Minor Obstacles

The Chicago Cubs are in the news early this year.  No, they haven't found a way to get eliminated from the playoffs before the season starts.  It's because of their star rookie, Kris Bryant.  In Spring Training, he's hitting .425, with nine home runs in 40 at bats (non-fan's translation: really really good.) 

But this being the Cubs, it can't be that simple.  You'd think that such a strong performance would get him a starting job, but instead, they're going to send him to the minors, at least for now.  Although everyone associated with the team is saying that starting the season in the minors is the best thing for his development, no one really believes that.  The more likely reason for Bryant's demotion is due to the arcane rules governing baseball contracts.  Baseball players spend the first few years of their careers with the team that drafted them. And, if Bryant spends at least the first twelve days of the season in the minor leagues, then this year won't technically count as his first year in the majors, and he'll have to spend an extra year with the Cubs before he gets the opportunity to sign with another team.

So now baseball journalists are having conniptions over this. They're being deprived of seeing one of the most exciting young players (for two weeks) and worried that a team that typically needs all the help it can get will be deprived of a potential star.  And the integrity of the game and all that.

I admit, the situation is pretty stupid.  But I also don't get why everyone is getting so angry over this particular situation.  To understand better, let's look forward over Bryant's career:

• He spends several productive years with the Cubs
• In his final year before free-agency, he spends the first half of the year trying to concentrate on the game while his agent attempts to negotiate a new contract, and the second half with the Cubs shopping him around to contending teams.  He eventually gets traded for a prospect no one ever hears from again, and plays out the season for a team that gets eliminated in the first round.
• He signs a massive contract with the Yankees or Dodgers.
• He plays the next several years putting up big numbers for a team that chokes in the playoffs every year.  Eventually they win the World Series, he acts like it was the culmination of a long personal journey, while everyone else finds it kind of underwhelming.
• The Yankees/Dodgers decide they can't afford to resign him, and he spends the downside of his career playing a year or two here and there for second-tier teams that are making a half-hearted attempt to spend with the big boys.
• He gets named to the Hall of Fame, and the question of which team's cap he's wearing on his plaque becomes a challenging trivia question.

Out of all that, is two weeks in the minors to take advantage of a technicality really the strangest thing, or the thing that damages the game the most?  In our modern world of obscene contracts and revolving-door rosters, the integrity-of-the-game ship sailed a long time ago.