I missed a lot of stuff over the last week. I am sure that all of the links below won’t be enough for what I missed, but I am going to try and include everything.
Perhaps the biggest news is that three minor league baseball players have filed a class action lawsuit against Major League Baseball for violating wage laws. I have talked about it on the site before and have felt for a long time that minor league players are drastically underpaid. Yes, some guys get big signing bonuses and so their minimal pay during the season works out because they have a nest to live off of. But what about a guy like El’Hajj Muhammad? While we don’t have access to his signing bonus, he was drafted in the 49th round (a round that doesn’t even exist anymore) our of a no-name junior college in New Jersey. He has gone out and been quite good in his career since being drafted, but as the lawsuit shows, he isn’t even being paid minimum wage and his signing bonus likely wasn’t more than a few thousand dollars given where he was drafted. College seniors often get a similar treatment where they get pennies on the dollar out of the draft because what other choice do they have? I think this is great news to see this happening and I really hope that these guys can win and at least get the minor league guys a seat at the table with the union that decides their fate, but they aren’t represented at.
Probably the biggest news for the Reds and most fans is that Mat Latos underwent minor knee surgery at the very start of spring training. He is expected to begin throwing again in 10 days (from the surgery), so he may be ready for the start of the season. What it does do though is put him a little behind schedule, which will open up some innings over the next few weeks for someone or even a few guys who may not have gotten those innings. Perhaps it keeps Robert Stephenson in camp an extra week, or it gets a guy like Daniel Corcino or Carlos Contreras a few extra innings against big league guys earlier in spring.
I talked with Brad at Miller Park Prospects about the Reds prospects as he is doing a series on the other systems in the division. The article ran last week, so if you want to read up on what I had to say about some of the guys, head on over and check out my 1200 words or so.
Jamie Ramsey has up a ton of photos from spring training so far on his Better Off Red blog. Ismael Guillon is rocking a mohawk of sorts this spring.
Fangraphs prospect writer Marc Hulet released his Top 100 Prospects list last week. His list included three Reds. Robert Stephenson comes in at #11 on the list, Billy Hamilton at #60 and Phillip Ervin rounding out the list for the Reds at #81.
Chris Teeter wrote about Billy Hamilton at Beyond the Box Score last week. The article looks at how the PECOTA system projects him as a baserunner and just how impressive the projection is, especially considering that it doesn’t give him a full season’s worth of plate appearances. Hamilton’s projection is 10.8, again in a non-full season’s worth of plate appearances, while the 10th highest projection over the last three seasons is 5.4. If we take the rate average he had per PA and adjust it for 600 PA, his projection would jump to 13.6. My “back of the napkin” guesses put him between 1-1.5 wins on the basepaths between the steals and the baserunning. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked if it wound up being slightly higher either.