Sometimes the phone rings, and other times it doesn’t. It’s hard for a guy not to take it personally either way, yet a new study suggests that whether that phone call arrives or doesn’t may well be dependent upon the fundamental approach of the organization he plays in.
Specifically, the StatsPlus BBA statistical crew has released a report on Spring Training rosters that shows wide divergence between teams’ approach to camp. While the study is 10,523 pages long, we’ll give you the meat of it right here in tabular form
Code: Select all
Team ST 40-man NRI
EDM 70 35 35
YS9 70 40 30
HAW 68 39 29
LV 57 40 17
BRK 50 36 14
ATC 49 36 13
CLG 47 39 8
SA 47 34 13
VAN 47 38 9
MEX 46 38 8
LOU 43 38 5
LBC 42 40 2
CAL 41 40 1
RCK 41 28 13
CCJ 40 29 11
NSH 40 38 2
MAD 39 38 1
NO 39 39 0
MTL 38 36 2
OMA 37 37 0
SEA 37 33 4
TWC 36 36 0
BOI 35 35 0
PHX 35 34 1
DM 33 33 0
SFB 33 33 0
WIC 33 34 -1
HNT 32 36 -4
JAX 27 27 0
VAL 27 37 -10
THE CONCENTRATED APPROACH
Squads like Valencia and Jacksonville have stuck to a smallball approach, and have only 27 players in camp. Huntsville has 32. Des Moines, San Fernando, and Wichita ring in at 33—some of these teams (Huntsville and Valencia) even sending 40-man roster players back to their minor league camps rather than keeping them in the primary spring training facilities.
[ Ed: as a basic process, every player on a team’s 40-man roster is automatically brought to spring training, so sending a player back to minor league camp is an indicator of a specific decision to restrict the play’s activity. ]
Seven teams have constrained their spring camp to only/all guys on major league contracts (their 40-man rosters). This collection of teams is New Orleans, Omaha, Twin Cities, and the aforementioned Des Moines, San Fernando, and Jacksonville. Wichita is in the group, too, though their spring roster is now down a notch due to an injury to Sparky Anderson.
There are probably several schools of thought to this approach, the most notable likely being concern over keeping young players from being injured in the early games. Some could also be hoping for more intensive development for their big-league clubs, and acknowledging that more time shakes off more rust.
“We want to come out of the gate as hot as we can,” one anonymous team official said. “You can’t win a pennant in April, but you can lose one.”
THE BRING A BUNCH APPROACH
On the other side of the coin, twelve franchises have invited as many as 8-35 non-roster players to camp (these are the kinds of guys noted in the front part of this feature—kids and rookies and possible roster-stuffing vets.
Rockville, San Antonio, and Atlantic City invited 13 players each, Brooklyn 14. Vegas 17. And then we come to Hawaii who has 68 players in camp, and both Edmonton and Yellow Springs, who have full barracks of 70 players—the Jackrabbits inviting 35 players from inside their organization, and the Nine inviting 30.
“We’d have brought more if we could,” said YS9 assistant GM Phillip Watson in a recent interview. “But the league doesn’t let us.”
The logic here is as much of a mixed bag as the logic for the opposite approach. “We like to see the kids,” Watson said, “and we like the kids to see time with our big league coaches. We think it gives the coaches greater familiarity with the organization. And, sur, we ease our veterans into the season a little and restrict their opportunities of getting hurt.”
When questioned as to whether the limits on the veterans time may result in slow starts, Watson was philosophical. “Sometimes we’ve come out of the gate hot and other times not so much. Last year we had a horrible April, but we were also on the road the whole month. So who can tell?”
WHICH WAY IS BEST?
One is tempted to look at the collection of teams in each bucket and draw reference as to whether one way or the other makes a difference. But that way seems to lie madness.
Jacksonville and San Fernando are recent mega-teams, and neither of them bring full slates to their facility. Rockville, Las Vegas, and Yellow Springs have been highly successful teams lately, and they bring a bunch of players to camp. Similarly, California is a mega-team that invited only NRI, while Edmonton is a budding mega-team and invited the max. Yellow Springs is considered to have a deep farm system, so maybe this process helps them. But Jacksonville is also well thought of when it comes to prospects. So maybe spring training isn’t that big of a deal to this.
In other words, who knows?
All you can say for sure is that the study gives you an idea of how different general managers are taking different approaches. And that alone makes the topic fun to look at and think about.
