May 12th, 2020: Restart Proposal, 2020 Draft, 2021 WBC

Self-promotion: I wrote a CBS post telling the story of the Aaron Judge transactions tree. It's something I mentioned in a mailbag a few weeks ago and figured it was worth a longer breakdown. Check it out, or at least do me a solid and click the link and slowly scroll to the bottom. You don't have to actually read it. Anyway, let's get to today's thoughts.

1. MLB's restart proposal. Later today MLB is expected to submit the first proposal to the MLBPA covering the start of the 2020 season. The owners approved the plan yesterday. I assume the union will reject it and submit a counter-proposal, and on and on they'll go for several cycles. The two sides have about a month to work things out before Spring Training 2.0 needs to begin to hit the early-July target for Opening Day. Here's what we know about MLB's restart proposal via Ron Blum, Jim Bowden, Ken Rosenthal (subs. req'd), and Joel Sherman.

82-Game Season

The proposal calls for an 82-game regular season beginning in early-July. The All-Star Game, currently scheduled for July 14th at Dodger Stadium, would likely be called off so that week could be used to play regular season games. Apparently some on the ownership side are hoping to stretch the season to 100 games with doubleheaders, fewer off-days, and regular season games in October, but that feels like a long shot at this point. Pushing the postseason back into November is a great idea in theory, but MLB is worried about halting the postseason should there be another COVID-19 outbreak in the fall. The goal is playing as much of a regular season and a complete postseason as quickly as possible. This is all but certain to be the shortest Major League Baseball season on record. That distinction currently belongs to the 1981 season, which was split in half by a 50-day work stoppage from June 12th to July 31st. Teams averaged 106 games played that season (the Giants led with 111 games and several tied at the bottom with 103 games). I don't have much to say about the length of the season. MLB and the MLBPA will play as much as they can because that equals the most money, and I'm cool with sprinkling in doubleheaders every so often to add games. Making every Saturday doubleheader day would be pretty cool, I think, though a doubleheader Saturday and a getaway day afternoon game Sunday is suboptimal. This season will be an outlier. I'm not going to waste time or energy worrying whether 82 games is enough to make a season feel legitimate. Every team is stuck in the same boat. If they play, it's legitimate, but it's going to feel weird no matter what. 

Regional Schedules

Teams would play as many games as possible in their home ballparks and they would play regional schedules. The Yankees would play all their games against the AL East and NL East while the Central divisions play each other and the West divisions play each other. The goal is reducing travel and not requiring players and personnel to fly all over the country. Isolating within geographic regions, basically. All travel brings risk, but playing in 10 different cities (fewer, really, given all the two-team cities) rather than 30 different cities lowers that risk. With an 82-game season, they could schedule 13 games against each division opponent and six games against each interleague opponent. MLB will have to be prepared to shift gears and quickly move games to neutral sites if there's an outbreak somewhere, though that will apply to all scheduling scenarios, not only the regional plan. In my perfect world every team would play a perfectly balanced schedule. That's not realistic in normal times and it is especially unrealistic this year. For what it's worth, here are the projected 2020 winning percentages for each division (via FanGraphs):

• AL East: .498 (.477 for the four non-Yankees teams)
• AL Central: .489 (.474 for the four non-Twins teams)
• AL West: .505 (.485 for the four non-Astros teams)
• NL East: .507
• NL West: .500
• NL West: .505

