Is This a Fun Offseason?
I keep a physical calendar on the wall by my desk because I don’t want to forget how to use a pen. Glancing up at the boxes and numbers, it appears that today is…February 5. Happy Chinese New Year! Monday afternoon, I received three separate emails regarding the departure of the truck carrying the Mariners’ team gear to Arizona. People used to celebrate pitchers and catchers. Now I guess people celebrate truck day. The symbolism is the same — spring training is right around the corner, with major-league teams taking to major-league(-quality) fields.
And I’m bracing myself to write about a J.T. Realmuto trade. At any minute of any hour, a team might acquire baseball’s best catcher. I’m also bracing myself to write about a Bryce Harper or Manny Machado signing. At any minute of any hour, a team might acquire one of baseball’s best outfielders, or one of baseball’s best infielders. Dallas Keuchel is still out there, too. Ditto Craig Kimbrel and Marwin Gonzalez, among many, lesser others. We know that moves are going to happen, and all of these free agencies will have lucrative conclusions, but it’s hard to feel like the offseason is ending when the offseason stove is still hot to the touch.
For many people, this has gone on long enough. This offseason has gotten obnoxious and stupid, and, won’t teams just do things already? In recent chats, I’ve received several questions asking why baseball’s offseason isn’t more like, say, basketball’s. Now, there’s a variety of reasons why the offseasons move at different speeds. That’s not what I’m here to write and ask about. Rather, consider what we’ve been dealing with. Is this actually bad?
I’m asking as a fan, to you, as fans. And I’m just asking about the pace of things. I’m not so much asking about the state of free agency. I’m not asking you to declare yourself as pro-owner or pro-labor. All I want to get to is the entertainment factor. Is this kind of offseason entertaining, or is this kind of offseason a terrible slog?
I know next to nothing about basketball. The only sport I understand in any great detail is this one. But allow me to insert a comparison table, to show you how these offseasons proceed. On the left, last offseason’s top ten unrestricted NBA free agents, according to Sports Illustrated. On the right, this offseason’s top ten MLB free agents, according to FanGraphs. I’m including the dates the free agents officially signed, according to Sports Reference. Unrestricted NBA free agents were able to start signing on July 6. MLB free agents were able to start signing on November 3.
| Player | FA Rank | Date Signed | Player | FA Rank | Date Signed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeBron James | 1 | July 9 | Manny Machado | 1 | — |
| Kevin Durant | 2 | July 7 | Bryce Harper | 2 | — |
| Paul George | 3 | July 6 | Patrick Corbin | 3 | December 7 |
| Chris Paul | 4 | July 7 | Dallas Keuchel | 4 | — |
| DeAndre Jordan | 5 | July 6 | Josh Donaldson | 5 | November 26 |
| DeMarcus Cousins | 6 | July 6 | Michael Brantley | 6 | December 19 |
| Derrick Favors | 7 | July 6 | A.J. Pollock | 7 | January 26 |
| J.J. Redick | 8 | July 6 | Yasmani Grandal | 8 | January 14 |
| Trevor Ariza | 9 | July 6 | Jed Lowrie | 9 | January 16 |
| Tyreke Evans | 10 | July 6 | Nathan Eovaldi | 10 | December 6 |
You get the point. As is typical, all the best NBA free agents were signed almost immediately. Basketball fans live for the frenzy of the early free-agency period. On the MLB side, only one of the top ten free agents was signed within a month, and three are still out there today. They’re three of the top four. A similar pattern happened last winter. And even in “healthier” offseasons, baseball’s market was always spread out. The NBA offseason doesn’t totally end within three or four days, and the MLB offseason doesn’t always wait several weeks to heat up, but they’ve always been two very different beasts. The winter meetings are the closest the MLB offseason comes to a frenzy, but even that deadline is meaningless and artificial.
I’ve been meaning to put this to a poll. My own opinion has been vacillating. I mean, on the one hand, nothing in baseball can compare to the start of the NBA offseason. There’s never that degree of non-stop action, where the entire landscape of the league can look different from one day to the next. Right now, as I sit and stare at Twitter, I’m just about sick of even reading Bryce Harper’s name. No more rumors. I just want answers. I’m annoyed that no one is providing any answers. I’d like to just move on already.
But then, isn’t this suspenseful? Don’t we typically want suspense? If you’re a fan of the Phillies, you probably feel pretty good about your chances of getting one of the stars, but nothing is guaranteed, and you don’t know when something might happen. You don’t know if things might fall apart. What if you’re a fan of the Padres? Suddenly, the Padres are mixed up in rumors linking them to Harper, Machado, and Realmuto. Maybe that’s simply fantastical thinking, but what if it’s not? What if the Padres are about to make a magnificent splash?
On any given day, there might be news or developments regarding a big-name baseball player. None of us know when anything might go down. Out of the blue last January, the Brewers traded for Christian Yelich and signed Lorenzo Cain. In an NBA-style offseason, there’s the immediate surge, and then you get used to however the players have settled. In an MLB-style offseason, there is no surge, but more fans might remain engaged, and for a longer period of time. When a great basketball player picks a team, fans of that team get to think about the basketball player. When a great baseball player remains on the market, fans of *lots* of teams get to think about the baseball player. And then, eventually, there’s a move. There’s resolution. It’s like a raffle where you don’t know when they’ll be doing the drawing.
I can talk myself into enjoying this offseason. Other times, I realize I’m having to talk myself into enjoying it. And I genuinely don’t know how the alternative feels. I think I prefer the MLB offseason, at least in theory. But this is why I’m including a poll. I’d like to know how the audience feels about all this. Aside from the specifics, regarding labor issues and a potential future work stoppage. All I’m asking about is the NBA’s chaos versus the MLB’s sluggish unpredictability. Do you like that baseball gives you something to think about 12 months a year, or do you crave the high of an ephemeral offseason free-for-all? I leave it now in your hands.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
I feel nothing in the means of suspense. It’s downright shameful that two players who were good enough to be called up at 19 and be perennial All-Stars who have major hardware like an MVP trophy and a platinum glove are not getting major offers so that they can make their team substantially better.
The win curve is an actual thing and so many teams are sitting there as revenues rise and are simply… ¯\_(?)_/¯
To be clear, there’s a difference between “they haven’t received big offers” and “they haven’t accepted big offers.”
This has been bothering me all offseason. WRiters and fans alike have been groaning about how teams haven’t signed/paid up for these guys, but we don’t know the explicit offers that have been exchanged. It’s plausible that Harper has received an offer in the ballpark of $300 million dollars, and just hasn’t or didn’t accept it.
I (obviously) agree that these guys are insanely valuable and should get paid accordingly, but there seems to be a lack of attention paid to the fact that agreeing to a contract is a two-party system.
Is there though?
Supposedly, Harper rejected a 10 year, $300 million offer from Washington.
To be fair, that offer no longer appears to be on the table. The Nats owner said this:
“When we met with them and we gave them the offer, we told them, ‘This is the best we can do’,” Lerner said. “We went right to the finish line very quickly. And we said, ‘If this is of interest to you, please come back to us and we’ll see whether we can finish it up.’
“But we just couldn’t afford to put more than that in and still be able to put a team together that had a chance to win the [National League] East or go farther than that.”
“If he comes back, it’s a strong possibility that we won’t be able to make it work,” Lerner said. “But I really don’t expect him to come back at this point. I think they’ve decided to move on. There’s just too much money out there that he’d be leaving on the table. That’s just not [agent Scott Boras’] M.O., to leave money on the table.”
Obvious shill is obvious.
Yes, there absolutely is.
Thank you Jeff !!! Your one of the few that has kept a level head here
Yeah I guess Harper and Machado are letting fair and equitable offers sit because they love ‘suspense’……………………………..
They did get major offers though. Harper had 10/300 on the table from the Nats before the offseason even started. I don’t blame Harper or Machado for holding out to get the best possible deal – they definitely deserve the money more than the owners. It’s disingenuous though to suggest that the reason they aren’t signed is because they haven’t been offered a ton of money.
The reason they haven’t signed is because they have been offered a ton of money and think there’s a chance teams will blink and offer more than a ton of money as the season comes closer, which might work out for them.
I typed up my above comment before reading yours. I agree entirely with what you’ve said here and I more or less said the same thing, just elsewhere.
But they’re asking for 10 years.
Once upon a time, contracts like that didn’t exist and players and agents over time very rightfully pushed the envelope to get bigger and longer contracts. At some point though, there’s a tipping point where contracts reach a length where it’s just untenable for teams. (15 years is clearly too much, and 5 years is clearly doable, so where’s the line?)
My memory stinks, but I can’t remember a 10 year contract signed that the team hasn’t ended up regretting and it may be that teams have decided that 10 years is just too much. Maybe (probably?) I’m the idiot, but I think if those guys were looking for 7 or 8 years, they’d have suitors lined up around the block.
Yankees and Jeter from 2001-2010.
… under which the Yankees failed to move him off short in favor of the far-better defensive player in 2004. Had they done so, they could later (2014) have not had to keep playing him there, which statistically cost them a playoff position that year (three defensive wins cost, one offensive win vs. a league-average SS, missed by four games). It’s a stretch, but perhaps under a much shorter contract they might have felt more comfortable moving him in 2004 when ARod arrived.
