Major League Baseball has now implemented random drug testing for minor league baseball players.  It’s all part of the plan… the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program to be specific. 

Who will be doing the actual testing?  A company called the National Center for Drug Free Sport.

For those interested in clicking deeper, you can find out the details on Drug Free Sport’s methods of specimen collecting (the SCAN method, Secure Collection Automated Network) and specimen analysis (they test for Anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, drugs of abuse, and masking agents, urine manipulators, adulterants).

Drug Free Sport has a wide clientele indeed.  They are being used by the NCAA, the PGA, MLB and the NBA.

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Chicago Breaking Sports (an oddly chosen, yet perhaps appropriate name for WGN/Chicago Tribune’s Sports site) has posted an interview of Cubs owner Tom Ricketts where he “discusses life as Cubs’ owner”. 

On Lou Piniella’s future

Ricketts said general manager Jim Hendry ultimately will make that decision. "If you insert yourself into that discussion, you’re not adding value, for one thing, and you want accountability," he said. "It’s Jim’s responsibility, and he knows it."

Passing the buck..

Seriously, good to hear that one fat cat owner isn’t going to micromanage his team. 

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The New York Times just sold some of its stake of the Boston Red Sox. 

The deal with Henry McCance for 50 of the media company’s 750 units in New England Sports Ventures (NESV), which owns the Major League Baseball team, reduces the Times’s stake to 16.6 percent from 17.75 percent.

Before we get all sentimental thinking it was a move to be more loyal to the Yankees, my bet is that it was a purely economic move based on the Times financial situation.

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A panel has been taking a hard look at the current way the game of Major League Baseball is being played.  And before you know it, April 4 to be exact,  there will be an announcement if there will be any proposed changes. If I know the MLB, there will be some.  They can’t leave well enough alone.  

Bud Selig is at the forefront of this effort. 

Here’s a quick look at some of the big issues the panel hopes to address:

1. Eliminating the All-Star-World Series home advantage
2. Adding instant replay for balls hit down the foul lines
3. Changing the playoff schedule
4. A variety of “pace of game” issues

The pace of game issue has been a thorn in MLB’s side for a while.  Jonathan Papelbon was fined $5000 last year for taking too long on the mound.  Now it’s come to light that three teams, the Yankees, Dodgers and the Red Sox  have been particularly named by this panel as violating the pace of game.  According to Stats LLC, all three teams average over three hours. 

As for the playoff schedule, I know many fans that would back the panel on a change on this one.  The early proposed change is to eliminate current days of rest to shorten the overall postseason. 

There are a few other issues being discussed.  Those include changes to the amateur draft and realignment to “better group teams of similar economic situations”.  I’m not sure exactly what that means and I’m not sure I want to know.

Now most of these rule or policy changes should they see the light of day, won’t take effect right away.  We wouldn’t see the changes to the postseason, for example, till the 2011 season.  As for the game play changes, they might take effect sooner.  Changes to hasten the pace of baseball games, for example, would probably take effect ASAP.  MLB feels they are under the gun by fans to speed the games up. 

And if you’re interested in how *I* feel about the above proposed changes:

1. Yes, let’s just pretend it never happened.  Despite how it was trumped up by MLB and media, the home advantage rule had limited effectiveness.
2. No, though I’m not surprised it’s being proposed.  Proponents of the original instant replay rule claimed over and over that “it will only be used for home run calls”.  I knew it would be a slippery slope. 
3. Yes.  The postseason schedule takes too long and the cynic in me wonders if it’s to prolong how long money can be made from it.
4. It depends.  I don’t like long games either but I also don’t like changing how players play the game.  I wonder what MLB would have done about Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, had he played in these times.

Your thoughts?

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There’s a new study out confirming that Major League Baseball teams increase their fan base and their ticket revenue by having international players on their rosters.

Perhaps it’s a no-brainer but this study from the University of Michigan spells it out and does the math for us.  The research was done over the years 1985-2005.  While there was initial prejudice at first, fans warmed up to international players and by end, there was shift to the polar opposite, that is, a slight prejudice towards teams without international players. 

To put numbers on it, each international player added to an MLB team could mean over a half million in ticket sales based on 2000 data. 

The preference peaked in 2000 when each international player added approximately $595,632 to ticket sales, the study showed. The average MLB team that season showed 10.8 foreign-born players on its roster and garnered an average of $6 million in additional revenue, the paper said.