Remove the division favorite from the equation and the three AL divisions are more or less equal. The difference between a .485 winning percentage and a .477 winning percentage is one win per 162 games. Not a big deal. The Yankees would get stuck playing the NL East as part of this regional plan, however, and the NL East ever so slightly projects to be the toughest division in the so-called Senior Circuit. The Marlins are the only projected pushover in the NL East. The regional schedule is fair in that the Yankees and Rays will have to play the same schedule, so neither team will have an inherent advantage in the division race. It's unfair in that the Yankees, Twins, and Astros won't play the same schedule, and that could have a huge impact on postseason seeding and homefield advantage and things like that. In normal times, I would be Mad Online about regional play. Given the circumstances, it is what it is. If this is the best and safest way to play baseball in 2020, so be it. Just roll with the punches. My hope is the regional schedule will include longer series. A regional schedule will require drawing up a new schedule (or at least part of a new schedule) and it would make sense to schedule five or six-game series. Send teams into a city for longer stays and cut back on how much they have to move around throughout the season. One big six-game series instead of two separate three-game trips is the way to go. "I don't think anything can be done until (safety) can be guaranteed and we feel comfortable with it. We want to put a good product on the field, but that's totally secondary to the health of the players. We are generally younger and healthier, but that doesn't mean our staff is. That doesn't mean the umpires are going to be in the clear. It's not hard to get one degree of separation away from players who have kids who may have conditions, or other family members that live with them. I'm confident before anything happens, we'll sort through all those issues," MLBPA executive board member and former Yankee Andrew Miller told Jesse Rogers.  

Expanded Postseason

Specifically, MLB will propose the seven-teams-per-league postseason plan that was floated over the winter. Postseason games would be played in each team's home city in October rather than at neutral sites in November. Hopefully that actually happens. The Yankees playing home postseason games somewhere other than Yankee Stadium would be capital-L Lame. If they have to play at neutral sites, so be it, but October baseball in the Bronx is as good as it gets. I don't want to miss it. Here's a reminder of how that seven-teams-per-league plan would work:

• The team with the best record in the league gets a bye to the LDS and the other six teams have to play a best-of-three Wild Card round.
• The division winner with the second best record gets to pick its Wild Card opponent, then the other division winner picks its opponent. The two remaining teams are paired.
• The two division winners and the wildcard team with the best record would host all games in the Wild Card round. Lower seeded teams get no home games.

Like I said in February, I am strongly opposed to this plan because it really waters down the postseason field. As recently as 2017 two sub-.500 teams would've made the postseason with his format and that stinks. The long 162-game season is the great separator and only the best of the best should play in October. This will not be a 162-game season though, not even close, and the shorter the season the more small sample size noise skews the results. This would've been the postseason field after 82 games last year:

AL Wild Card Game: Rangers at Rays
ALDS1: Wild Card Game winner at Yankees
ALDS2: Twins at Astros

NL Wild Card Game: Rockies at Brewers
NLDS1: Wild Card Game winner at Dodgers
NLDS2: Cubs at Braves

The eventual World Series champion Nationals would not have made the postseason. The Yankees would've had to play the Wild Card Game winner rather than get an ALDS bye I mean play the Twins. In baseball, 82 games is not always enough for a team's true talent to shine through, and because of that I'm cool with an expanded postseason field this year. It's a little more fair. The seven-teams-per-league plan MLB proposed isn't great but, honestly, I'm having a hard time coming up with something better. Going with eight teams per league and holding a traditional NBA or NHL bracket-style postseason is excessive. You're letting more than half the league into the postseason in that scenario. Maybe six teams with two Wild Card Games? The second and third wildcard teams play the first Wild Card Game, the winner then plays the first wildcard team in the second Wild Card Game, and the winner advances to the LDS? I kinda like it. That way the first wildcard team only has to win one game to advance, rewarding them for having the better record. For this year though, an expanded postseason works for me. It gives more teams a chance to win the World Series and more postseason games equals more revenue. As much as I gripe about the money side of things, it's still a business, and everyone still has to get paid. Adding postseason games to recoup revenue is not unreasonable. As long as the expanded postseason format is a one-year thing and not the new normal, I'm fine with whatever they come up with. And you know what? I actually love the whole "pick your opponent" aspect. Give me the chaos and ensuing drama. It could be really cool. Hopefully MLB doesn't suck the fun out of it.