Do you really think the Yankees regret Jeter’s contract?
Rangers ended up trading him but ARod was worth every penny of his 10 year deal. That’s a thing that can happen when the deal starts in a player’s mid-20s and not early-mid-30s.
Manny Ramirez was also worth every penny from his deal that he signed with the Red Sox.
Not a 10 year deal though
It drives me crazy to this day how the popular narrative was that the contract to A-Rod (Gold Glove caliber SS who was hitting 50-ish HR a year) crippled the Rangers and made them unable to compete.
But the Rangers’ payroll would have been highest in the division BEFORE taking A-Rod’s contract into account. The Rangers didn’t win because they didn’t have enough good players. Not because they had the best (or one of the few best, at least) player in the AL.
I agree, I think 10 years is too long, and teams have figured that out. Even if the player plays well enough over 10 years to justify some kind of WAR value formula, that doesn’t take into consideration the years where a team is not in contention, and doesn’t get value from additional WAR.
This is why the Rangers got rid of A-rod. Not that they weren’t justifying their contracts, but that it wasn’t going to help the team get into contention, and was just dragging down a rebuild.
I would also venture to say that no team has the ability to contend for 10 years in a row. Even the best run teams will have periods where they don’t contend. Like it or not, team owners seem aligned on a strategy of contend, or don’t contend and rebuild.
A-rod was definitely worth the first 10 year deal he signed. The Rangers got more value that what they paid, which is what everybody tries to do in any transaction.
It just so happens they were in a 4 team divisions during the 3 year stretch where it may have been the most fiercely competitive stretch in such a short time. From 01-03, The A’s and Mariners both averaged win total was over 100 wins a year. And the Angels won a World Series. They had the bad luck of signing a truly generational talent at the worst possible time.
I agree A rod was worth his first 10 year deal. My point was that even if a player can be worth his deal in wins value, that doesn’t necessarily translate to value for a team. In a year where they’re no longer contending and want to rebuild, those wins are worth zero.
So that’s why 10 year contracts are too long, in essence there’s negative value in the inflexibility.
Nobody knows what will happen 10 years from now yes, but you need to sign 10 year deals to extraordinary players if you’re at the right spot on the win curve for what can reasonably be contending for the next foreseeable few years.
The surplus value of a Machado or Harper pushing the needle into a playoff spot the next few years adds more than enough revenue to cover the backend, which won’t be as fruitful. (And those players are only 26, so it’s not like you’re signing them until their 40s)
My original point was when the Rangers signed A-Rod, they were a miserable team and playing in a division that just had two playoff teams, as well as a talented Angels team that would win the World Series in a couple years. The Rangers were not the team to have gotten the most out of his talents.
I’m not a believer that having a superstar on a rebuilding team has zero value in terms of ticket prices and TV viewership. It may be a waste of that superstars greatness that he plays on losers, but I have little doubt that some fans will pay to see a superstar play during his prime even if he is surrounded by dunces. Cause I will! The Orioles sold some tickets last year because of Machado that won’t be sold this year.
That’s a fair point, there’s not zero value. But there’s likely not $8 million/WAR, like is being used for analysis.
Also I think we should consider that teams may have better ways of improving a team over 10 years with $300 million dollars. Better player development, scouting, signing high ceiling prospects, all that costs money. Not to mention the analytics that goes into all of that.
Ultimately you need to maximize the value return of every dollar.
I haven’t done the substantial analysis on whether a 10 year/$300 million contract to machado/harper is the best way to spend money to improve a team. But I bet the Yankees/Dodgers, etc. have.
What about what’s best for us fans? Are you interested about that at all? Because honestly, that comment didn’t sound like it came from a baseball fan.
What are you talking about- baseball talent is a fixed pool, its zero-sum as far as ‘fans’ (in the aggregate) being happy/sad about player transactions.
The zero sum nature makes the timing issue a bit moot- while its better to hear good news early, it might be more enjoyable for bad news to be delayed. Consider each MLB season- nearly every team falls well short of goals, but the delayed bad news and suspense in the meantime is big part of why we follow.
Poll results from this article will be heavily tainted by the nonstop PR on this exact issue- i.e. all the hysteria that a slow offseason for Boras clients means baseball has lost its soul.
There are a ton of examples.
Helton signed a 9 year extension when he already had 2 years remaining for a total of 11year/$150m in 2001. That contract was worth every penny.
Posey’s 9/$167m or 10/$189m including the team option, has already paid for itself, and it still has 3-4 years left on it.
Andrus signed a 8 year extension plus 1 option year, while he was still under control for 2 more years, totalling 10/$137m. Andrus just needs to put up about 3.0 WAR total over the next four seasons for that deal to have been worth it.
Longoria signed a 10/$136m deal. While it’s a bit of an albatross now, Longoria’s been worth 20.1 WAR since signing, so if 1 WAR is worth more than $6.5m, it’s already been worth it.
Ryan Braun signed a 5 years extension in the middle of a 7 year deal. Altogether, when signing in 2011 it amounted to a 10/$145m deal. Since then he’s been worth 26.2 WAR. Not a bad deal.
Votto signed a 10/$225m deal. Since 2014, he’s been worth 23.3 WAR, and the deal isn’t looking very fair for the Reds.
Best I can tell, here are all of the 10 (+) year deals in MLB history where there were no ‘would-have-been’ arbitration years included
2001 Jeter
2001 A-Rod
2007 A-Rod
2012 Pujols
2014 Votto
2014 Cano
For any active contracts, I used STEAMER for 2019, -0.5 fWAR per year for aging and $8M per win for 2019 plus $0.5 per year. Here are those deals by the percentage of value to contract amount:
133% A-Rod (2001)
131% Votto
118% Jeter
113% Cano
73% A-Rod (2007)
14% Pujols
Thanks for this. I don’t think we can just project Votto and Cano’s contracts using -.5 fWAR per year for aging, at least not just 4 years in. If we did that, every long term contract would appear worth it at the beginning. I believe the current perception is that the risk of a player’s career simply cratering is scaring teams away from long term contracts.
For example, if we take out Votto and Cano, then we see that one A-rod contract was good, one was bad, Jeter’s was good, and Pujols’ was terrible.
We now also see that the upside to a 10 year contract is definitely there, but not nearly as much as a potential downside.
Meanwhile, nearly every good starting pitcher (including the best one), lots of other good hitters, and basically 9999 out of the top 1000 relievers have signed.
If anything is shameful, it’s the Players Association and random writers doing their best fear mongering and using the fact that handful of players aren’t signed yet as a sign that the sky is falling.
There are a few players who have an inflated notion of their value, and teams are smarter than they used to be. If anything it would be more surprising if everyone good was signed already, since that would mean that all of them had reasonable expectations.
It’s a fair point that despite the “over 100 free agents unsigned!” fear-mongering from Boras (and like-minded writers), I think many/ most Fangraphs readers would be hard-pressed to name even a dozen guys they actually care about watching next year who are on that list. And that’s from a self-selected audience that presumably cares much more about this stuff than the ‘average’ fan!
Appreciating that not everyone’s tastes run to fantasy baseball, there’s a pretty good overlap between that audience and the passionate baseball fan audience. After you get past the obvious (Harper/Machado/Keuchel/Kimbrel), how many guys are left that one would deem relevant in a fake baseball league? Moustakas. Marwin, I guess. But that’s … pretty much it*?
Name me a free agent pitcher besides the two above that move the needle from a fan-interest perspective? Oh, Gio Gonzalez. So there’s that.
(*Adam Jones strikes me as a guy with name value – but limited on-field value – where the bid/ask is going to be painfully wide between the self-/agent-perception of “5-time All Star!” at who knows how many millions per year and the GM/analytics perception of “league average bat/mediocre corner OF/slightly better Curtis Granderson – who just signed for $2/1).
As I believe Jeff has said earlier, it was naive to think that this Harper negotiation was going to get resolved anywhere but the last possible moment. Which is fine – it’s entirely his prerogative to wait. He *should* be trying to maximize his leverage. Just as the clubs should.
But it’s silly for Boras to light the house on fire and then complain about the smoke.
In terms of how baseball players are being treated by owners, I feel like minor leaguers have a much more reasonable case for being treated shamefully than MLB players do.
Yes, it’s likely that the poorly-negotiated CBA is costing superstars money, but they’re at least going to be paid tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the MLB lobbied Congress (successfully!) to exempt themselves from having to pay minimum wage to minor leaguers.
Regardless, ownership sucks so I’m OK with people complaining about that fact. But most of the high-end of the MLB free agent market is dealing with making fewer millions than they might in a different system. Sure, that’s not really fair, and I certainly would rather see players get the money instead of owners, but it’s not like Bryce Harper is going to have to share a 2-bedroom apartment with 3 teammates this year.
But again, MLB and their owners are certinaly slimy, so I guess I’ll just be happy that it’s at least being discussed in mainstream media outlets. “Owners are bad” is a sentiment that I can definitely get behind!
