Jarred Kelenic, Seattle Mariners.
It’s a weird day to celebrate for sure and one that the Mariners haven’t had an opportunity to celebrate since, well, never really. That’s right; your Seattle Mariners have never had the chance to celebrate Service Time Manipulation Day. Not with Ken Griffey Jr., or A-Rod, or Felix Hernandez, or any actual prospect that panned out.
Throughout the entire history of major league baseball, there have been big names who were allowed to celebrate service time manipulation. Still, no one really recognized it as a special occasion. Until Scott Boras came along.
That’s right, manipulating a player’s service time didn’t become news until 2015. It wasn’t even the player or the team doing the manipulating; it was super-agent Scott Boras.
Picture this, you’re the #2 prospect in all the land, but the #1 prospect on a contending Chicago Cubs team that desperately needs the offensive potential of Kris Bryant. It’s March 2015, and your super mouthy, overly opinionated agent decides to press play on a strategy to get Bryant to the opening day roster of the Cubs and get shown the money.
Let me adjust that; he’s going to get paid, and been paid all along, just not from a contract that Boras negotiated. This year Kris Bryant will make $19,500,000 and then becomes a free agent, where Scott Boras can work his magic and sit on contract negotiations until March of 2022. It would’ve been 2021 though if the Cubs had listened to him and his smart mouth. I mean smart strategy, of course.
“You are damaging the ethics and brand of Major League Baseball,” Scott Boras said on March 18, 2015. That was a day after he said, “Cubs ownership has a choice… the choice is winning,” in regards to Kris Bryant. Eventually, it turned into a war of words with then Cubs President Theo Epstein.
Kris Bryant opened the 2015 season with Chicago’s AAA affiliate, Iowa, and got off to a scorching hot start (in seven games). At the end of the season, Chicago was swept by the Mets in the NLCS, and Bryant won Rookie of the Year. No harm, no foul, no money for Boras, but Bryant’s done well through the arbitration process anyway.
Or is it owners, or GMs, or the media, or the fans? Someone is being manipulated on this day, and I’m not even sure who it is. Bryant’s not the only high-profile service time manipulation member, but he might as well be the president of the club. Evan Longoria, Bryce Harper, and George Springer were also part of this process before Bryant’s rookie season, but it’s really become popular since then.
Ronald Acuna joined the Braves in 2018. Also, if you have this superstar on your fantasy baseball team, congratulations, you are now permitted to change your team’s name to Acuna Matata. It means no worries in baseball’s unwritten rules. Vladimir Guererro Jr. is another one that is a blatant recent member of this club in 2019. Looking to join this club is Jarred Kelenic. Too soon? Yes, it is. He’s a little further down the article, but it’s coming.
Also, in 2019, the San Diego Padres were in a serious situation when it came to what to do with all of their prospects. Fernando Tatis, MacKenzie Gore, Chris Paddock, and the list went on and on. So they managed to figure out a way to injure Gore, over and over again. Rather than going with the Chicago Cubs model for service time manipulation, they went a different direction.
San Diego Padres GM AJ Peller came back from the future and in 2019 said, we’re going to sign Tatis to a massive contract, and he’ll immediately show one of his lesser-known talents and separate his shoulder while swinging at a pitch. Oh, and Paddack isn’t going to be any good anymore (4 starts and a 10+ ERA).
Why else would he have both top prospects be part of the club right out of spring training in 2019? Fan pressure? Agent pressure? Manny Machado pressure? Okay, the last one wasn’t actually a thing, but when your star’s nickname is the Baby-faced Assasin, you watch your back.
But bringing Tatis onto the big-league club on March 29, 2019, vs. April 12 of the same year, was a massive gamble. San Diego has locked up for the young slugger for the next 150 years or something like that. Clearly, that’s the result of some crystal ball-type chicanery.
Nowadays, the Padres trade away all of their prospects for aces and decent veterans, and well, they probably have the second or third best roster in the National League. It worked, but for the most part, it doesn’t typically work.
