Get Rid Of Free Agent Compensation
Draft pick compensation is a decent enough idea in theory. By rewarding teams who cannot retain their own high-quality players with extra selections each summer, low-budget franchises should get additional prospects to try and remain competitive with those who can spend liberally in free agency. The problem is that it just doesn’t work.
With tonight’s deadline looming, we’ve now seen most free agents were who offered arbitration by their teams reject the offer and decide to stay on the market. Among those who will not be returning to their previous clubs, but will land their former organization a choice in the supplemental round next summer:
Javier Vazquez, New York Yankees
Felipe Lopez, Boston Red Sox
Adam LaRoche, Arizona Diamondbacks
Orlando Hudson, Minnesota Twins
Trevor Hoffman, Milwaukee Brewers
Brad Hawpe, Tampa Bay Rays
These players all have something else in common – their current organizations don’t want them back next year.
Vazquez flopped in New York once again, and was not offered a contract for 2011 by the Yankees. He agreed to decline the offer in advance, allowing the Yankees to collect an extra draft pick, since there was no cost to him in order to do so. Hoffman reportedly made the same deal with Milwaukee. Neither team had any real interest in retaining the player, but simply used the system as a way to gather a top-50 pick next summer.
The Felipe Lopez situation is even worse. After getting released by the Cardinals on September 21st, he was signed by the Red Sox four days later. He appeared in four games before the season ended. The Red Sox knew he was likely to be a Type B free agent, and acquired him for the final week of the season for the sole purpose of offering him arbitration, having him decline it, and collecting the draft pick when he signs elsewhere.
Hawpe was legitimately acquired for the stretch run, rather than for his Type B status, but the Rays may also be compensated with a quality prospect for “losing” a player that has 46 career plate appearances with their organization. While we have not seen the same report with Hawpe as we did with Vazquez and Hoffman, it is likely that Tampa Bay also struck a deal with the player to decline the offer, as Hawpe could do much better in arbitration than he will as a free agent this winter.
The Twins and Diamondbacks at least acquired Hudson and LaRoche for one full season, but neither were realistic candidates to return next year. Minnesota just won the rights to Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who will replace Hudson on the roster, while Arizona declined the 2011 option they held on LaRoche and have made it clear that they will look elsewhere for a first baseman next winter.
Six unwanted players, six quality draft picks in return for franchises that spent zero time or effort developing any of them. This is not at all in the spirit of the rule, and while the teams are entirely within their rights to use the system this way to stockpile draft picks, it simply exposes a system that doesn’t work.
The entire system needs to be scrapped. The Elias Ratings that determine what tier players fall into is laughably outdated, and the current exchange of picks does nothing to transfer picks from those with money to those that have money. In fact, just look at which teams received compensation selections last summer.
#18 – Anaheim (from Seattle)
#19 – Houston (from Detroit)
#20 – Boston (from Atlanta)
#28 – Anaheim (from Boston)
Supplemental Picks:
Detroit – 3
Toronto – 3
St. Louis – 2
Boston – 2
Anaheim – 2
Tampa Bay – 1
Houston – 1
Seattle – 1
Texas – 1
Colorado – 1
Atlanta – 1
The Tigers, Cardinals, Red Sox, and Angels are four of the five teams that received multiple picks in the supplemental round, and the Angels got two additional first-round picks for losing Type A free agents as well. Those franchises are not anyone’s idea of low-budget teams that needs help from MLB to keep competitive balance in the game. And yet, because of the way free-agent compensation is structured, the franchises who spend the most in free agency also get rewarded in the draft, simply because they have the capital to offer arbitration to players in the first place.
Right now, the only thing accomplished by the free agent compensation system is to give additional draft picks to teams that understand how to game the system and have the financial capability to do so. It isn’t doing anything for competitive balance. It’s a broken system that simply needs to be replaced.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I wouldn’t say get rid of the compensation, but I would put a cap on how many of the first 100 picks a team can have.
I completely agree Dave! Great piece of work as always!
I completely agree Joe! Great piece of trolling!