Yep, it’s almost modern day slavery what the owners are doing to some of these Minor leaguers with over 6 year minor league deals paying them mystery meat food and 1000$/month. Why do you think more and more teams are signing only and favor Latin players.
They make more in the minors than adjunct college professors earn to teach. Just saying.
1) This is not true, at least not most places.
2) If it was true, it would still emphasize how little they get paid.
Yeah, this isn’t correct–my wife did the adjunct thing for a couple years and made around $40k. Minor league players don’t come anywhere close to that.
If this is even true this makes it OK! It’s just good business!
Maybe because Latin-America players who are not subject o the draft don’t get the $$1 million – $100K bonuses that a 1st – 10th round draftee gets?
“Suspenseful” might be nice, I guess. But this is just boring.
How would it be any more exciting if they were already signed?
Because the fan base of the signing team would be excited and the fans of their division rivals would be demanding a response from their team.
So to nerd this out properly, there would be 1 happier fanbase and roughly 29 less happy fanbases?
I would posit that with them both unsigned we are at peak “happy”. 😉
Stolen bike meme?
Since when has there been 29 division rivals of a single team?
And it would trigger other players to sign, as teams move to their plan B’s. Also, the fans of the signing teams can start to dream on what their season will be like with a new star player.
It wouldn’t! “This is boring” does not, as a proposition, imply anything about the boringness of things that are not this! That state of affairs would be an unexciting one that I could simply ignore for a few months, rather than a boring thing that I feel obscurely compelled to keep an eye on for months, even while nothing fun or interesting happens. I would find that preferable.
It’s a question of timing. With two weeks left before pitchers and catchers, to not have “plan a” resolved so plan b can happen is too much tension for me. But not signing until the end of January is pretty suspenseful.
It’s pretty meh right now, but things are going to be forced into excitement in short order here. There’s lots of fun to be had yet!
I LOVE the idea of a frenzy. However, I voted for MLB style because I know I’m checking baseball news every day anyway, so I want there to actually be news.
That’s kind of where I am. But I also have to do this for work. Maybe for the average fan, it’s nice to just be able to check out for like three months.
See, but I’m not checking out for three months. I’m checking Twitter and MLB Trade Rumors and everything else, desperate for some excitement. It’s probably more my problem, but I’m looking for that dopamine rush of seeing a transaction or a signing unfold over Twitter, and then being able to think about how that deal shapes the pennant races in the upcoming season. When it’s day after day of nothing, but there’s an expectation of something happening, it’s really disappointing and annoying. With the NBA, at least you can look forward to a few days of intense action, and then you can move on with your life. With the MLB offseason, it’s like being on hold with the DMV for months on end. Maybe it’ll end at some point, but you have to wait and be bored until it does.
No way. I love checking the “mundane” player news (I use Rotoworld). I’m sure I’m a big exception in that I don’t watch any other sports (literally, at all – in most years, the only non-baseball sports event I watch is the Super Bowl), but even if I did I feel like I’d still get a thrill from checking the player news every day (often multiple times per day).
yeah but are Bitmoji and Boob’s non-story tweets really “news?”
I would enjoy the tension/drama more if it weren’t:
1) Obviously motivated by greedy owners
2) To the detriment of many (most?) fans’ team’s chances to win*
*caveat: things will probably happen next week which will render all of our current feelings moot
This whole offseason I’ve been mesmerized by how many fans call the owners greedy (selfish with money), but don’t care about the players – just themselves as fans (traditional selfish).
Is there not a meaningful difference between a player advocating for a return proportionate to what they generate and an ownership group pretending it can’t afford contracts that it can?
I understand the resistance to hysteria, but it’s also not just the 2 “big ticket” players. A number of teams would be playoff contenders by signing Keuchel and/or Marwin (Angels! Rockies! Pirates!) but prefer to deliver a substandard product. The players are greedy, but their greed does not “harm” the fan, at the moment, to the degree that owner greed does.
This is quite wrong from a market or social welfare perspective (and something that often gets missed by writers who regurgitate agents’ talking points while droning on about the “broken” market, but don’t know what they’re talking about).
All of these big-name players will *still* play MLB next year for some team. “Fans” are not being harmed at all. Even if any particular team’s fans are arguably being harmed because that team doesn’t sign a certain player, it is made up for by another team’s fans getting the benefit of that player when he is signed by the other team.
The only party “harmed” if Bryce Harper gets $26MM per year versus $32MM is Bryce Harper (and Scott Boras). Bryce Harper will play just as hard next year for $26MM as he will for $32MM, and there is no risk that only getting $26MM will result in him retiring from baseball and pursuing alternative employment.
The notion of “harm” to fans is a red herring.
Fully agree and well put.
No it’s not. The harm that Leinhorn was discussing was from “his” team not ponying up the money for a specific player, thus depriving him of seeing the best players, reducing the team’s chances of playoff baseball, etc. I presume you knew that and just wanted to trot out your “I’m a smarter baseball viewer than all of you” paragraph, though.
I just don’t understand this argument … and it’s one I hear all of the time.
There is no guarantee, and a lot of evidence to the contrary, that signing players to 10+ year deals at the top mark in AAV is a very poor decision. One that often does NOT return value proportionate to the cost, from the owners perspective. Just go down the list 8+ year deals and see how many netted out as wins for the teams. It’s not pretty if you are an owner.
Ideally, the players and owners will eventually come to an understanding that both sides need to share in the wealth and both sides need to share in the risk. Do whatever you can to boost players earning potential FOR WHEN THEY EARN IT (pay Mike Trout $50M+/year) and mitigate an owners risk for when players turn back into pumpkins. Unfortunately, players will never give up guaranteed contracts. As a result, owners will further shy away from longer-term deals to mitigate their risk.
I’m afraid that the past 2 off-seasons will be the new norm without compromises on both sides.
Why am I looking to mitigate the risk to owners?
Not to save the owners money
..but for 2 reasons apart from saving the owners money:
(1) if you cheer for a team, you want them spending in ways that avoid needless excessive risk and instead lock in high upside, low risk assets, and
(2) owners are jackasses and pass rising expenses onto fans.
I know some studies have questioned #2, but those studies looked mostly at ticket prices and didn’t look at all the ways owners squeeze fans for money including tax money plays and tv-network deals/ relations
As much as people can dislike owners, rightly imo, there is not necessarily any benefit to having them spend ineffectively – particularly not when it means giving more years to a future owner Derek Jeter types or throwing 10s of millions more than warranted at Jay Bruces. Infact, owners spending more on the underpaid staff and players will be both in line with the most equitable improvement to employee rights and will also be an effective spend.
Just because owners are bad doesn’t mean they should all give all of their money to me- we can all agree that it would be more equitable if it were shared generally. Same logic applies even to Boras clients.
This is so incredibly dumb and such an incredibly common take among fans these days. I have no idea how anyone gets to this point but I see it constantly
As a person who’s not an NBA fan –
Serious, genuine question: What happens in the NBA for the whole rest of the offseason after that one exciting week? Does Kyrie go act in a movie and everyone else just chill and watch summer sports?
you get a bunch of fluff nonsense stories like “x player showed up to the club looking like this? what? no way!!” and stuff like “x player tweeted this and heres the top responses” stuff that im sure gets clicks, but not anything important for the actual games
Yeah, basically.
I have the same question but about what happens *before* that week. I see that the finals ended on June 8, so there’s a month of…what? Are teams allowed to negotiate with players but not sign them? Is there some kind of “technically against the rules but we just look the other way” kind of courtship going on?
Do teams have any kind of agreements with players in between the end of the finals and the start of the signing period? Are they “gentlemen’s agreements” or are they binding (i.e. are the players actually signed but the deals just aren’t announced until July 6)?
I know absolutely zero about basketball, but I did know that LeBron was a big free agent this past year. When he signed so quickly, my baseball-fan mind was blown. The whole thing seems bizarre!
Jon, I think a partial answer seems to be that NBA offseasons are basically planned in advance? Like with this whole Anthony Davis stuff right now, and the Porzingis trade, certain teams are basically declaring what they plan to do in the offseason already, and it’s widely known that like, New York is clearing salary space to sign this guy and that guy. Which removes suspense even before the offseason happens.
I like the NBA roughly 80% as much as the MLB, and probably talk about it with my friends more. From my vantage point – June is essentially mlbtraderumors.com on steroids, with the draft thrown in for good measure. That’s the best month of the offseason for sure. Then comes the crazy frenzy of activity, and then comes the hype. Once everyone knows who’s on who, you can argue/discuss/speculate all day. It’s actually amazing – there isn’t an August or September day I don’t text about the NBA, and that’s with me watching baseball every day. I would also guess teams sell tickets in droves during this time.
There’s actually less to talk about now as a baseball fan, because I don’t know who’s on what team. I’m a Reds fan; are we WC contenders? Not if the standard is a Phillies team that lands Harper and Marwin and Keuchel (as well as the usual suspects). Are Padres fans more excited about the prospect of trading for Realmuto than they would be if they just had him? And every puff piece is replacing a ‘1994 is coming’ articles we read every day.
So even with less activity, it sure feels like the NBA is more fun in late July-September than this has been.
Yes, generally NBA player are tapped up before free agency.