Of course, if these numbers just reflect ticket sales, I can only imagine what kind of effect they may have on media such as television, cable, and online advertising. 

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Last August, I wrote about the deal between MLB and Topps and how it was arranged that Topps would have exclusive rights to MLB logos and graphics. 

Now there seems to be another chapter to the story. 

MLB is now suing Upper Deck for trademark infringement for using its logos on its cards without permission. 

It said Upper Deck’s cards improperly feature various sport and team logos, and that some 2010 packaging featuring New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter may confuse consumers because of its similarity to authorized packaging used in 2009.

MLB wants to halt sales of the cards and seeks “triple and punitive damages”.

I’m all in Upper Deck’s corner for the non-competitive deal that MLB made with Topps last year but surely Upper Deck didn’t think they could get away with this.  MLB (and Topps for that matter) would be keeping their eyes on them for any trademark infringement.  And sure enough, they caught them with their hand in the figurative cookie jar. 

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Three months ago, MLB signed Topps Company to a major contract to produce and market baseball cards with the MLB teams’ logo.  This was an exclusive contract to the detriment to other card making companies such as Upper Deck. 

Now, Topps has scored another coup.  They have reached agreement with Major League Baseball Properties in a multi-year licensing deal to produce certain nationally distributed Minor League cards. 

The agreement makes Topps the only trading card manufacturer licensed by MLBP to produce nationally-distributed trading cards of top draft picks and prospects within Minor League Baseball, and will give Topps the rights to names and logos of the 160 affiliated Minor League clubs and current Minor League players in uniform on baseball cards and stickers beginning on January 1, 2010. In addition, Topps will now have the exclusive use of the Pro Debut logo. Its first product will be its 2010 Topps Pro Debut Series 1 to be unveiled in early March 2010.

As it was three months ago, this deal is exclusive. 

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Looks like baseball’s general managers weren’t interested about expanding the role of instant replay in baseball.  The topic wasn’t even brought up during their annual meeting on Tuesday.

"There are those who clamor for more and more instant replay," said Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB executive vice president of baseball operations, "I think we need to digest what we’ve got. I know some (general managers) have talked off-line about the expansion of instant replay, but the commissioner (Bud Selig) doesn’t see any reason to consider it."

Good on them, I say.  Even if you favor the system, it’s too soon to rush into it because a few umps made some bad calls. 

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Bill Clark of the Columbia Daily Tribune writes about how Major League Baseball is entering the realm of DNA testing especially in Latin America.

In an attempt to eliminate cheating on age and identities in Latin America, particularly in the Dominican Republic, MLB has admitted to genetic testing to determine the true identity of players being signed, particularly those receiving big bonuses.

In addition to establishing the identity of players, it is possible to also provide clues to their age.

Federal legislation that was passed last year, will prohibit companies from testing employees (or a family member) on the basis of their DNA.  This law will take effect on November 21 of this year.  It is unclear how this U.S. law will affect American companies implementing these procedures in other countries.

Here is the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 in its entirety.

According to the New York Times, MLB has declined how many players have been tested and whether or not the test results were kept or destroyed.  Given the situation with the recent controversy with the 2003 steroid list that was under law supposed to be kept under wraps, you can see where that can lead us.

The whole thing stinks to me.  Major League Baseball has no business doing this.  If they can find out what they need to know the old fashioned way by forging relationships and establishing communications, then they need to do their homework.  DNA testing and the like is one more thing that will set their work down there backwards.

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2009 can be known as the year that the Dodgers toppled the Yankees… at least in attendance figures. 

For the first time in six years, the Yankees didn’t lead the majors in total yearly attendance.  They came in second.  The top honor goes to the Los Angeles Dodgers who had 3,761,661 go through the turnstiles at Dodger Stadium.

Number 3 shouldn’t be a big surprise.  Given their World Championship status and relatively large market, the Philadelphia Phillies grabbed that spot.

As for Chicago teams. the Cubs ranked sixth and the White Sox came in sixteenth in 2009.

Overall, Major League Baseball had a slight downturn in attendance from 2008 (6.6% less according to MLB.com) but with an attendance of 73,418,479, MLB is spinning it that this year is the fifth most attended year all time.  Yay, Baseball.

For those attendance stat geeks, The Biz of Baseball does a good job of breaking it all down for us.  Their pdf looking back at this past decade of MLB attendance team-by-team is quite detailed.

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