I lol’d at the Anaheims.
one point of correction: it’s not true that a player can agree to decline arbitration at no cost to him. if signing the player comes at the cost of a draft pick, a team may very well factor that in, and reduce the offer that is made to the player.
All of these players are Type B free agents – there is no cost to the signing team.
that’s true, but there will be type As on the market, I assume, who will be hurt by their type A status. there are players that get screwed by their status every year. i think that’s a big issue as well because players should not be penalized for their GOOD performance.
For a Type A free agent, yes. But Type B guys don’t cost the signing team any draft picks, and the six guys listed at the top are Type B’s.
now why is the reasonable playoff system (not perfect, but not “broken”) being uprooted and painstakingly reworked while this is the first mention i’ve heard about the compensation system? great article!
regrettably because the masses usually have no idea what they are talking about
While I agree that the system is not working as intended, I don’t think throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the way to go either. For one thing, I would suggest that just as low-level teams are protected from losing a draft pick, high level teams should not be granted a draft pick. That would clear up a lot of the system-gaming you point out. There are other tweaks as well (e.g. something to ensure that a team doesn’t lose out on a pick simply because another team signs more than 2 type-As.)
This makes a whole lot of sense at first glance.
At second glance, see obsessivegiantscompulsive’s first point.
I like the idea of draft pick compensation in theory, and I think its value could be salvaged with three changes.
First (and most obvious): scrap the long since obsolete Elias ranking system, and replace it with something closer to Fangraphs WAR. The reasons for this should go without saying. Putouts? Really? This could even be a place for MLB to use Field F/X, if it becomes possible in the near future to use this data to create better defensive statistics than UZR or +/-.
Second: make all compensation picks supplemental rounders, and order the picks based on the quality of the player lost (using the new, superior to Elias ranking system). The current system which gives away picks ~16-30 (or picks 1-15 of round 2) is all kinds of messed up. The Rays’ return for Carl Crawford shouldn’t depend on the record of the team that signs him in the previous season. If the Angels pick up Crawford, the consensus best position player on the market, the Rays will get a sandwich pick and a mid-2nd rounder, something like pick #60 overall (I’m guessing – the number’s not important). If the Yankees get him, they’d get pick #31. If the Angels had won just two more games and signed him, the Rays would get pick #16. How can that possibly be right?
Third: institute a minimum number of years the player has to be with a club in order to qualify for draft pick compensation. I’m of two minds on this, and could easily be swayed either direction. Either restrict compensation to guys who broke in with the club and spent all of his club-controlled years there, or restrict it to guys who spent a minimum of three seasons with the club. The former approach seems to get at the spirit of compensation – lessening the blow of losing homegrown talent. The latter approach would do that too, but it would also reward teams for making good 3+ year FA signings and for acquiring guys with multiple years of club control remaining in trade. The benefit of either approach is that it would correct for the current trend, which is that teams that are active at the trade deadline get a disproportionate number of the compensation picks.
For your third point, what if the number of years determines what round you get the pick in? E.g. if the player is with your team at least 4 years, you get a pick in the 1st round supplemental (ordered based on rankings from point #1). Between 2-4 years second round supplemental, 0-2 years third round. So if a team like Tampa gets a Soriano to make a run, they’ll still get a 3rd round pick. 3rd rounders have some value so it’s fair, but it keeps teams from getting top 100 picks (probably) for having a player for a couple of weeks.
I would like to note a few things.
First, given the examples above, of teams not wanting the players but getting picks, you have to remember that the original team drafting him and then trading him got more in the trade to account for the fact there might be a draft pick waiting for the second team when he goes free agent. So that team does benefit.
Second, this rule was not made exclusively to help low budget teams, it was to provide some sort of compensation to the team losing a player good enough to warrant some sort of compensation. Before, the team controlled him for his career. That typically it was low budget teams losing good players to big money teams is the reality, but I don’t think that was the rationale used originally.
Third, and most of all, the odds of finding a similar player to the player lost to free agent is so low that any team using that as an equivalent value (which many fans seem to do) is doing a dis-service to their fans and ownership. A pick that far back in the draft (and it is not really that far back) is much like a raffle ticket at your local church: you might win a nice appliance, but you will very rarely get rich that way.
