FYI Takes on Marcus Stroman's Opt Out
Without having thrown a pitch in 2020,Mets starter Marcus Stroman opted out for the rest of the season. His decision to do so comes just as he accrued enough service time to become a free agent this winter. The Baseball FYI staff shares their thoughts on this unique situation.
Stroman broke no rules whatsoever. He used the system to his personal advantage, as is his wont. MLB teams rampantly manipulate service time for their benefit,including in 2020, so this is a taste of their own medicine. Any owner or exec who decries Stroman for exercising his collectively bargained rights will be a contemptuous hypocrite. The rules rarely seem to benefit the players, so good for him for finding a loophole. -Daniel R. Epstein
MLB owners don’t hesitate to have their front offices manipulate major-league service time in order to get an extra year of team control over star prospects. Therefore, I have no problem with Marcus Stroman manipulating service time himself. Just as MLB front offices aren’t breaking any rules (although that could change under a new CBA), Stroman didn’t break any rules in what he did. During this unprecedented time, it isn’t a great look for him personally, but he also has to look out for himself. Unlike the owners, players only have a finite amount of time in which they can earn big money. Opting out in the midst of a pandemic because you think it will help you financially, and perhaps physically, is nothing to criticize in my book. If any MLB front-office executives criticize Stroman’s decision, it further goes to show their hypocrisy. - Jacob Kornhauser
Service time manipulation by MLB teams sucks. It’s an issueI have written about in the past.By keeping top talent in the minors longer than necessary for an extra year of control, big league teams irritate hometown fans, dampen national hype/spotlight, and make enemies out of their own future star players. It hurts the game and is something that must be addressed when a new CBA is negotiated in 2021.
For all those reasons, I would love to hail Marcus Stroman’s recent opt out as a smart move by a player finally getting to use the system for their own benefit. But looking at the way this all played out, and the circumstances of 2020, I can’t help but regard the Mets pitchers decision with suspicion.
Back in 2019, New York gave up pitchers Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson for a year and a half of Stroman’s talents. Currently, in Toronto, Kay has a 1.13 ERA (in only eight innings of relief) while Woods Richardson is the 66th best prospect in the game according to Baseball America. On the flip side, the Mets only got 11 starts from Stroman who compiled a grand total of 59.2 innings pitched.
After suffering a left calf tear in late July, Stroman’s been rehabilitating and has not pitched for the team all season. Just as his service time requirement for the year was met, making him a free-agent, Stroman decided to opt out due to COVID-19 concerns.
While I won’t claim to know Stroman’s reasoning, and COVID-19 is a legitimate worry, the chosen date is certainly interesting. Instead of opting out when the injury occurred, or at any other point up to now, Stroman’s timing offers multiple benefits. Now he will be able to rehab for a full year and cash out with a new contract for a new team.
Stroman broke no rules, but it’s hard to feel like the pitcher approached the issue with honesty when communicating with a team and fanbase that had high hopes for him out of the gate. - Chris Murphy
So, Marcus Stroman gave Major League Baseball a little taste of their own medicine, and boy, they don’t like it.
There are so many reasons that Stroman opting out of the MLB season in 2020 makes sense — and the timing only made those reasons mount even more.
Let’s look at it this way, Stroman had a left calf tear during Summer Camp. It can take anywhere from 3 weeks to months for that type of injury to heal enough to return to the rigors of an MLB season, even one as fraught with issues as this one has been.
To look directly through all of the issues that Stroman carefully laid out as reasons for opting out, accuse him of simply wanting to take a $3.3 million pay cut, (amount per MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo) so that he may become a free agent in the offseason paints a problematic picture for the way that the sport views things.
Stroman has had a front-row seat to the viewing party of this season’s early failings while he rehabbed his injury. It leaves a lot of time to think, to watch his fellow teammates choose to make the same decision, to think about his family, to watch how this deadly virus becomes more volatile by the day and within the sport.
No part of me thought that Stroman was sitting around, counting down the days until he was able to successfully opt out of the 2020 season and become a free agent this winter. The narrative around that particular sentiment only serves to show that this is how baseball thinks. Because Stroman, what we can assume unintentionally, is doing to baseball the same thing it does to its players time and time again. Whether Stroman sees it that way or not, it’s clear that some think this is his intent, and now they see how much damage it can inflict on a situation.
So while folks are out there shaking their heads about how this unfolds for the Mets, Stroman is out there thinking about the dangers of traveling to Florida next week — the epicenter of the sports first outbreak. That’s enough reason for anyone to make this decision, regardless of anything else. So, bravo to Stroman. — Cat Garcia