NBA & NFL free agency go relatively quickly compared to MLB because both NBA & NFL have salary caps, spending floors, and otherwise standardized contract parameters-with NBA max contracts in particular preventing players with leverage from having any reason to hold out.
I enjoy the communists of baseball twitter being rattled and upset every day. It must be real hard work for Normadin to recycle the same tweets and columns non stop
Don’t you think you’ll get more joy watching the Middle East and Africa segment of world news?
Its pretty bizarre like like 5 yerda regressives on this site keep mischaracterizing the fangraphs ‘more FA money to future owners’ take as progressive or left wing.
The majority of commentators have it correct that the big money agenda being pushed by all the ESPN/FOX sport content partners is pro-big club, pro-big sponsor, pro-big agency, & pro-big FA- i.e. anti-progressive. The regressives should love this Craig/Rian agenda to get old familiar players from yesteryear paid and played.
Agreed, it’s ironic (and a bit sad). Some commenters here characterize the Rian/Craig/Jaffe/Meg wing as “communist”/left-wing, but the agenda they push is actually quite regressive and pro-big money.
My comments (to speak for myself) here are actually pro-social welfare and pro-player (especially minimum salaried players) but plenty here misconstrue them and think that they are pro-owner.
But this is probably par for the course for public discourse these days, whether about baseball or anything else.
I like the drawn out MLB off-season. Only because I remember all too well my disappointment, as a small child, that year I woke up before my parents and tore through all of my presents in five minutes and had to sit and do nothing for an hour while everyone else did their thing before I was actually allowed to play with anything.
That being said. I absolutely detest the social media / journalistic hand-wringing that accompanies the longer off-season. At least for this year and the last I sure do. All the chicken littling about “Oh woe! What is wrong with baseball?!?” is … disappointing.
I liked “Long and drawn out” when that meant stuff was done by January.
THIS… this is miserable.
Last year we had free agents missing spring training because they didn’t get signed till it was almost April. That is not good for the players, and it’s not good for the game.
I’m sure if Greg Holland, Mike Moustakas, et al, could do it over, they would have taken the earlier, good offers teams gave them, and thus they would have “gotten signed” months before April.
I’m sure Cardinals fans *really* wish Holland would have taken that earlier offer…..
They didn’t get signed, or they chose not to sign?
Perspective matters, yeah?
They were offered contracts proportional to what they’re worth, or were they not?
Perspective matters.
(not saying they were given those deals, nobody knows but them. Just snarky one-sided comments lack logic).
True but judging by performance Id say there was a good chance the players might have over-valued themselves and the owners where right in “these players arent that good”
Teams that presented deals to Holland and Moose in the early off-season are counting their lucky stars. Both players would have been vastly overpaid compared to what they produced. As is, even with the bargain basement deals that they took, Holland got waived (couldn’t give him away) and Moose was traded for 2 very non-exciting prospects.
Many turned down offers for big contracts.
Edging is fun for a while… until you learn that you can’t cum for another month
“I’m just about sick of even reading Bryce Harper’s name.”
Well, at least you’ve caught up to where the rest of us were nine years ago.
I don’t really care all that much about basketball free agency, but hockey is very similar (and only five days earlier) and I’ve never experienced anything close to the level of suspense following baseball transactions as I got from the days leading up to the Zack Parise/Ryan Suter signings on July 4, 2012.
Both of those leagues have the advantage of a draft that happens at almost the same time as their free agency, and draft days that are compellingly full of trades, so they pack a lot of action into a short time in the summer. Baseball can’t really duplicate that because of season scheduling.
Isn’t this largely a function of max contracts in the NBA? You have an earning ceiling based on your tenure, and the signing period is more about who is willing to come closest to the max and is a good fit so you may yet be able to achieve another max contract. It’s really easy to work that out when you have your offers in front of you.
In MLB, the reason the top stars haven’t signed yet is because they don’t want to be the person who sets the market, only to find out that they could have gotten more.
Yes
Right. If there were no caps on max contracts in the NBA, I can promise that LeBron, Durant, et al, wouldn’t have signed in the first few days of FA. And indeed, none of the other guys would have signed either, because they wouldn’t have offers until LeBron, Durant, et al signed and were off the market.
I agree that’s a very big factor. The top four NBA free agents on the list above (James, Durant, George, and Paul) are all earning max-level salaries in 2018-19.
The structure of the NBA’s salary cap is another big factor. I won’t claim to have an in-depth understanding of the NBA’s cap rules, which are vastly more complicated than anything related to baseball’s CBT. In broad terms, though, NBA salary cap rules, combined with various rules on the amount and length of contracts, pretty clearly set parameters on what any specific team can offer a free agent. And, as Brian Reinhart astutely points out above, it’s often clear before the NBA offseason that teams have cleared a certain amount of salary space with a specific plan in mind.
Between the combination of NBA contract limits and salary cap rules, I think that it sets up a far more limited bid-ask range compared to what we see in baseball.
And to put a finer point on it, it’s because the top players in the NBA are all systematically underpaid because of max contracts. Every single team in the league would give a max contract to Lebron, Durant, Anthony Davis, etc. without a single thought. So that class of players know on day one of free agency what their options are: anyone with cap room.
This turns free agency, at least for the tippy-top guys, into the equivalent of an NCAA national signing day. Because they’re underpaid, the players, weirdly, have total agency when they choose to sign and with which team — every team would be thrilled to have them on whatever terms the player wants.
And so much like the NCAA, the NBA free agency feeding frenzy is actually a symptom of excess demand for the best players. In a free market that would manifest in higher salaries — which would require long negotiations with multiple teams, resulting in a drawn-out and unpredictable free agency much like MLB’s.
TLDR: Machado and Harper haven’t signed because MLB actually has a healthy labor market, relatively speaking.
THE OFFSEASON IS ALWAYS TERRIBLE, THERE IS NO BASEBALL!!!
I have to admit, you have put your finger on the heart of the problem. My wife as a Cardinals fan is often forced to resort to watching Blues games during the off-season, and as a Red Sox fan I tend to watch the Patriots, but it just isn’t the same.
That is hitting the nail with the hammer. Only now, as we get closer to those magical words, “Pitchers and catchers report”, does the three month long period of depression begin to end and I no longer find myself in a sustained catatonic trance. This renaissance coincided today with a spring like 65 degrees here in CT so out came the rake and 2019 actually began.
This is when I end up watching cricket and pesapallo on youtube. Until pitchers and catchers report.
If a team had signed Brycechado out of the Winter Meetings, there would be a lot more excitement for those fans, most assuredly. Drawing it out this long for guys like SD fans who maybe sorta loosely attached is probably just waiting on heartbreak.
The NBA is a salaried cap league, if you dont get paid fast, or move fast, you’ll end up with less or not a team you want. I don’t understand why everyone thinks these guys should be signed already. Sites like Fangraphs, BP, etc
, have basically figured out how much a win costs, and blast teams for long term deals for guys that dont workout. Why would management want anything to do with signing guys right away?
The $/Win figure that gets thrown around is essentially the average amount spent per expected win on the free agent market inclusive of all teams. It’s not really an accurate representation of how each individual team values a win on the free agent market.
The $/win figure that gets thrown around is the average amount spent per ACTUAL wins from players on the free agent market. As such, it is even further away from how an individual team values a win on the free agent market than what you say.
Yes true, thanks for the correction there. I forget that it was the result of looking at how much had been historically paid for a win, not the expected number. Which, as you point out, is even more inaccurate. It’s quickly becoming one of the things that about me most in free agency evaluations.
The maddening thing is that this is not how it used to be defined. I believe Dave Cameron had a system about 10 years ago that was prospective. But then, we just kind of left it behind.
*annoys me most
Should MLB adapt a window of free agency? I know it would probably hurt the players, but effectively this window already exists mentally as the players want to be on a roster for Spring Training or April 1. Maybe a tighten up time window would create more bidding action?
I think there needs to be something in place that incentivizes teams and players to get deals done before spring activities start, I’m just not sure what the structure should be. Might have to give this a little thought and come back.
The incentive to get deals done before spring is already there. Teams want to sign guys sooner so they know what they are working with sooner/plan things out more in advance and players want to sign sooner so they can get situated and start working with their new team.
All things being equal I think both teams and player would prefer to get deals done sooner rather than later. All things are not equal though.
I think traditionally that assessment was true, but not so much anymore. Teams are increasingly willing to rely on cheap, cost controlled talent and are using that as additional leverage.
There’s currently an imbalance between a player/agent’s evaluation of a player’s value and how teams are valuing players. Team’s are increasingly willing to wait players out until their expectations align with what the team is willing to pay. Could players drop their expectations more quickly to get a deal done? Sure, but there is more pressure on a player to sign before the season starts than for a team who has a variety of cheap alternative options at their disposal.
I don’t think players should be forced to settle for less than the maximum they can make. And I also understand that matching expectations to what the market will offer is how negotiating works, but I just personally don’t like it dragging out into the spring when both players and teams should be more concerned with the fringes of the roster, not centerpieces.
Does it really affect me in any meaningful way? No but I do think the current structure allows teams to put extra pressure on players to lower their expectations versus having the sides meet in the middle.