Can someone post this reply on the front page instead of the article currently up there?
But Hudson signed with the Twins. The Twins “lost him” because his contract expired. What they get for not having to sign him is all the money he would have been paid.
Two distinct modifications would make sense to me: (1) restrict this to draftees OR (2) use value added. That is every draftee you get the full A/B, but if you sign a B player and he leaves a B player, you get nothing… you sign a B player and he leaves as an A player, you get 1 pick (not 2). This gives recognition to teams that DEVELOP player.
The way most teams get compensated for free agents now is by trading them before their contracts expire. Eliminating this system might slightly alter the equation of trade valuations (you could no longer factor in the draft picks when placing a value on the player you’re trading for).
Weren’t there rumblings that draft pick compensation was going to be eliminated the last time the CBA was negotiated?
I usually like Dave’s articles but this one is a bit pointless. We all knew that teams game the free agent compensation system, but I think we all saw it coming. The better question is, do you have a better alternative? I’m not saying one doesn’t exist, but I’d rather hear you propose a system you think is better than hear you state the obvious.
For example, your criticism of the Elias rating system can be addressed by simply fixing the rating system.
The criticism that there are ways for financially capable teams to game the system in ways that small-payroll teams cannot is valid, but wouldn’t it be worse if there was no compensation system at all?
Nope. The sandwich picks destroy a lot of the value of high end second round picks.
I think slamcactus does a very good job creating some solutions to the deficiencies Dave pointed out.
1) As you said also, re-do the rankings system.
2) Reduce the value of the compensation and make it completely determinative on the value of the player than the record of the team acquiring him.
3) Slamcactus suggested they institute a minimum number of years players of value must reside with a team in order to gain compensation. I think an even better idea would be to institute a minimum number of years a player must have been under contract in order to gain compensation. For example, if a player signs a four-year deal but then is traded in their last year, the team that traded for that player should still get compensated. This would, however, get rid of players that sign one year deals and compensate teams the same as players that came up through a team’s system and played out their cost-controlled years before leaving. In other words, no more Orlando Hudson compensation.
4) Relief pitchers need to be grouped in with starters in this equation, as some mid-level guys are always getting screwed with their type-A status. Jason Frasor’s good, but no team in their right mind would give up their first round pick to sign him. So his market is already narrowed to his former team, the best teams, and the teams that have already signed other really good free agents. You can’t tell me that’s how they wanted the system to work.
mmmm, there’s a little bit of overanalysis going on here mainly caused by overvaluation of draft picks by many people.
This system will self-correct when players begin to wake up and accept Arbitration. It’s shocking to see just 2 players accept this time around. At least a down others should have accepted. When they see that there aren’t the multi-year offers out there anymore then you will see them begin to accept Arb in larger numbers.
“down” should be “dozen”
I fixed this problem two offseasons ago.
http://www.athleticsnation.com/2009/1/15/725357/fixing-the-free-agent-comp
The Cliff’s Notes:
You create draft-pick compensation based upon the FA contract the player signs, not based upon his previous stats. This gives us a more accurate picture of how the player is valued going forward, and what his previous team is really “losing” in terms of future production.
Dave,
What about just changing around the valuation formula. Wouldn’t that fix like more than half of the problems with the system without eliminating the benefits? That, and placing international FA’s in the draft pool…
I think that the absolute need for some form of FA compensation is best seen through the NBA.
One of the top storylines in the NBA is the inevitability of the Nuggets trading away Carmelo Anthony this season. It was a top off-season story as well.
The only reason that it’s an inevitability that he will be traded is that the Nuggets know they can’t re-sign him, and they know that they’ll receive nothing in return if he leaves in FA. This is a horrible position for the team to be put in. Politically, you shouldn’t (can’t?) trade away a franchise player, yet teams are incentivized to trade them away under the current NBA system, for fear of getting nothing back in the future. But if the Nuggets were guaranteed X number of extra lottery ping-pong balls for the draft, now they have some incentive to hang on to Anthony. They have to weigh their incoming offers as being better than the yield they’ll get in the draft, just as baseball teams do.