50-Man Rosters & Universal DH

Because there is unlikely to be a minor league season this year, MLB's proposal calls for a 50-man roster. More accurately, it calls for a 30-man active roster and a 20-man taxi squad. That way extra players would be readily available as injury replacements and call-up options. A 50-man roster with a taxi squad is the only thing that makes sense with no proper minor leagues. It creates a lot of roster mechanics questions though. Does the 40-man roster become a 50-man roster, and if yes, do teams have to cut 10 guys to get back to 40 after the season? Does a player on the taxi squad get MLB pay and service time, or he is considered a minor leaguer who draws a minor league salary? Does a player who goes from the active roster to the taxi squad burn a minor league option? In normal times the Yankees' top four catchers can not be sent to the minors. Kyle Higashioka, Erik Kratz, and Gary Sanchez are all out of options and Chris Iannetta has more than enough service time to refuse a minor league demotion. How players go from the taxi squad to the active roster and back is a big deal! This stuff is important, and because pay and service time will be involved, the MLBPA will be very concerned. I think the 30-man roster/20-man taxi squad makes perfect sense. That's the best way to go about things in these unusual times. How it all actually works will take a little creativity though. (Here's the Yankees' 50-man roster I put together recently. That's worth revisiting as Opening Day draws closer and we learn about any roster limits and guidelines.) On another roster-related note, MLB's proposal calls for a universal DH, and hooray for that. The regional schedule will create (a lot) more interleague games and it's not fair to play so many games with different rules. Plus the universal DH will help protect pitchers after this weird ramp up/shut down/ramp back up situation. The universal DH is a no-brainer. At all times and especially after the shutdown.

Pay Reduction

MLB is expected to ask the MLBPA to accept further pay reductions to make up for the revenue that will be lost when they play without fans in the stands. Specifically, MLB will propose a totally revised one-year economic system in which the players and owners split revenue 50/50. Other sports have revenue sharing -- NFL players get 48%, NHL players get 50%, and NBA players get 49% to 51% -- but it would be unprecedented in baseball. The revenue sharing plan is a salary cap by another name and the union should view it as an act of labor war. I don't think that's an overreaction. Here's what MLBPA chief Tony Clark told Ken Rosenthal (subs. req'd) about the proposal:

"A system that restricts player pay based on revenues is a salary cap, period. This is not the first salary cap proposal our union has received. It probably won’t be the last. That the league is trying to take advantage of a global health crisis to get what they’ve failed to achieve in the past -- and to anonymously negotiate through the media for the last several days -- suggests they know exactly how this will be received. None of this is beneficial to the process of finding a way for us to safely get back on the field and resume the 2020 season -- which continues to be our sole focus.”