I think this would just punish baseball’s middle class and replacement-level players. Harper and Machado will get signed one way or another. Restricting signings after some period would leave some of the lesser guys out in the cold.
If Machado and Harper were signed already, how would I quantify all of the extra “fun” I was having?
I do prefer it like this actually. It keeps me thinking of baseball for a longer time. I follow football and hockey along with baseball, and in those sports, especially hockey, once the big free agents sign (usually within a week of free agency starting) there’s usually nothing important happening until games start up again. im not thinking about hockey in august. im usually not thinking of football in may either. here we are in the first week of February and i am still crazy for baseball information. just like i was in January too. now, it might be because im obsessed with baseball and follow it more than the other sports, but i like that signings are more spread out because it keeps me intrigued and up to date with everything that is happening. when the signings are so rapid in the other sports they get lost with me as they happen because i cant remember half of them, whereas here i know basically all the mlb deals that have occurred so far. i know im in the minority for this, but thats just my thinking
Zero problems with this off-season although the baseless one-sided conspiracy theories from the fans are getting highly obnoxious- AAV is strong as ever you are just seeing a year or 2 chopped off contracts these days which is nothing more than good business practice.In fact i applaud the owners for not repeating this….. 2017……..
• David Price: 7 years, $217M
• Zack Greinke: 6 years, $206.5M
• Jason Heyward: 8 years, $184M
• Chris Davis: 7 years, $161M
• Justin Upton: 6 years, $132.75M
• Johnny Cueto: 6 years, $130M
• Jordan Zimmermann: 5 years, $110M
• Jeff Samardzija: 5 years, $90M
• Wei-Yin Chen: 5 years, $80M
• Mike Leake: 5 years, $80M
• Yoenis Cespedes: 3 years, $75M
• Alex Gordon: 4 years, $72M
• Ian Kennedy: 5 years, $70
Good list. You can run a similar exercise (and would make for a good article) by running down the list of “biggest contract a team has given out” in another recent piece.
The first A-Rod worked out fine – but that’s the exception to the rule. Most of them are cringe-inducing (if you’re a fan who likes his/her team to have flexibility to make other roster moves.)
And I’ll echo the ‘Thanks Jeff’ from above. The Sullivan/Szymborski approach this offseason has been a welcome (and thoughtful) one.
Extremely thoughtful and without these 2 guys I cant imagine how much viewership Fangraphs would lose in a time like this-
The thing about Sullivan for those who have read enough of his work is he never writes with agenda or bias. He has an uncanny ability to tune out all the “noise” and just deliver straight- forward amazing piece after piece that stems from his brain only not a mush of the majority- So refreshing!
Many of those are 2016, but logic still holds. That’s not far in the rear view mirror for GMs to be asking “what were we thinking?”
Immediately followed by “Let’s not do that again.”
To reinforce the point (again, pulling from that White Sox article):
2012 – Pujols, $24 x 10 – Angels
2014 – Cabrera, $31 x8 – Tigers
2016 – Heyward $23 x8 – Cubs
2016 – Davis, $23 x 7 – Orioles
That’s four fan bases that have recent reason to be hesitant about laying out huge long-term deals. (That does not mean that Manny Machado = Chris Davis. But it does mean that because of the Davis mistake, Baltimore’s options for Machado were more limited.)
And I still think Machado signs an enormous deal; writers are just getting impatient for content. (It’s strange to me that the overwhelming view of the readership seems to be ‘this is mostly fine; be patient’. But the new editorial direction at FG is ‘this is a crisis’.)
Appreciating that it’s too open-ended for Jeff’s poll – and a topic he was probably trying to avoid wading into – I think there’s a sub-question for those who prefer a faster-paced off-season:
Would you rather have
(a) a flurry of activity
(b) a more protracted offseason – but one that reduces the risk of your team making a knee-jerk bad decision?
People get funny about sports. I don’t know any other business where parties are expected to rush $100M decisions just … because.
Oh, and I don’t see how shortening the off-season helps the players. Ultimately, negotiations are about leverage. There are plenty of teams that could do without any given player in an FA market. There are no players that could do with out any of the clubs in MLB. Telling players “it will be illegal for you to negotiate with a potential employer past X date” seems preposterously counter-productive.
Who had Upton pegged as the best value of that group two years ago lol?
Melvin Upton I’ll wager
As a Pirates fan, I can assure you that it has not been fun.
Off season is never fun. It’s like having some internet time vs being with a real woman.
That’s true.
I like it better this way, though I wish things were somehow spaced out a bit more. Sometimes it just feels like weeks go by with nothing at all happening.
Also, we already have a “big burst” period at the trading deadline. That’s fun too, but personally I love checking the news every day.
I had to chuckle at the inclusion of Marwin Gonzalez in the article.
Marwin Gonzalez is basically the exact same guy as Eduardo Escobar. Seriously, run a custom player report for those two over any two-year, three-year, four-year, five-year, or six-year period. It’s uncanny. They are both ~30-year-old Venezuelan switch-hitting utility players, “adequate” defensively at SS, 2B, 3B, and LF. Both started as slap-hitting middle infielders, but in recent seasons have grown into relative power threats. Over the last two years, in just under 1100 PAs, they have ~40 HRs, ~160 RBIs, a ~20% K rate, a ~.200 ISO, and a ~.475 SLG %.
Did anyone give a single whit about Eduardo Escobar signing a 3yr/$21MM deal early this offseason? Why would anyone care about Marwin signing now?
In any event, the only alternative to this continuing “suspense” is for Harper and Machado to have signed earlier in the offseason. And if that happened, it’d be just as boring now.
I get it that Jeff does this for a living, so at some point it becomes annoying because he’s going to have to write about these things when they happen and so there’s a “let’s get this over with” sort of vibe. But for fans, who cares how long it takes.
I recall commenting that Escobar’s signing should have sent chills up and down the spine of the middle tier free agents this off-season. The major league front offices were quite accurate in their assessment of the free agent market last year. A relatively high percentage of the late middle tier signings fell flat.
You’ve mischaracterized this as suspense. It’s simply nothing happening with no real expectation that it’ll change soon. The sad part is that secondary and tertiary consequences of moves are themselves delayed – so just like last season there are certain players that are clogging the ‘transaction pipeline’.
The worst side effect of this all has been that sports writers have turned to non-stop griping about how this is going to destroy the game when, if you look objectively at the marquee-level contracts handed out to players in the 15-20 years prior, there’s albatross after albatross in there – this seems less like ‘greedy mean owners’, as sports writers are wont to characterize it, than simply a market recalibration in favor of shorter, higher AAV contracts and opt out clauses.
I mean, we’ve already got buyer’s remorse on contracts that were just signed *last year*, not to mention the duds floating around out there from previous years (most entertaining theme of the offseason: watching the Yankees beg people to take Ellsbury off their hands). What GM wants the $30 million Pujols contract when you can go get an ok DH for peanuts? I love the articles that seem to be effectively arguing that GMs should make crappy investments just because we resent the idea that the owners might be keeping that money instead (yes, I realize that there are fundamental differences between Harper/Machado and the older guys, but then…we’ve already lived to regret the much more comparable Heyward and Stanton contracts…heck, look at the big winners from just last year, lots of money handed out, and I can count only two guys I’d still give the same contract to, knowing what we know now: Cain and Martinez)
This reaction is totally logical and it makes for better baseball, because having albatross contracts hamstringing teams sucks (look at the NBA, one effect of the salary floor is that a good deal of the trade deadline is dominated by teams merely trying to escape from shitty contracts). These 4 and 5+ year contracts in a league where contracts are guaranteed are insane, and I’ll happily accept a couple slow offseasons if that means the market there gets reset. And that doesn’t mean the owners have to pocket everything – spend it elsewhere. I’d rather my team blew a bit of money betting on prospects if that means they get to keep the ones who work out around longer, than be effectively flushing it down the toilet on a Barry Zito.
I don’t know enough of NBA to compare both. But being a hockey/NHL fan (NHL has a FA frenzy on July 1), the rules that govern each sport and the contact structures makes it almost impossible for MLB contract to be negotiated so quickly. In the NHL, unless you are 35 yo, there are no performance bonuses allowed in FA (ok…the odd rookie that is an FA can).. the only real thing to negotiate is basically a lockout protection with yearly bonuses rather than salary. And to get those, you need to be a legit All Star. The NHL CBA pretty much took out a lot of negotiations freedom.
Will all that said, I feel that, whether you are a owner or player advocate, you are missing the boat… the only group of people getting sham here are the fans. In don’t have the numbers at hand, but the inflation in the “normal world” has been about 2% for the past, I dunno… 10 years. What is MLB? 5-6% a year? Don’t tell me a lot of the “new” revenue are coming from technology and tv money… in the end, fans and the general public pay for that. There will be a point where the fan says screw it, not worth it… I don’t know when… but it will happen (heck… are we seeing a start… younger crowd is not getting on board!)
The NBA is going to win this poll going away because of the RIGHT NOW nature of our society.