Well, the NBA’s salary cap structure is completely messed up and would be terrible for MLB. And that’s not even counting the moral dimension of the way that the NBA directs revenue away from its stars and into the pockets of the owners.
This has absolutely nothing to do with my point about free agent compensation.
But since certain teams have a big financial advantage over others, then what do you suggest?
“”make all compensation picks supplemental rounders””
This is an incredibly bad idea. Supplemental picks punish EVERY team, not just the team signing a free agent. Every supplemental pick is created out of think air, and pushes back every pick after. The worst team in the league last year should get the 31st pick in the draft as their 2nd rounder, but due to all the supplemental picks jammed in between the 1st and 2nd round, that 2nd round pick will end up being something like pick number 55. 20-some odd extra players will be off the draft board before that 2nd round pick, and before every other pick that comes behind it.
The supplemental picks need to be eliminated. Instead, find a logical way to really punish the big market teams that sign valuable players away without devaluing the worth of every other team’s draft picks. Baseball would be better if fewer free agents changed teams anyway.
It’s easy to criticize a broken system. It’s much harder to come up with an acceptable replacement.
Well I would imagine coming up with better numbers to go by when dealing with the Elias rankings would be an obvious suggestion. But ridding of this system altogether, and then doing something else? Yes, that would be more difficult.
And yet until there’s some sort of agreement that the original system should be scrapped, there’s no movement to come up with the acceptable alternative.
Allow the trading of draft picks? Anyone?
Still helps the rich get richer. They’re the ones w/ the extra draft picks so they’ll be able to trade them for usable pieces today. Doesn’t solve the problem at all.
Not sure I buy that. Draft pick trading has worked well in the NFL without a particular team exploiting it. Teams generally protect their first and second round choices as those have the most value in getting a top quality player.
The thing is, teams like the Yankees are going to consistently have picks in the low first round. The value of a low first round pick is not nearly as high as a high first round pick. The only reason some teams even get high quality picks that low is signability concerns with players “dropping” to them. Which is another thing about the system that is currently and completely broken.
The rather obvious solution (if you don’t eliminate the compensation altogether) is to establish a minimum service time requirement with the current team in order to get compensation.
I thought the theory behind the system was to fix the problem where a team develops a player and can’t afford to keep them, so they should get something back… The Red Sox did not develop Felipe Lopez over a period of 4 games, so they should get no compensation back for him..
To just throw out arbitrary #’s: To get Type B compensation the player needs to have been on your roster for at least one season, Type A at least 2 full season (and if a Type A was only on your team 1 year, maybe it can just be downgraded to a B). This wold curtail the gaming of the system a bit as if you wanted to buy a pick, you’d have to carry a player on you rroster for a season or two, as opposed to 1 week on an expanded roster.
I don’t like the idea of only homegrown talent as minor leaguers get traded and the receiving team are still investing and developing these guys.
…or just abolish the system as Dave suggests.
In theory that is a solution, however that diminishes the return that you can get for a Type A free agent that you want to trade. Part of the compensation that a team gets in a deadline trade (think Adrian Gonzalez this summer) is that the team acquiring him will at least get those draft picks if they don’t resign him, and that allows a smaller market team like the Padres to get a better haul for him than they would if the team acquiring him got nothing. This would really hamper trading Type A guys when a team can’t afford them, and will further alienate fanbases when the team has to either 1) trade him for $0.60 on the $1.00 or 2) keep him and get draft picks that in all likelihood will not reach the majors for 3-4 years.
It only impacts deadline deals… (as it should). If you want to get max value from a Type A, the team dumping him should not be doing it at the deadline and there should be consequences for doing so. This becomes even worse for type B’s where many become purely salary dumps for PTBNL.
If the Padres plan to let AGon go as a free agent… do so and get the picks or get whatever value he’s worth as a 3 month rental (which in baseball terms is 3-4 wins, not a haul of propsects). If they want to get maximum value for trading him, trade him for more than the value of 3 months of time… where’s the equity in that?
