The Kris Bryant Dilemma

Kris Bryant is one of the top prospects in baseball. We all know this but in case you wanted a refresher, Baseball America says he's the best, MLB.com says he's just the 2nd best. Baseball Prospectus hates Bryant, he's only the fifth best according to them. But it's okay because FanGraphs says he's the best. I think you get the point.

Last year Kris Bryant hit .325/.438/.661 across AA and AAA with 43 home runs, 110 RBI, 118 runs and 15 stolen bases. When the #2 pick puts up that kind of performance in his first full year in the minors, that's how you get to be such an esteemed prospect. 

There is a strong case Bryant deserved a call up last year. There is a stronger case Bryant deserves to start the year in the majors this year. Maybe the Cubs just want to see how Bryant performs in the spring. Bryant has delivered, as he's 10/23 with six home runs. He even hit a homer last night but it doesn't count as it was a "B" game. But, as we all know Bryant will start in the minors to delay his arbitration clock, giving the Cubs more years of a cheaper Bryant. 

A lot has been said about this recently. Mike Petrtillo had a great article about it earlier this week and Keith Law dove into the topic today.  The logic according to Petrillo for withholding Bryant is simple and sound as he lays out here:

"If Bryant is with the Cubs from day one, he’ll vest 2015 as a full season of service time and be eligible for free agency after the 2020 season. If they hold him down in Triple-A so that he misses the first nine Cubs games of the season (which take place over 12 days, due to three scheduled days off), they’ll enjoy Bryant’s services through the 2021 season as well — his age-29 season. It’s a simple decision for the Cubs. Two weeks of Bryant’s age-23 season just won’t be as valuable as six months of his age-29 season. Keeping him down may not be popular, but it’s unquestionably correct."

Petrillo offers one alternative, but it really only helps top top prospects like Bryant, maybe not helping the situation entirely. Law offers his own option, making the last year before free agency a defacto free agency, where all teams could make a one-year offer on the player with the player's team having a right of refusal.

Both alternatives would help get Bryant to the majors on Opening Day this year, but neither necessarily completely fixes the problem. To be honest, I'm not sure I have an answer that fixes the problem, but here is one idea:  Allow players to file complaints, that would be taken seriously, about a team withholding a player to delay free agency. Teams can hide behind shade about player development, but some situations are clear if we stop putting lipstick on the ole pig. If the Cubs held down Bryant to start the season, he should be able to file and possibly win a complaint that would grant him one full year of service time. In theory Bryant could do this now but in reality it would never work. However, if that would be a real threat, the Cubs would want to save face and promote Bryant rather than deal with the fallback and still lose out on his service time. Outside of that, or some of the ideas that were mentioned the only solution will be what the players decide to do or change, or negotiate about with the next Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The funniest part about all of this however is listening to the GMs constantly talk about the issue. Scott Boras is just defending his client when he lambastes the Cubs' handling of Bryant but it's also interesting to hear Theo Epstein's response:

"Kris Bryant's development path has absolutely nothing to do with ownership, period. As with all our baseball decisions, I will determine where Kris begins the 2015 season after consulting with members of our baseball operations staff. Comments from agents, media members and anybody outside our organization will be ignored.”

Now, that's  a pretty solid response by Epstein to tell Boras to get the hell out of here but it's tough to believe him. Bryant has crushed at every minor league stop and doesn't need to hit 50 homers in a minor league season to be ready to hit major league pitching. Clearly he's being held down for financial reasons, which is highly tied to ownership, contradicting Theo's thoughts.

In the end, this is an unfortunate dilemma, not just for Bryant, Boras and the Cubs but for the fans who miss out on seeing a potential all-star caliber youngin' because of rules of which the team can take advantage. You can't blame the Cubs, it's a business. The saving grace is laughing at Theo and his colleagues when they mention the development of Bryant or whoever the next guy in this situation is, which suddenly goes away after an arbitrary date in April. On March 20th, Bryant isn't ready but in mid-April everything changes.