The MLBPA already agreed to prorated salaries back in March -- MLB and the MLBPA are in this together and they should share the financial burden, and prorating salaries is very fair -- and that should be the end of it. If MLB wanted to pay less than prorated salaries, then they shouldn't have agreed to prorated salaries. It really is that simple. When the union negotiated a crappy Collective Bargaining Agreement(s) and player salaries stagnated while revenues climbed to all-time highs -- Ron Blum notes the MLB average salary was set to hold steady around $4.4M for the fifth (!) straight season in 2020 -- they did not ask to open the agreement and change the terms. MLB negotiated a crappy deal for itself in March -- we don't even know whether it's a crappy deal yet! -- and that's too bad. They don't get to renegotiate the terms even in these adverse times. If MLB didn't anticipate losing more revenue because fans won't be allowed into the ballpark, then that is 100% on them. Honor the contracts you signed and the agreement you made in March. Careers can be so short in this game. Players have a very limited time to get in and make some money before being tossed aside. The owners don't have the same short career expectancy. They can survive one year in the red. And if they can't, sell the franchise to someone for 10 figures. Any proposal that includes a revenue sharing system should be met with the demand that every team opens its books and provides a full accounting of their revenue and expenses -- Rosenthal says the CBA requires teams to share only some revenue information (media deals are not shared, believe it or not) -- not only for this year, but going back 5-10 years, because past information will create a more complete picture of each team's financial situation. There's no chance MLB goes for that because their entire racket falls apart the instant they can't pretend they have less money than they really have, but that's the only logical response, and, frankly, even that is generous. The MLBPA already agreed to prorated salaries and is under no obligation to renegotiate. "That negotiation is over," Clark said last month regarding rumors about further pay reductions. That's a good quote and all, but I'll need to see the union stand its ground before I believe it. The pressure on the MLBPA will be enormous. Most fans are anti-player for whatever reason and will call the millionaire players (not the billionaire owners) greedy for not accepting another pay reduction. Randy Levine called the players "patriots" earlier this week, implying they are un-American if they don't bend over backwards to get the season underway. Also, players want to play, and with a union membership this large -- there are 1,200 players on 40-man rosters at any given moment -- some will be more willing to accept additional pay reductions than others. It's inevitable. This is going to get really ugly. I want to believe MLB and the MLBPA are not dumb enough to publicly bicker about money when tens of millions have lost their jobs, but publicly bickering about money is what they do, and I suspect this will all happen out in the open. The MLBPA needs to focus the public conversation on safe workplace conditions because they will never win a battle that paints one side as greedy and the other side as ready to play. If the MLBPA relents and agrees to another pay cut without receiving enormous, landscape altering concessions in return (free agency after four years?), just decertify the union. The players would be better off pocketing their dues than paying for representation like that. "We understand that this year isn't going to be as financially rewarding for the ownership groups. There is higher risk this season. If it's not safe to bring fans into games, you're still asking us to play, there's certainly a risk there. Travel is limited to essential, and we're traveling, that means there is risk involved ... The way our sport works is we are not tied to revenue in any way. If the owners hit a home run and make more money, we don't go back and ask for more on our end. Ultimately this isn't about money. We need to find a way to safely get our players on the field in a safe manner and control that. I would hope this doesn't turn into anything regarding (money)," Miller told Rogers.

Lingering Issues

Beyond the major items above, MLB and the MLBPA will have to resolve many other issues before the season can begin. They must agree to plans for Spring Training 2.0 (when, where, how long, etc.), COVID-19 testing protocols that don't harm the public at large, a contingency plan should someone in the baseball bubble get sick, hygiene guidelines (CPBL and KBO have banned spitting, high-fives, etc.), and rules governing who and how much other personnel is allowed to be around the team (scouts, clubhouse attendants, etc.), among other things. All obvious, I know, but at some point the two sides have to actually sit down and figure it all out. That might not happen on the first pass -- like I said, MLB and the MLBPA will surely trade proposals and counter-proposals, and some smaller things can be pushed off until later -- but it'll have to happen eventually. Also, some things can't be resolved right now. A testing protocol that makes sense now may not make sense in July. Framework can (and should) be developed now, but everything will have to be subject to change. "We'll explore a lot of options, but I think there will be some things we're going to say no to. Just based on government regulations, the chances of having fans in the stands is going to be next to zero. With that in mind, there is some inherent risk to this, and we'll weed through the proposal and I'm sure we'll agree on some things and some things we won't because it's implying too much risk for everyone." MLBPA executive board member (and Yankees non-roster invitee) Chris Iannetta told Rogers. (Canada has a mandatory 14-day quarantine for anyone entering the country, so that's something else MLB and the Blue Jays would have to figure out. Also, Sean Doolittle posted a thoughtful Twitter thread with other not-so-obvious concerns.)  

2. 2020 draft rules finalized. What has long been assumed is now official: MLB will have a five-round draft this year. Last week MLB proposed a 10-round draft with severe spending restrictions in rounds 6-10, which the MLBPA rejected. MLB responded with a five-round draft that literally no one (MLBPA, amateur players, fans, front offices) wants except the owners. The draft is the most efficient and cost effective way to acquire talent, MLB and the owners know that, but they're still shortening the draft this year and hurting the game's future to save a few bucks. The total savings by cutting rounds 6-10 is just short of $30M in bonus money ($29,578,100 in slot value, to be exact), or less than $1M per team. The savings are really about half that since MLB was willing to accept half-slot values in rounds 6-10, so this plan will save each team less than $500,000 on average over what they proposed last week. "For any ownership group that supports this course of action as advisable or, frankly, is so cash-strapped that this mid-six-figure savings is a financial necessity, they should do everyone a favor, including their fellow owners, and sell their franchises. Does anyone think it’s that big of an ethical jump from hijacking the draft, tanking, and service manipulation to hidden cameras and banging on trash cans? All those behaviors and attitudes, they’re not analytic or intelligent or efficient, they’re just unethical, and they reveal a lack of respect for players and fans," veteran agent Jeff Berry told Ron Blum. As a refresher, here's what the Yankees are looking at this summer now that it's officially a five-round draft:

• First round: 28th overall ($2,493,400 slot value)
• Third round: 99th overall ($587,400 slot value)
• Fourth round: 129th overall ($438,700 slot value)
• Total bonus pool: $3,519,500
• Bonus pool plus 5% overage: $3,695,475
• Unlimited undrafted free agent signings ($20,000 maximum bonus)
• Two-day draft to be held June 10th and 11th

Players will receive only $100,000 upfront. The rest of their bonus will paid in two equal installments on July 1st, 2021 and July 1st, 2022 because the owners are the only people with short-term cash flow problems. No one else. The Yankees surrendered their second and fifth round picks to sign Gerrit Cole, hence the shortage of selections. I'm sure they'll be aggressive with undrafted free agents, but that $20,000 won't be enough for some players no matter what, and I'm not sure whether teams will truly be able to reel in legitimate 6-10 rounds talent for $20,000. The bet here is the very best high school prospects will still turn pro and get paid, but the vast majority of high schoolers wind up in college, and this will be a college heavy draft overall. Teams have a longer history with college kids and they'll lean on that information rather than roll the dice with prep players in such a short draft. Also, count on teams really squeezing players in the fourth and fifth round. I have no doubt about it. Either sign for this well-below-slot sum as our fifth rounder or you'll go undrafted and get stuck with $20,000. They'll do that and there's no guarantee they'll redirect the bonus pool savings toward other picks. They can cite financial losses and pocket the savings. Last year 1,217 players were drafted. This year 160 players will be drafted. Hundreds of players who would've turned pro will instead flock to college (or return to college), and colleges will be flooded. Division I rosters will be loaded -- the quality of play in college baseball should be at an all-time high the next few years -- and players get who squeezed off the roster will wind up in Division II, and players who gets squeezed off those rosters will go to Division III, and down the line they'll go until a few hundred players get squeezed out of baseball entirely. And then future draft classes will be flooded too. A player projected to be, say, a third rounder in a year or two could get bumped down into the fifth or sixth round because this draft will send so many players to college and junior college. It's a damn shame and it feels completely unnecessary. This is going to cost baseball talent for years to come -- MLB can shorten the draft to 20 rounds next year and there's no reason to believe they won't -- and damage the sport long-term. This is a very telling decision. MLB and the owners just told everyone their No. 1 concern is not ensuring the sport will prosper long-term, it's limiting their financial liability during an unprecedented event. How sad. "Particularly given the negligible economic impact to what’s already a cheap acquisition cost, this approach is grossly shortsighted. To drastically reduce opportunity and talent and talent pools, it stunts growth and diversity at all levels and is really a self-inflicted sabotage of the long-term health and popularity of the game," Berry told Blum.