The team receiving Gonzalez at the deadline has done vitrually nothing to develop him, so why should they benefit by getting comp pick value for him? This was not their franchise player that has been developed over the years, and if they couldn’t afford to keep him, then they shouldn’t have traded for him in the first place (or adjusted the trdae value accordingly)
The compensation system was designed to lessen the blow of losing FA’s that teams invested in and developed, not as a way to game FA’s to be… Another option would be to eliminate Type B’s altogether as these FA’s are the ones that tend to get gamed. (and also fix the rating system)
And why do we want to encourage deals at the deadline? They make sense for things like the Twins trying to get a first baseman to replace Morneua (though they didn’t do that) but I’ve never gotten why we should allow things like the White Sox signing Manny.
why not just add a type C category then? for any players with their current teams less than 1 season the compensation is a type C pick – a sandwich pick after round 2.
Another view on this is if compensation for free agents is eliminated then the players union really has no say in changes to the rule 4 draft – such as mandatory slots for bonuses or eliminating major league contracts to the draftees.
This, it seems to me, would be the main reason for MLB to make compensation changes.
The system certainly needs to be tweaked. I think just scrapping it with no other plan for compensation is clearly a bad idea…but I don’t know of a legitimate fix that wouldn’t have some of the same holes.
The rich do get richer through the current system because they are the teams that can afford to pick up the Type B guys as roster filler.
I would love for a great new idea to come up and replace the Elias dinosaur, but I haven’t seen a good one yet.
Agreed. I just read every comment here, and I haven’t seen one suggestion that makes me think “Wow, that’s a great solution!”
Also, it’s not just there to benefit the team losing a player, it’s also there to penalize someone for signing a big-time free agent. In that regard, it seems to be working because you lose your first or second round pick when you sign a Type A free agent.
The counter argument is that this is just not working. The reason being, say the Yankees sign a really good player for a few years and then let him go in free agency. He’s still a good player, and still rated as Type A or Type B. Someone else signs him, and now the Yankees are the ones benefiting from the system.
This is the point of the article. Teams that can afford the arbitration risk are taking on these players for the simple purpose of getting an extra draft pick. The system is no longer benefiting or penalizing anybody in particular except for those who can weather the storm of having their talent diminished in the farm system by not having high draft picks.
One possible solution is to just eliminate any free agency draft pick compensations after the player’s first free agency. After 6 years, they’re a free agent, and subject to the compensation status. After their contract is up with whatever team they sign, they no longer compensate the team they just left.
Yes, the system is broken. My suggestion would simply be to eliminate sandwich picks and a Type A gets you a first round pick from the team that signed him and a Type B gets you the second round pick from the team that signed him. That way, the worst team still gets 1, 31, 61, etc. instead of 1, 67 , 97, etc. or whatever (unless they sign a Type A or Type B).
I would be interested to learn what “deals” or “understandings” were offered to several marginal type B’s (Lopez, Hawpe, Hoffman, etc) that got their approval to refuse arbitration when it seems clear that if they accepted arbitration they would get much more money for 2011.
The deal was “we’ll only offer you arbitration if you promise to decline it.”
that doesn’t explain why the player would decline. Hoffman’s decline was obviously negotiated into his deal with the Brewers and it clearly got him some add’t cash.
Lopez couldn’t had have any handshake deal cause he was only with the Sox for 1 week. He’s just rolling the dice b/c he had a modest salary for 2010 anyway.
Hawpe’s is an odd case. But he probably just wanted a chance to play for a playoff team and that was his showcase for a job for 2011… remember he was released by the Rox, so he just wanted to get a chance to play and in exchange he agreed not to accept Arb.
Why not eliminate the supplemental picks as part of the luxury tax?
I have no problem with FA compensation but I don’t think it should be handed out so freely. It should be reserved for only the top FA’s(say top 10 or so) not average or slightly above average players like it is now and I think you should have to offer them a multi year contract to show that you actually do want them on your team, not just offer arbitration when you know they’re isn’t a chance in hell that they’ll take it.