The Seattle Mariners are in a similar(ish) situation to the San Diego Padres, and the Chicago Cubs had above, with Jarred Kelenic. Someone mouthed off (Machado for the Padres, Boras for Bryant and the Cubs) and sent the media into a tizzy. Former M’s President Kevin Mather said what everyone was thinking, and then what no one was thinking, and finally, stuff that just made everyone mad.
Kelenic’s agent Brody Schofield did his best Scott Boras imitation when he said to USA Today, “It was crystal clear to Jarred, then and now, that the decision not to call him up is based on service time. There is no question that if he signed that contract, he would’ve been in the big leagues.”
This prompted a retort, a rebuttal of sorts, from GM Jerry Dipoto. “We feel that is the furthest thing from the truth… we’ve laid out a plan for Jarred, we’ve been very transparent in sharing that with him all along.” They both are probably lying, honestly. See what I did there?
The short of it is, “you guys don’t care about winning.” The response is, “that’s a lie.” it’s the 2015 Cubbies all over again. Here’s the really cool thing about being a Mariners fan though, we get to go through this next year with Julio Rodriguez, Emmerson Hancock, and George Kirby. 2023? Noelvi Marte. 2024? Jonatan Clase and whoever we select in the 2021 MLB draft.
Mariners fans will be so well versed in service time manipulation that I’m going to start a petition to call the Seattle baseball team, the Seattle Service Time Manipulators, or Seattle Manipers for short, and we’ll all know what it means.
It’ll be our inside joke. We could all put “Happy Seattle Manipers Day” in the comments and see if anyone gets it. April 16, 2021, is now Seattle Manipers Day.
Is it unethical? No, Scott Boras and Scott Boras sympathizer it’s not. Is it negatively impacting the brand of baseball? No, it’s not, or at least no more than MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s, 4,000 proposals on how to improve baseball. Is it inconvenient? Yes, about as inconvenient as cheering for Taylor Trammell, not to strike out. It’s not fun, but someone has to do it.
So today, April 16, 2021, marks the first day that the Seattle Manipers (remember, it’s our inside joke, don’t ruin it) can call up Jarred Kelenic. It also represents the reality that Seattle now has control of Jarred Kelenic’s contract through the 2027 season, no matter when he gets called up. The question now is whether Kevin Mather was right, or to save face will Dipoto keep Kelenic down until Tacoma starts playing some games?
Now the wait begins in earnest. After the doubleheader sweep of Baltimore on April 15, the Seattle Mariners no longer have a control-the-player reason to keep Kelenic at Minor League Camp. Taylor Trammell is a fun dude, probably the life of the party, but he can’t handle big-league pitching.
It’s no secret the M’s sorely miss Kyle Lewis and his power bat. But right now, we can officially start the pool for when Kelenic gets called up. My guess he arrives in the third week of May. Partially because I want to be wrong, and he comes up earlier; also partially because it’s logical to give Kelenic two weeks of AAA before calling him up.
Mariners Manager Scott Servais said he wants to keep Logan Gilbert’s innings down for 2021. The team intends on bringing him up later in the year. I still don’t understand this philosophy, but this could be another service time manipulation effort, especially if they wait until the halfway point of the season where Seattle will retain all three of Gilbert’s option years.
To go with the theme, if he only pitches half a season in 2022, then the Mariners could keep control of his contract through 2028. It seems a bit shady, but with the Kelenic shenanigans, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Either way, happy service time manipulation day. The proper way to celebrate would be to give the person of most value in your life a gift and tell them that they can’t open it until Kelenic gets called up. That’s what I’m going to do for my wife, and she’s going to love it.
The opinions in this article are the opinions of Joe Swenson, the writer. The humor is also the humor of Joe Swenson. While Joe Swenson doesn’t often write satirical articles, he can often be found providing satire throughout the Mariners social network universe.
Joe Swenson is a life-long Seattle sports fan, award-winning playwright, author, director, producer, and co-host of the sports podcast In The Clutch.