The manipulation of service time is one of baseball's dirtiest tricks, which is why Red Sox player rep Matt Barnes was happy to see disgraced former Mariners CEO Kevin Mather pull back the curtain last week.
For those who missed it, earlier this month Mather made the monumentally stupid decision to admit on camera that the club had refrained from promoting top prospect Jarred Kelenic partly to control his service time, and partly in retaliation for not signing a team-friendly contract extension. He was speaking via Zoom to a rotary club and video of the Zoom call was uploaded to YouTube last Sunday, leading to Mather's resignation on Monday.
Barnes viewed the video with some satisfaction, not because he wants to see the 21-year-old Kelenic artificially held back from patrolling center field in Seattle, but because Mather's admissions brought to light the worst-kept secret in the game -- teams will finagle the service time of their best young players to seize another year of control before they can reach free agency.
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SIGN UP HERE "I think it's very interesting that something like that came to light," Barnes said via Zoom on Saturday. "I think everybody kind of had an idea that something was going on. You've seen it way too many times in which guys who were absolutely destroying Triple A or up in the major leagues are absolutely killing it and get sent back down for whatever reason, or don't get called up in time, for whatever reason."
Mather's comments were breathtakingly arrogant and provided insight into how ownership really views players. In addition to admitting that he wouldn't start the service time clocks of prospects like Kelenic with a late-season call-up, Mather also criticized the English skills of another top prospect, outfielder Julio Rodriguez, and bemoaned the $75,000 the organization had to spend on an interpreter for former Mariners reliever Hisashi Iwakuma.
What primarily caught the ears of players around the game, however, was the admission on service time, which will surely be a focus of negotiations on the new collective bargaining agreement, which expires after the season.
One player, Cubs All-Star Kris Bryant, has already lost a service-time-manipulation grievance, but the players' case appears to be strengthening.
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"I think it's very unfortunate," Barnes said. "But I think it's very eye opening to a lot of people outside of players to really understand and get a look at and understand how things really work behind the scenes. I think it's unfortunate that it does happen. But that's the proof that it actually does."