Why can’t the player say that they will deny it, and then accept? Isn’t that a part of the negotiation game?
The team is most definitely stuck with the player, otherwise the team would have to be reprimanded for a clear case of collusive behavior with the player. I guess that the first guy to do this would be blackballed from the game, but for a guy like Hoffman who is in his last year anyway, why not go for the money grab.
The easy solution to this problem is that if you are a player and have a clear incentive to accept arbitration when the team doesn’t want you to (as ALL of the players listed would be better off accepting), then you should accept it. Teams will adapt VERY quickly to this.
But yeah, in general the rankings Elias gives are really stupid and have no basis in reality, and I like the idea of granting free agent status retroactively based on the contract received by the player. That would also help guys who get stuck as Type A who really should not be classified as such (Juan Cruz comes to mind)
I didn’t really understand the acquisition of Miguel Olivo for peanuts at the start of this off season, but it seems to me that this acquisition is the most egregious gaming of the system, of all for 2010-2011. Assuming he declines arbitration, Toronto will get a pick in return for a guy who never suited up for the Jays.
I haven’t heard who the “player to be named” is, but I’m guessing he won’t quite have the pedigree of the sandwich pick they’ll get, in return. Makes me wonder what the Rockies Mgmt has been smoking.
He would have accepted arbitration if the rockies had offered it, so they got rid of him. What’s wrong with that?
How about only give the draft picks for players that have never been free agents before? This would cover the cases most in need of correction — those in which a small market team is losing a star player to free agency. Once a guy has signed a contract as a free agent (not to include extensions that include one or more post-arbitration years) signing the player won’t cost picks.
This would assume that some kind of player quality scale continues to be used, of course, though not necessarily Elias.
Why not create more tiers like type A, B, C, D, E, F but keep about the same number of players that are currently reaching type A and B. Then associate Type A with first round compensation and type B with 2nd round compensation etc.. That way each team loses a draft pick if they sign a FA. Say player X is one of the last ones to qualify they would become a type F Free agent and cost the signing team a 6th round draft pick. That way their is a cost but it isnt too high.
My biggest beef with the current process is that team A can sign a type A free agent and lose a pick. Then team B can sign one of team A’s type A free agents and team A gets a draft pick and a supplemental round pick. So team A picked up a FA, lost a FA, got a draft pick back and got extra draft pick.
Just my 2 cents.
Ian
The first, and seemingly most obvious, step I would take is to take away comp picks if a team signs another free agent. Under the current system a team that loses 1 Type A free agent, but signs two can actually come out ahead on draft picks. They would have to give up their first round pick and second round pick, but would gain a first and a supplemental pick. Worst case scenario they trade a first and second for a supplemental and a second. Best case scenario a team with a protected first rounder could actually gain a first and supplemental while losing a second and a third. It really seems like that should have been noticed the day they came up with the idea.
Is there also a list of teams that lost picks? – instead of teams that gained picks.
While the current way of free agent compensation IS 100% broken, every other sport’s methods of none compensation are much, MUCH worse.
The NFL has compensation methods. They also have the “franchise” tag where they can keep a player unless another team wants to forfeit their 1st round draft pick.
This is f***ing ludicrous.
The Pirates, the team with the fewest wins in major league baseball last year, will have the first overall pick.
The Rays, the team with the most wins in baseball, will then pick somewhere between eight and eleven times before the Pirates get their next draft pick. All that for losing six unessential (indeed, for the most part, quite bad) bullpen pitchers, a guy who hit under .200 last year, a DH from off the garbage heap and Carl Crawford.
Other teams getting lots of “compensatory” draft picks: the 85-win Jays (5), the 89-win Red Sox (5), the 94-win Twins (4), the 91-win Padres (3), the 83-win Rockies (3), and the 88-win White Sox (3).
I’ve become convinced that the best way to generate draft picks is just to sign an entire bullpen (maybe excepting a long-term closer) to one-year contracts every season. You’re virtually guaranteed to rack up six or seven picks a year. The system actually (and severely) punishes teams for going with homegrown bullpen talent.