There is a third party in these discussions and that is the lawyers. The agents role in this cannot be overestimated and from my years of frequenting baseball sites I have not seen very many positive comments about Scott Boras and his ilk. Maybe if there were more David Robertson’s this wouldn’t be the situation that has occurred.
Man if you think MLB is bad. I’m a Lakers fan and the couple of seasons before this one, fans advocated tanking (including me) and not spending on big name FAs (or spending money on short term contracts that’ll be off the books) so we’ll have enough room to sign LeBron to a max deal.
And you can argue LeBron is grossly underpaid to what he is actually worth to a team.
Basketball’s “free agency period” runs from the end of the season to the first day players can actually sign. Such is life when max contracts are a thing, and the way to lure players is to spend months marketing a city, culture, and experience. It’s all the same BS that MLB free agency is going through right now.
I’m Ron Burgundy?
The suspense angle is a fun one, but I don’t think it holds up. I’ve spent most of this offseason wondering why there isn’t more public interest in a couple of future Hall-of-Fame 26 year-olds and that’s not a topic I really like thinking about too much. Regardless of who you put the “blame” on (owners, players, agents, etc.) the main topic of the offseason is team budgets and marginal value of a win vs. dollars and acceptable profit margins and a bunch of other stuff that isn’t fun to think about. I could deal with this better if there were rumors and stuff to think about, but it’s been mostly dark this offseason. At least last year with Ohtani you got the initial offers and the finalists and the different pitches being put together by multiple teams. ..
Fast and chaotic is the way to go imo. The White Sox suddenly breaking their established pattern by trading Chris Sale and then Adam Eaton 24 hours later was pretty fun. Harper signing immediately after Machado does would also be pretty fun. At the moment, it’s mostly just dreary.
I truly do not get the complaining about this being a boring offseason. Do people expect life to be exciting in every moment? Do they expect every year to be the same as the last?
The market changes, the game changes – spring training won’t really get going for another month still. Why shouldn’t it take the whole offseason for the market to shake out in any given year?
I can’t be the only fanatical baseball person who does not need a daily update on thin rumors about these top free agents. Every article I see that insists everybody should be in on Machado and Harper makes me grind my teeth. Machado is a pretty unappealing ballplayer to many, what with his ankle crunching of opponents – he’s acted dumb that way since he was a rookie – and his insistence on playing a position that is not his best, and his .335 career OBP. Yes, he’s a fine player, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to want him. Ten years for that guy? He’s already had some bad injuries. Harper is great – not sure I’d want his personality in my clubhouse though, and he also has flaws and an injury history. The top teams might not have the salary space, and are egomaniacs going to want to sign with Tampa or Texas?
Nobody has tell me there are fine ballplayers out there unsigned. But it’s a free market, meaning no one is obligated to buy the most expensive, risky thing out there. Sheesh, they used to bitch that players got too much money, now they’re insisting everybody should be trying to sign Manny Machado – so then with all that demand maybe Boras can get him a 12 year 400 million dollar contract – never mind that the aging curve for hitters is changing as we speak.
We only know excitement because there is boredom. And vice versa. People should try to be more zen. I’ve got a couple of Ottoneu teams and it’s been totally fun wheeling and dealing this winter. I wouldn’t mind having a little break to rest my baseball mind.
there was a decent amount of activity out of the gate with the Mariners’ trades and Yankee/Nationals FA signings and then it’s been slow as molasses.
NBA teams and players do not attempt to hide who they want/where they want to go. deals get done faster without all the posturing. and 1 guy can make a marginal team a playoff team, unlike in baseball.
Tomorrow is the unofficial start of baseball season here in KC. One bar in town here has celebrated
Babe Ruth’s Birthday for over 30 years.
Jeff, I feel a bit sorry for you. You have to check out all the these reports that keep popping up. I don’t have to, and I don’t read them. They pop up on the websites I look at and after reading the headline I go on the the next thing. I will read articles written after any free agent is signed. I will read FG writer’s analysis of the deals. Everything else is just writers needing to fill pages while trying to be the first with a scoop. Big example is the White Sox being reported as having made Machado a 7 year $175 million offer. Oh, yeah, I really swallowed that one hook, line and sinker. Not.
My opinion of how the off season plays out. Who the heck cares? Definitely not the management of the MLB teams.
So things were actually coming along at a slow and steady pace until recently. A lot of stuff has happened! It’s just that now we’re sitting here with a bunch of Scott Boras clients and Manny Machado waiting out the market, and it’s dull as can be. This week could really use some excitement, but things weren’t all that bad before recently
It doesn’t help that the Marlins keep leaking information to scare up more suitors for Realmuto, which never goes anywhere because the Rays/Braves/Dodgers/Astros haven’t actually re-engaged, nor have the Padres/Reds upped their offers. I’m pretty sick of hearing about where Realmuto will or won’t go, because it’s all smoke with no fire, trying to get another team back in the mix. I’m much more sick of Realmuto than Harper/Machado.
It’s mind blowing how all 30 teams are not wanting to get realmuto. Sad. Rules need to be changed where teams are trying to get better and win. Would fix the attendance issue and everything if all teams actually tried to win. Baseball is trending wrong direction.
They fine players for posting videos of highlight video of themselves since the owners didn’t get their cut.. while nfl and nba promotes their players. Nba revenue increased 25% this year alone. Think about that…not 2.5 mlb style, 25%! MLB needs true leadership and almost to the point where it needs shock paddles to get it going right direction again.
It’s no coincidence the NBA announced that Mavericks block buster trade during the super bowl wknd…..it’s advertising and had all the media talking about it at right time. It’s no coincidence NBA broke record attendandance levels again this year. We could only wish for that kind of leadership that knew how to grow the brand and the game and market it’s players etc
All 30 teams would LOVE to have Realmuto. However, not one team has been willing to pay the price that the Marlins are asking.
If you want to put the blame somewhere is it really with the 29 teams or the 1 team?
The Marlins value Realmuto more than the other 29 teams, so he is not been traded. What’s so magical about that?
The Pirates had a 5.3 catcher WAR last year. The Marlins were at 4.5 WAR. That combo of Cervelli and Diaz is excellent. Not mind blowing that they aren’t involved.
I miss the quiet of the true offseason in late January. I get that breaking news is fun, but I don’t need it year-round. I’ve found that some of the most interesting baseball articles come out in January and February precisely because nothing obviously newsworthy was happening and it forces beat writers and blog sites to get creative about storylines.
There is SO much interesting about baseball beyond free agency and trade headlines. There’s an incredibly deep history. There’s human interest stories. There’s in-depth analysis of swing approach or pitch tinkering.
It also just feels odd to start spring training with so many big names not having teams. It took me a while to place what I didn’t like about it, because it IS fun when a free agent signs last minute to plug an annoying hole on your favorite team’s roster. But what bothers me is this: it feels deeply unprofessional and disrespectful to the players to drag things out this long.
Spring training is starting. Players need to start preparing for the season. But for a couple dozen very talented guys, they still don’t know where they’re going to play? That just seems ridiculous. Sports isn’t the real world, but in the real world waiting to bring key pieces to a team in until the very last minute is just bad management.
Taking over three months to finish the free agency process comes across like an inefficient waste of everyone’s time and that makes me greatly dislike it.
Yes.
– Jerry Dipoto
I was an Expos fan for 20ish years so the offseason was always no fun at all. It was basically when you found out what latest soul crushing decision the team had made that you would be lamenting until the day you die.
That has now been supplanted by Hall of Fame day.
Sadly the last strike killed the expos, they never could recover …..and this next strike will likely claim another team.
30 employers colluding against their labour pool is a real blast. We should support this because the players make going to games so expensive and the owners are our friends. I say in return we give the owners some taxpayer money (say hundreds of millions) for their private endeavors. Huzzah! Huzzah! We are good at business!
I hope the players strike and Americans tell the owners to go screw. Unfortunately the latter is screwed because we really truly have become*that* stupid and easily manipulated as a population. This I know without even skimming the other comments (because I know how it goes).
What are you even talking about? Front offices are smarter, very sorry about that. We have a much better understanding of play value and how expensive it is to buy wins after a certain point. Why should a team spend 30 million a year to go from 98 wins to 101, when we all know playoff baseball is a fickle thing that can sometimes be what amounts to a crapshoot.
This has nothing to do with collusion at all. This has to do with owners realizing that huge expensive contracts are not pathways to sustained success in baseball. Young, cheap, flexible, is your better overall general strategy. Yes, you can pick windows to go all-in to pick up a ring, but you almost always regret the contracts on the back end.
Look, end of the day progress usually comes with some benefits, namely you often get more….for less. Progress in analytics, progress in understanding cost per win (it’s cheaper to go from 70 wins to 80 than it is to go from 98 to 105), progress in video technology, all of these have allowed many owners to get more (or as much) while spending less.
SenorGato, you pay less for an Ipod now than my father payed for a personal computer in 1982 that could do a million times less….slower. Are you a big old meanie because you took advantage of progress and paid less? No. And neither are the owners.
It’s sad what the owners are doing. Dallas Keuchel, Kimbrel, Harper, machado etc still haven’t gotten offers that pay them there worth. The agents are not just making up their asking prices….they don’t just pull them out of thin air. Kimbrel and Keuchel have not gotten 1 offer that we know of. Are you telling me them at all 30 teams don’t think they will help them? It’s bs.
