salaried players in MLB, and total salaries are $3B. That makes minimum-salaried players 5% of total salaries. For a typical team that would make $5M for the lower class, and $95M for arb/free agents. Quadrupling the minimum would still make the split 80/20.

You mean the indy leagues don't have World Anti-Doping Agency approved PED testing programs? Also, has there ever been a case of someone getting popped for PEDs and just going to the NBP or KBO or Taiwan? Or Mexico? You couldn't come back without serving your suspension, but if you're an Eddie Gamboa level player you don't care.

The hardest thing will be marginal major leaguers. You could devise punitive measures that keep established players from using, mostly. Like a three-year ban and voiding of contract for a 2nd offense. But how do you stop guys who're making $10-30k a year in the minors? If the take PEDs and make the majors it's a ~20x increase in pay. Massive raise. Far, far more than they could make outside the game. If they're caught, so what? Barely worse off than making a pittance playing for Canton-Akron. I don't know how you fix that, the incentives are too great.

Let's say in his three arb years he makes 2, 4, 8 million. That's $14M, plus the maybe $2M he'll earn his first three. So $16M going into free agency. Meaning he'll have to be worth 49-16 or $33M in free agency. That's maybe four or five wins. What percentage of players similar to Schoop are worth at least four wins in free agency? That's almost more art than science since you need to develop a list of comparables from a niche profile; young, powerful, strike-zone challenged middle infielders. Here's a list: Nap Lajoie, Carlos Baerga, Juan Samuel, Robinson Cano, Bill Hall, Rougned Odor, Bret Boone, Schoop, Frank Catalanotto, Jorge Cantu, Alfonso Soriano. I figure most of them were more than worth a $33M deal in free agency.

Don't ask me, but adjusting strike zone size is far simpler than tracking a 93 mph slider to an accuracy of a fraction of an inch.

No. It would be almost trivial to adjust strike zone sizes. You have sub-$1k cameras and cell phones that do good facial recognition.