Wow, this really brings it home nicely. Just the amount of talent that will be unavailable to the “neediest” team in the second round due to all the sandwich picks is evidence enough that a change is needed here.
It is my understanding that people have assigned a dollar value to the compensation picks. Instead of giving up picks, why not have the signing team simply pay the team losing the player?
If you want to get fancy, you could eliminate the rating system altogether. Convert all the applicable FA contracts to their present value. Take the largest one and calculate the percentage of that which equals the dollar value of the 1st pick in the draft. Apply that percentage to all applicable FA signings above some set value or maybe only the top 20 or 30% of the FA contracts. (The numbers in this paragraph are only suggestions.)
While I agree generally with your point, there’s a bit of selection bias going on in your examples. One of the reasons these teams won so many games is because they had more players who fit the criteria of being Type-A and Type-B free agents. Granted, the compensation system is screwed up for relievers and Brad Hawpe added little to the Rays, but most of the others were pretty good ballplayers who helped contribute to the many wins these teams had over the last 2 years.
this.
saying they were “unessential” is absurd. How did the Rays win 96 games??
Okay.
So, you have a system that rewards teams for having good players.
I thought winning games, drawing fans, and putting up championship banners were supposed to be the rewards for having good players. Is that not enough? The draft is supposed to have a balancing-out effect; instead, free agent compensation means the rich get richer.
Yeah, but you get to watch the best commodity in baseball, McCutcheon for a couple more years. Besides, the Rays will be lucky to get one extra first rounder. They’ll end up with a bunch of sandwiches and seconds, but that’s no way to fill up the tank.
Actually most RPers aren’t offered arbitration. The Twins had 4 pitchers who were labeled Type A or Type B (Guerrier, Crain, Rauch, Fuentes), the Twins offered only Crain arbitration because the other 3 likely would have accepted costing the Twins much too much money. RPer get labeled Type A or Type B frequently, but much less frequently actually get offered arbitration.
Well, John, the Rays offered arb to Soriano, Choate, Balfour, and Qualls with all declining, and Benoit was already signed before they had the chance. Wheeler is the only guy we’re afraid to offer arb to since he’d be the most likely to fall into the scenario you mention.
It’s sad that one guy that typifies the reason to have the compensation, Carl Crawford, probably won’t even be returning a 1st round pick to the team that he leaves. If the idea is to compensate small-market teams when their superstars leave, then clearly the system is broken since Crawford would basically have to sign with the Red Sox, and that’s about it to return that 1st round pick.
Dave, I enjoyed your post, but would have liked to have seen that aspect mentioned, as well as, the loophole abuse by intelligent teams.
A. Player has to be on team for two prior seasons before FA.
B. Team must offer player 2 year deal at or above previous salary.
C. Player must receive 3 or more years from team giving compensation. If signed to a 2 year contract and retained beyond that deal by signing team, a compensation pick will be awarded to the previous team in that year’s draft.
I agree,but lets get rid of free agency and have people enter a re-entrance draft which would work like the draft for first year players or simply let a player assume free agency with no restrictions after a payroll cap has been installed.By the way the Giants won the series with a lesser payroll than the Yankees so maybe that proves that the size of the paycheck should not be the number 1 item ability to play with a team effort means more than offering a fat wallot.
Every system, no matter how well designed, can be gamed…that’s not an excuse to scrap the system, just an reason to have better controls put in place with the new CBA.
“Javier Vazquez, New York Yankees”
Setting aside payroll, the Yankees gave up 3 players they developed Melky, Dunn and Arody to get Javier Vazquez and Boone Logan. I wouldn’t exactly call that gaming the system. Part of the value in the trade on the Yankee’s part was recovering some of the lost prospects should Vasquez leave. Another point is Atlanta did not develop Javier either. Washington developed and later traded him to Yankees. Atlanta used the potential draft pick compensation in part as a trading chip to the Yankees and received more prospects than may have otherwise received in return. I don’t believe this had anything to do with Atlanta not being able to offer arbitration to Javier.
Gaming the system is more the Red Sox making salary dump trades and picking players off the waiver wire to get extra draft picks.