Starting the service-time clock

Baseball Prospectus: Another consideration with a player like Marte is the question of starting his service-time clock. How much of a concern is that for you, given the budget constraints the Braves and every other team must face?

Schuerholz: It's never an issue for us. Maybe that's just because of my attitude--we always seem to have quality talent in the pipeline behind the guy whose time clock starts, behind the guy who's going to get more expensive than his quality of play demands. So we'll just put another player in that role. We have great confidence in our scouting and development program, that we have a very full pipeline of talented players. If they're good enough, there's really no problem--they'll earn their way into a starting spot.

I cringe when I hear or read talk that the Pirates should keep a player in the minors in part because that prevents the starting of his service-time clock. Such talk, for example, was bandied about as a reason to keep back Zach Duke coming out of March. The real reason not to promote Duke was Dave Williams, who has been great in the fifth-starter role. Even if not starting the clock is so important, which I don't believe, then I don't understand what Littlefield would have to gain by acknowledging that this is a factor. It's cheap and whiny and repels me. Maybe he didn't acknowledge it; I don't know; I don't care to research it. It was most certainly mentioned as a factor in the Duke decision by various journalists and folks in the know. And I don't recall Littlefield refuting the speculation the way I thought he should. If I was the GM and someone asked me that same question Jonah Keri asked the Atlanta GM about Andy Marte, I'd say, "Hell no" and a bunch more unprintable words.

What I also like here in Schuerholz's reply is the easy confidence. If you don't have it, learn to fake it. That's should be part of the job. And why can't any GM have this confidence? Under the current CBA, the team gets three years for the first million dollars. That's twenty-one dog years and even more baseball years. And in the next three years, the players make less in arbitration, in most cases, than they'd make as a free agent. I don't care how po' the Bucs are, I'll never think it's less than penny-wise, pound-foolish to countenance talk about the delaying of a promotion so a player will cost the team less in four or five years.

Schuerholz handles himself well in that interview, which I totally recommend, over at BP in their for-pay area. Since he's a GM, I know he's talking out the side of his mouth, but still it sounds good. If he runs for office when he gets bored with baseball, I think he'll do well.