Hector Olivera Should Invest Those Checks from the Atlanta Braves
Rosenthal: “Paid Suspension” status retro-actively turns into “Unpaid” once penalties are handed down
Hector Olivera is effectively already suspended without pay – those paychecks he’s still receiving are merely figments of his imagination.
So says Ken Rosenthal in a story about Rockies’ SS Jose Reyes, who is expected to finally learn of his fate from major league baseball as early as today.
"Reyes, 32, already has missed the Rockies‘ first 34 games while on paid administrative leave. A suspension of say, 60 games, would cover an additional 26 games and become unpaid. Reyes would need to repay any money he received during his paid leave, so he stands to lose nearly half of his $22 million salary in 2016."
In the case involving the Atlanta Braves, Hector Olivera was placed on the Restricted list on April 13 as a result of his arrest for misdemeanor assault and baseball’s Domestic Abuse policy. Officially, he is on ‘Administrative Leave’ – similar to the status of a public official accused of some sort of misconduct.
Accordingly, Olivera is still receiving paychecks. However, once his status eventually changes to “suspended” (which could take months more), then he will be required to forfeit all monies paid to him – pro-rated back to April 13. That’s the message Rosenthal is giving to us.
Innocent Until… MLB Says So
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Of note here is a word about the presumption of innocence: if Olivera is exonerated by the court, that’s one thing. MLB’s presumption does not require the same standard. Note that in the cases of both Aroldis Chapman and Jose Reyes, no charges were ever filed, yet both were suspended.
You can draw your own conclusions on the morality of such a system that MLB has in place that does this, but MLB is clearly sending a strong message to the players: don’t mess with women.
With Reyes, his wife opted to stymie the police investigation, though MLB is clearly figuring that there’s enough ‘smoke’ to surmise that there was a fire. With Chapman, there was clearly some anger involved, but precious little evidence that he even laid a hand to his girlfriend despite her report to police – a report that he denied in statements to the press this week.
There is thus an underlying assumption written into this account of the new Olivera saga: he will be suspended by major league baseball – regardless of the outcome of the criminal investigation. That precedent has already been set, and it would seem that this case has already gotten further along that either of the other two noted above (next court date being July 11, for now).
Next: Forecasting the Effects