Odds and Ends

Just a few tidbits with which some certainly will be familiar. 

Gavin Lux:

Folks Gavin Lux isn’t going anywhere. He has made major strides in the past two years and there is no reason to think he won’t continue to do so. Work ethic and character do count for something. At what position will he play at the MLB level?  According to the Dodgers he provides more than one option. 

For now, Roberts would only say Lux is a possibility at multiple positions.

 “Gavin is in the mix,” he said. “He really came out of the gates and performed well. He struggled a little bit like a lot of young players do. … Right now, he’s in the mix, but we have a long way to go before we break camp. To look back on a year ago and see how much he’s matured, I’m very, very proud of him. He’s going to play the game at this level for a long time. But we’ve got a long time before we break camp.”

Mitchell White 

Some have speculated that soon to be 25-year-old right-hander Mitchell White will eventually move to the pen. He did so in the AFL after a so-so 2019 season. With a blister issue thrown in, plus starting pitchers ahead of him, relief seems like a very viable option. 

Late in the season, word came that the Dodgers were assigning the 2016 second-round pick to the AFL, giving him another opportunity to bounce back.

 “The idea for me was definitely to get a little experience in the bullpen because, potentially, that could be my role down the road and then also, because of those blisters, I missed a lot of innings,” he said. “I didn’t even realize how many innings, so I needed to build that count up, and those are the two main things that we’re working on here.””Pitching out of the ‘pen is a great [opportunity],” he said. “I don’t know if that’s ever going to come up in the future, but it definitely could, and getting a little experience here will not hurt.”

2020 Draft 

The 2020 First-Year Player Draft is about to take on a much more collegiate feel. 

The Draft will officially move to Omaha — the site of the College World Series — in 2020, commissioner Rob Manfred announced in a Winter Meetings press conference. The Draft itself will begin on Wednesday, June 10, in order to avoid any overlap with the NCAA Division I baseball tournament. 

Manfred added that all College World Series teams will be invited to attend, in the hope that more draft-eligible players will be able to celebrate their selections in the room where they happen. 

“The result we’re looking for here is that many of the players being drafted are going to have a much better draft day experience,” said the commissioner. “We’re going to have a much better draft day experience.” 

The First-Year Player Draft had been held at MLB Network Studios in Secaucus, New Jersey since 2009. 

Rule 5

 There were no big changes in the Rule 5 routine this year although the collective bargaining agreement that set the rules for the draft is a few years old. There were a couple of tweaks. It eliminated the old Double-A portion of the Draft and upped the compensation for a Major League pick from $50,000 to $100,000. 

Carlos Sepulveda 

Speaking of Rule 5, second baseman Carlos Sepulveda was selected by the Dodgers in the Triple-A portion of the draft. He had been signed as an international free agent by the Cubs in December of 2014. The 23-year-old native of Monclova, Coahuila, Mexico has played five years in the Cubs system starting with the Arizona league Cubs in 2015 and playing with the A+ Myrtle Beach Pelicans of the Carolina League in 2019. His best year was with the South Bend Cubs in 2016 in the Midwest League where he posted a triple slash of .310/.361/.373. 

After a good first year in  the AZL and a very good year in the Midwest League, things went down hill for the 5’10”/170-lb. left handed-hitting second baseman. He does throw right-handed. After 28 games with the Myrtle Beach Pelicans in 2017 he suffered a shoulder injury which sidelined him for the balance of the 2017 season and resulting surgery claimed all of 2018.  

Sepulveda returned to Myrtle Beach  for the 2019 season working his way back from the surgery. Although he had a hot spell at the plate in July he finished the season with  a slash line of .243/.342/.285. His glove work didn’t suffer as he committed only two errors over 802.1 innings and 373 total chances. 

He was backed up behind middle infielders in the Cubs system but perhaps was seen by the Dodgers as infield depth who had cut down on his strikeout rate and has a possibility of showing off his stuff now that he is healthy. He is currently playing winter ball in the Mexican League and may well start the 2020 season with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes looking to make it the AA before season’s end. 

Winter League Ball 

The following Dodger minor league players are playing winter ball. 

Australia – Jared Walker, Eric Peterson,Yujo Kilagata 

Dominican – Christian Santana, Luis Vasquez, Shea Spitzbarth 

Mexico  –  Carlos Spulveda, Antonio Hernandez, Ricardo Hernandez 

Puerto Rico – Darien Nunez  

Professional Baseball Agreement 

A while back MLB announced changes it would like to make  with minor league  baseball in the new PBA agreement .At the recent winter meetings representatives from MLB and MiLB met  to discuss the proposed changes and  what they might look like across the total minor league spectrum. Following the meetings MiLB issued a statement of its own to correct, as they saw it, inaccuracies in the MLB working paper. 

This is a link to the statement;

https://www.oursportscentral.com/services/releases/minor-league-baseball-issues-pba-negotiation-update/n-5580194 

MLB has responded to the MiLB statement with a statement of its own. 

Major League Baseball responded with its own public statement last night. But rather than publicly rebut Minor League Baseball’s claims, or to simply say, consistent with Manfred’s statement on Wednesday, that it preferred to negotiate in private, it threatened to simply drop any agreement with Minor League Baseball and, presumably start its own minor league system bypassing MiLB entirely. 

“If the National Association [of Minor League Clubs] has an interest in an agreement with Major League Baseball, it must address the very significant issues with the current system at the bargaining table. Otherwise, MLB clubs will be free to affiliate with any minor league team or potential team in the United States, including independent league teams and cities which are not permitted to compete for an affiliate under the current agreement.” 

As for Minor League Baseball going public itself, one Minor League Baseball owner’s comments to the Los Angeles Times seems to sum up the thinking pretty well: 

“Rob is attempting to decimate the industry, destroy baseball in communities and eliminate thousands of jobs, and he’s upset that the owners of the teams have gone public with that information in an effort to save their teams. That’s rich.