3. 2020 draft prospect: Vanderbilt LHP Jake Eder. The 2020 amateur draft will take place June 10th and, as noted earlier, the Yankees will have only three picks and a $3.7M bonus pool. I'm going to break down potential targets between now and then. We've already covered RHP Nick Bitsko, RHP Tanner Burns, OF Pete Crow-Armstrong, RHP J.T. Ginn, OF Isaiah Greene, RHP Bryce Jarvis, LHP Luke Little, RHP Max Meyer, RHP C.J. Van Eyk, and C Austin Wells. Eder was both a top three rounds talent and unsignable out of his Florida high school three years ago. The Mets took a shot in the 37th round and that didn't go anywhere. Eder has pitched in every role with the Commodores. He was a swingman as a freshman (5.45 ERA and 37/22 K/BB in 33 innings) and a full-time reliever as a sophomore (2.97 ERA and 41/16 K/BB in 39.1 innings), during which he closed out Vanderbilt's College World Series championship with a three-inning save. Eder moved into the rotation this spring and had a 3.60 ERA with 27 strikeouts and nine walks in four starts and 20 innings prior to the shutdown. It's worth noting he was very good against elite competition in the wood bat Cape Cod League last summer (1.20 ERA and 15/4 K/BB in 15 innings). MLB.com ranks Eder as the 59th best prospect in the draft class while Baseball America (subs. req'd) has him 71st. The Yankees hold the 28th and 99th overall picks. Here's a snippet of MLB's scouting report (here's video):

When Eder is at his best, he can work at 92-95 mph and touch 97 with his fastball and back it up with a plus curveball. But there also are days when he'll sit closer to 90 mph and lack feel for his curve. Though he can flash a solid changeup, it's still a work in progress because he hasn't used it much in short stints with the Commodores ... His strong 6-foot-4 frame is built for durability and helps create tough angle on his pitches. If he can maintain the consistency and command of his stuff that he showed in the summer and fall, he could be a mid-rotation starter.

Eder has some similarities to T.J. Sikkema, who the Yankees selected in the second round last year. They're both big-bodied lefties with inconsistent velocity and a potential wipeout breaking ball. Eder has shown he can pitch in the mid-90s in the past, so it's in there, and the hope would be the Yankees get him to sit at his top end velocity rather than closer to 90 mph given their track record of helping pitchers to increase their velocity. Lefties with a really good curveball and the potential for above-average velocity are always popular on draft day, and Eder has had success with a high profile college program and in challenging environments (SEC, College World Series, the Cape). My hunch is Eder is a 'tweener with respect to the Yankees. Not an ideal target for their first rounder and unlikely to be available with their third rounder. Then again, it's difficult to figure out who fits where this year given the shutdown and lack of scouting/statistical data, and it's possible Eder would've pitched his way into no-doubt first round territory with a full season.