If Harper and machado offers are reportedly 175$MM, it’s sad how not all 30 teams or at least most of them are not kicking machados door down. Collusion.
They point to a long list of players with deals signed and compare stats for each player and their respective deal that player signed over the years…..they compare and say hey machado is better than these 10 guys but worse then these 10 guys so his value is here.
What’s really sad is you have a guy like Jacob Degrom, at worst is an all star but he’s arguably a top 5 pitcher in the game and has been for the last 5 years. He’s been at his peak for 5 years and he’s sadly only made 12$MM dollars to date…TOTAL. 12 million dollars over 5 years….SAD.
He’s one of MLBs best and this is how he is treated. Rules need to be changed. He’s 30 years old and will he a free agent when he’s 32…..after what you are seeing these owners do now, do you think he will get paid his worth? Hell no. The owners are ruining the game and sadly it will lead to a strike.
Where to even begin?
— When Kimbrel is asking for 6 years/$100M coming off a post-season when he couldn’t be trusted are you really that surprised the offers have been a little slow. Most were estimating that his final price would be in the 4-5 years/$60M range. If you know you are 40% off the asking price do you even submit the offer?
— Reps don’t make up their numbers, but they certainly put on their rose-colored glasses and ask for the moon. Teams (typically) don’t make up their numbers either. They tend to take a more pessimistic view of the player. When you negotiate properly, you land somewhere in the middle which generally still favors the player but not nearly to the same degree.
— The $175M figure that was reported was shot down by Machado’s own agent. Pretty close to a verified fact that Harper turned down $300M from the Nats. Most teams do not need a 10/$300M deal on the books, contrary to your suggestion.
— Sucks for deGrom. The system does not treat guys like that fairly. Also kind of sucks for the owners like Moreno who have $250M albatrosses hanging around their necks. There are plenty of individual examples where the system is not fair. However, it works in the aggregate, demonstrated by no work stoppage in 24 years.
Holy Jeebus lol
Nobody on the planet is truly worth $30 million a year. Few CEOs of major corporations make that much.
People are worth what someone is willing to pay. What is going on with the comments section on this site? It’s like taking a beginners class on the Communist Manifesto. Do you guys not get how a free and functioning economy works?
By definition, reading an article arguing that Yasiel Puig is a physicist makes this a fun offseason all by itself.
I’m still waiting for the Red Sox to sign a good reliever instead of some anonymous guys they stuff in the minors. Not a fan of this offseason… but maybe I should’ve just tuned out baseball until March instead of reading FG all the time.
This is kind of a false narrative. The reason the NBA offseason is more fun is because they have by far more player movement than the MLB. Because of that, despite the major free agents all being signed in a week or two, elite players are still being moved between teams the rest of the offseason at higher rates than in baseball. Last offseason, Kawhi Leonard (a top 5ish player in the league) was traded, as well as other important moves, well after the free agency opening. That’s a function of NBA players having a lot shorter contracts, having more control, and a salary cap
Neither option; it’s the CBA/ownership concerns that are creating the lacklustre experience
One guy! One guy nails it!
I don’t like this off-season at all. For me, one of the best things about the off-season is speculating about the real season. If we only know how teams are constructed just before, during, or even after spring training, it takes much of the fun away for me.
But you should actually love this offseason if thats your logic. With more young players signing early contract extensions than ever, there are fewer regular starters reaching free agency.
So the bizarre ‘we want teams to bowl over FAs with big money immediately because it makes the offseason more fun to know the teams early’ take doesn’t make sense given that so many fans of clubs have enjoyed certainty (and ability for secondary & tertiary moves) & the ability to plan due to all the pre-FA extensions.
Owners should pay more but these CAA-planted FA spend memes dominating all the Megacorp sport/content partner websites are bot quality.
Doesn’t the NBA use a salary cap system? If they do, then wouldn’t it be a pretty easy process comparatively? Just offer the max contract to a superstar and toss in the most benefits and the player decides where he want’s to play based on the benefits and team?
I think what the MLBPA along with the mega superstars and their agents are failing to realize is that by waiting to try to maximize their contracts, they hurt EVERY OTHER PLAYER in free agency. Don’t take the first decent offer made, but damn, have in mind who you want to play for and if they give you what you want, take it! By waiting this long, you’re going to lose leverage, and you’re going to destroy the leverage of all the Tier 2 and 3 FA’s that haven’t signed yet because teams are waiting to see if they can land the top tier of players.
Maybe the next CBA they can fix this, because it’s really ridiculous. Maybe they can have an ‘arbitration’ style panel come up with an approximate worth of a player either in total contract or AAV (and give approximate cash values for opt outs and other perks) and factor in any preferences that the player might have. Then if a team offers within 10% of that figure, all teams will then be notified that an acceptable offer has been made and will have two weeks to make their offers. The player has one week to mull over all available offers before choosing a team (there would be no option to refuse). These bids won’t be available to other teams to see, so teams will be bidding blindly forcing them to offer what they would be willing to spend rather than marginally more than the last team and teams can make multiple offers. For example, a team could bid $340m/10y with deferred cash on Harper, and a $180m/6y deal with a 3rd year opt out, full no-trade clause, and mutual options for 7th, 8th, and 9th years worth $35m, $35m, $38m, with buyouts of $9m, $12m, and $13m with each buyout triggering the following if the team opted out (so, if the team said no to a 7th year, they would have to pay $34m, if they said no to an 8th, they’d pay $25m). Harper could then choose which he prefers.
The submissions would be given to the panel to determine the contracts’ worth to make sure that the offers are within the value range. In the example above, the contracts would fit if they were looking at a $30m AAV, and if the board was looking at job security, the 6 year deal with the three mutual options would offer, potentially, 90% of the security that the 10 year offer would give him, but with the perks added (and the deferred cash factored), would be the more valuable deal. Once the player has accepted an offer, all offers made to him will be made public. If the player remains unsigned after a month of being on the market (and again every month thereafter), they may ask for a review of their value, in which the player could change some of their inputs, or they could ask for a complete recalculation.
Free agents would be signed within a month of their first offer that meets expectations, which will allow the markets to move quicker. No more will players be able to sit on their hands and delay things, and once and offer is in hand, teams won’t be able to sit around hoping to score a bargain. Creating an artificial urgency with teams never knowing what offers were made by other rival teams and having a set of parameters that the teams will know right off the bat should help. Giving the players some say in the ‘arbitration’ style panel should help keep them happy as well. And you could do it similar to the old Class A/B system, where only players who have achieved a certain threshold would get this treatment, and all others would proceed as usual. Otherwise, we’re going to need salary caps and tax team income rather than a soft cap that taxes team spending.
I’ve always felt that the misstep in this process is that players are not paid based on performance much. Every player should make a minimum salary and then be paid more based entirely on their performance compared to the mean of all players. Those with extremely good performance should get huge bonuses and those that underperform should make less. This system completely eliminates albatross contracts and pays everyone what they are worth each year.
Morally, then it also creates unlimited free agency. If Mike Trout feels like he’s got a better shot at a ring with the Dodgers, he goes. Talented young player on a rebuilding team…he heads off to a contender and gets paid for performance on top of that. How do you build a team like that? You can’t ethically argue that a player without a contract must stay with his team.
Ethics? Our friends and allies, the owners, are allowing these greedy POS boys to play a game for a living. Where are the players’ ethics when they force the owners to pay minor leaguers unlivable wages? When they force owners to raise prices? Do you think Hal Steinbrenner WANTS his customers – excuse me, friends and partners of his – to spend 40 dollars on water and a sandwich? He is forced to!
These players do not deserve contracts. They age! When they are young they should not be paid due to a lack of track record. As they age they are declining and depreciating, like cars. Why should we let our dear dear friends and allies, the owners, be robbed by these greedy fiends!?
I vote that people suggesting anti-labor systems like this take it upon themselves to request being compensated in the same manner from their own employers.
So your suggesting all these people, en masse, be laughed out of their bosses office? I take it you’ve only signed the back of checks, and never the front?
I always like talking about baseball. The season ends, you do a post mortem, and then you move to hot stove. Pretty much anything about baseball is a good thing. As to this particular off-season, it’s not irritating for a lack of movement, because plenty has happened. It’s irritating for what it seems to say about the game…that far too many teams place additional profitability over putting quality and competitiveness on the field. As a fan, I want to win. But I also want to see good games.
related, an NPR commentary about free agency in the NBA and the creation of super teams: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/06/691909965/opinion-now-is-the-winter-of-the-nba-players-discontent
If I set aside the economic/labor controversies, as you asked us to do, I have to say I greatly prefer this type of offseason. If everyone signed in December, what the hell would we do now? For us baseball die-hards, it’s already such a boring and sad wait until Spring Training. I am happy to partially distract myself with debates about Harper’s next team, and a tiny hope that his team will also be my team.