4. Remembering a random Yankee: Eric Hinske. By request, our next random Yankee is the 2002 AL Rookie of the Year. We've already covered Juan Acevedo, Erick Almonte, Oscar Azocar, Colter Bean, Cesar Cabral, Brandon Claussen, Kevin Elster, Greg Golson, Nick Green, Aaron Guiel, Brandon Knight, Blake Parker, Chris Parmelee, Mark Reynolds, DeWayne Wise, and Kerry Wood. I thought the Yankees acquired Hinske at the 2009 trade deadline, but it turns out they acquired him a month earlier, on June 30th. The Yankees had not yet hit their stride at that point -- they were 44-32 and 2.5 games behind the Red Sox in the AL East on the day of the Hinske trade -- and the bench was a clear weakness. Jose Molina was a very good backup catcher. The rest of the bench was Ramiro Pena, Angel Berroa or Cody Ransom (Ransom was hurt for a while and Berroa filled in), and whichever one of Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner wasn't playing center field that day. A four-man bench and a seven-man bullpen? Feels like a lifetime ago. Almost exactly halfway through the season Brian Cashman brought in Hinske to upgrade the bench. Two prospects, righty Casey Erickson and catcher Eric Fryer, went to the Pirates, who covered half the $800,000 or so remaining on Hinske's contract. (Erickson never reached the big leagues but Fryer, who the Yankees originally acquired from the Brewers for Chase Wright, appeared in 158 MLB games across seven seasons as an up-and-down depth catcher.) Hinske replaced Pena on the roster -- Pena was sent down in part to learn how to play the outfield, believe it or not -- and he also helped replace Xavier Nady, who suffered a setback during his elbow injury rehab about a week before the trade. He eventually needed Tommy John surgery. "There’s a lot of benefits to (Hinske). He knows his role. He can help us at third, first, left, right, DH. He can pinch-hit, and that’s a difficult thing, to be used to doing something like that and handling it. And he’s a pro. He’s been through the trenches in the American League East," Cashman told Tyler Kepner after the trade. Hinske's impact was immediate. He went deep in his first game as a Yankee (here's video), twice in his third game as a Yankee, and once again in his fifth and seventh games as a Yankee. Hinske went 7-for-21 (.333) with five home runs in his first seven games following the trade and there were calls to start him over Nick Swisher in right field. The thing is, those seven games came in the span of 30 days. Hinske had so much success because the Yankees put him in good situations (i.e. facing almost all righties) and didn't overexpose him. The Yankees heated up in August but Hinske cooled down. The team went 41-18 in the final two months while Hinske went 12-for-63 (.190) with two homers. The two-homer game was his highlight as a Yankee, I guess, though that came in forgettable a 14-8 loss. By win probability, Hinske's greatest contribution to the Yankees was a pinch-hit single against Royals closer Kyle Farnsworth on Sept. 29th, which helped set up a walk-off win. The AL East title had already been clinched at that point though. Hinske was on the roster all three postseason rounds but barely played. Zero appearances in the ALDS, zero appearances in the ALCS, and one plate appearance in the World Series. He pinch-hit for David Robertson in the fifth inning of the Game 5 loss, drew a walk, and later came around to score a run that cut the deficit to 6-2. Largely inconsequential. Hinske came along for the ride during the 2009 postseason, but hey, it was his third consecutive trip to the World Series with three different teams (2007 Red Sox, 2008 Rays, 2009 Yankees), and that's pretty cool. He finished his Yankees career with a .226/.316/.512 (107 wRC+) batting line and seven homers in only 98 plate appearances. I would've guess it was closer to 198 plate appearances. My memory's not what it used to be. Fine production given the role and especially considering who Hinske replaced (the overmatched Pena). Hinske spent 2010-12 with the Braves and 2013 with the Diamondbacks before hanging up his spikes. This slipped my mind, but Hinske joined the Yankees as a scout following that 2013 season, and helped them land Brian McCann. "He was here. He was involved. He helped me with Brian McCann ... because he played with Brian. So I appreciate Eric Hinske giving Brian McCann a lot of good advice about his experience here with the Yankees," Cashman told Andy McCullough. Hinske's stint with the Yankees as a scout was very short-lived though. About a month later he left to join the Cubs as their first base coach. He eventually climbed to assistant hitting coach and later joined the Angels as their hitting coach. I assume his time with Billy Eppler, currently the Angels GM and Cashman's former right-hand man, and the Yankees in 2009 helped Hinske land with the Halos. The Angels let Hinske go this past offseason when they brought in Joe Maddon and overhauled their coaching staff. I'm not sure what he's up to now, but 12 seasons in the big leagues, a Rookie of the Year award, three World Series rings (2007 Red Sox, 2009 Yankees, 2016 Cubs), and more than $22M in career earnings ain't too bad. Not at all.

5. Rapid fire thoughts. Only one rapid fire thought today. The 2021 World Baseball Classic has been canceled, according to Enrique Rojas. Joel Sherman says it will be moved to 2023, pending necessary approvals. "It is not a priority right now," a source told Rojas. The WBC is a collectively bargaining event and MLB and the MLBPA have much more important things on their plate right now, so they will push it back to the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. This is a real bummer. The WBC is an awful lot fun. Team USA has had trouble luring the game's biggest stars to the event -- U.S. apathy to baseball is something else -- but Latin American players seem to take great pride in representing their country. I reckon Luis Cessa (Mexico), Jonathan Loaisiga (Nicaragua), Gary Sanchez (Dominican Republic), Gleyber Torres (Venezuela), and Gio Urshela (Colombia) are disappointed. They all figured to receive WBC invitations. Maybe Miguel Andujar too. I'll miss the WBC. It's so much fun, especially the early round games in other countries with foreign or minor league players who may never experience a higher moment in their careers. They're all-in on the event and it shows on the field.

(Send your questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)