As a Pirates fan, I just want something, anything… it really is shameful that they aren’t in on Machado. He’s the perfect fit for them and they have the money to do it. Does cheap ass Nutting really believe that signing him for $35MM AAV wouldn’t be worth it. Hell, just throw a 2yr/$100MM contract at him and see if he bites. But alas, it won’t happen. The Pirates will go into the season with 2 brutally obvious needs at SS and SP with Machado and Keuchel both available, $33MM off the books, and the same $50MM every other team got, and they are going to sit on it.
It’s just good business, bro. Signing those guys makes their $/WAR more inefficient and will force ownership to raise prices for us fans due to these players’ unending greed. The Pirates have properties like Kevin Newman and Cole Tucker, who can give huge surplus valuez once developed and that is just good efficient business. Nutting is a business man, a fellow magnate like so many of us fans, and is just looking out for us and his traditional business of owning a MLB team. If he’d like a new stadium just ask for the money, we will not cast a vote (so greedy people can say no? Buzz off!), and we will toss in some tax breaks to make it most fair as he has to employ greedy leeches just playing a game.
Superstars generally are never going to sign as FAs in Pittsburgh unless the living conditions greatly improve (ie legalization or major improvement to the city) or the team is an obvious division favorite.
Since Pittsburgh cannot attract marques talent, it would be crazy for them to spend big on the middle tier of lousy FAs who are generally very poor value. Bucs lucky to have Huntington.
What’s annoying about the offseason is that the number of teams uninterested in even marginal improvement has grown to encompass more than half the league. Obviously this is a product of the win curve but there are ways the league can disincentivize this kind of behavior.
Thats not true at all.
The players that improve teams have almost all signed, saved for two megastars holding out for record-breaking megadeals. The Adam Jones types who dont improve clubs are still out there.
Didn’t we all spend the 90s/00s saying ‘these dumb clubs, why do they always recycle crap past-it expensive vets instead of going with similarly productive youth with upside?’ Now clubs are doing it- having less reason to overpay for a 30 saves in part because fans, ST holders and sponsors are no longer temporarily excited by paying FA money for names two-years past their sell by.
The NHL is also fast and furious. It’s not uncommon for mega-contracts to be signed within minutes of the start of FA on July 1st. The week from the draft (1 week prior) to FA is crazy with speculation, negotiations and trades (those start a bit before the draft, as draft picks are exchanged as well).
NBA free agent signings are rapid due to the salary cap/floor and max contracts. Because the NBA is more structured it takes out many of the variables that slow down the process of signing the best players.
All the suspense is gone at this point. It’s suspenseful when multiple teams are vying for great players, and even moreso when one of those teams is YOUR team. It’s not fun to see the reality of baseball (this is all about money) thrown in your face. As fans, we get that on some level, and we can take it for awhile, but not for months on end.
It’s been a blast up here in Boston, with the patriots filling that 4 month void of championships.
JD martinez didn’t sign until Feb 26th last year and he and the Sox did ok. I’d like to know how teams shape up, but the fun doesn’t really start until april, anyway…
Given the pace of the past 2 years largest signings, maybe fans need to simply shift what is considered to be the offseason. Fans should think, “the real offseason begins now that the HOF voting is in,” and go from there. The Oct.-Nov. awards announcements schedule could be thought of as the official end of the fan’s season, then ignore everything that happens from awards up until HOF announcement.
This way, quality holiday time will be freed up, so fans can enjoy their non-baseball lives, while spending significantly less time evaluating the true value of worm-burner WAR nuggets generated by 4th-inning associate pre-setup setup men in mid-game low-pressure situations.
Or the league could just shorten the window and force the parties to come to deals faster. I don’t know if this is league mandate, or done via collective bargaining, but I’d like to see a 2 month FA period or some limited window. Of course, after that flurry, we’d be back in the same place of watching paint dry…..but at least we’d have fuller more fleshed out teams.
This off-season has been just as much fun to me as any other has ever been, which is to say not at all.
To me, the biggest reason I wish things happened more quickly is not simply because I’m impatient, but because of the pressure it puts on organizations to respond to what their competition is doing. There is no time for hesitating in the NBA (or, in many cases, the NFL), because you could quickly and easily miss out on the piece you need that makes the difference between a fringe WC contender and a division favorite. While the impact any given player can make in the NBA is bigger, there is certainly more chance for a move’s impact to be felt greatly in baseball than the NFL with its 22 starting players and 47-man rosters.
At the risk of a post hoc, ergo propter hoc comparison, note that the NBA is a salary-capped league, while MLB is not. Therefore, the agents for guys like Harper and Machado can convince their clients they’re worth double what any team thinks, and keep them held out despite the market congealing around a much lower figure for their value.
In the NBA, a finite number of teams have the cap space for the top free agents, and those negotiations can therefore take place in a much shorter time frame and be effectively concluded by the time the signing season starts. A cap in the MLB, no matter how high, would bring the current, ongoing draggy offseason to a much-quicker conclusion. Of course, I favor a floor along with the cap, if anyone is interested.
Here you go — the best suggestion for how to “fix” the offseason:
https://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2018/12/visiting-column-3-accelerating-off.html
I vote baseball’s July trade deadline. It is not free agency but it has perfect mix of NBA-style chaotic moves and slow, drawn out, suspenseful MLB-style prior to deadline day.
As far as free agency alone, I prefer most free agents and trades to happen before Winter fest so fans can get to know new players little better.
The business side of me says get as much $$ as you believe you’re worth but the rational part of me says how can you not live well on $300 million for the rest of your life. The following is oversimplifiying……he invests every penny of this contract because he’s already made millions that allows him to live off his previous contracts. Taxes (federal 39.6%, Maryland tax 5.75%) and Boras % (7%?) leave Harper with ~$14.4/million/yr cleared. No doubt his accountant has ways for him to lower his taxable earnings but lets just use $14.4 million. Harper can generate ~$350,000/yr on that $14.4 million if he invests conservatively (T-bills). I guess it comes down to how much is enough for a person. The overwhelming majority of us could live nicely on just the interest and not touch the principle. And that $14.4 million is for just one year. And don’t forget the millions in endorsements he gets. By year 10 he theoretically clears $144 million. If T-Bills are still yielding 2.5%/year he earns $3.6 million/yr in just interest! Crazy.
I don’t begrudge any player from making what ever the market dictates. It’s not my money so why do I care. I did the above excercise to point out the absuridty of turning down a $300 million dollar contract. Seems to me its more about one’s ego.
Why do people who present this side of the conversation *never* consider that the owners are men who can hand out a 10 year $300 million dollar contract with full confidence they will make money on it? The owners are colluding and letting these two guys (plus dozens of other FAs hit even harder, including one of the most dominant relievers of all time during a time BP use has never been more valuable) sit on the market because the double digit billions in revenue the MLB generates annually does not yield enough profit to satisfy. All this while refusing to pay minor league players a decent wage, putting caps on amateur spending both internationally and in the draft, and regularly stealing public money for their own private ventures because they will get away with it.
Meanwhile serfs throughout line up to defend these people…It makes zero f’n sense to me, literally no one benefits from this but the people who are already among the richest and more powerful on the planet that only want more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more
Almost no one at all – save maybe 5 or so conservative posters- are defending the scub owners.
Many are simply explaining that the issue not just ‘MLB owners vs Derek Jeter type 10-year big money FA.” Indeed, the guys who get the record-breaking 10 year deals are as wealthy as owners.
Whether you know it or not, most of your posts are pushing the Boras (another man as wealth as MLB owners) narrative that ‘to help the little guy’ fans need to pressure ownership to overpay FAs and Boras clients. This post above is one of the only posts you have where you address the other issues that most commentators are discussing: minor league pay, roster spots, employee rights, staff pay, etc. – ie actual progressive priorities from a labor perspective.
“Indeed, the guys who get the record-breaking 10 year deals are as wealthy as owners.” I find this hard to believe.
It seems like the players are taking forever to make up their minds or trying to squeeze another penny into a contract, but it will be to their determent as teams plan to move on without them. I can’t imagine the Yankees, for example, want gossip and positional change clouds hanging over their spring training.
The NBA model is definitely more exciting, but it’s obviously an unfair comparison. Baseball can never emulate it unless they set max contracts and hard salary caps. Elite NBA players know exactly what they terms of their contracts are going to be, they just need to determine where they want to live/work.
Drawn out suspense is good. I like that for 2 months I have plenty of baseball rumors and news even when no games are on. And it’s not like there hasn’t been action this winter–between the Cano blockbuster and Jerry being Jerry, we’ve had interesting trades. The Nationals, Reds, and Mets look completely revamped, the Rangers have decided to employ all the veterans, and there have been a whole host of smaller moves on the edges from the Dodgers and a few others.
The frustration is that teams are very clearly not prioritizing making themselves as good as they can each season. And that makes sense from some teams–I mean, the Royals and Marlins punting is kind of just expected at this point and no one is suggesting them trying harder makes a meaningful impact on the sport. But what makes this season and the past one stand out is that even the good teams or the teams on the fringes aren’t plugging obvious holes. The Astros need more starter depth, the Red Sox need a bullpen, and the Cubs haven’t added anyone despite a rough year. Teams who are about to unleash loads of young talent that could use a generational talent for the next 6+ years, like the White Sox and Padres, aren’t biting either.
It’s just frustrating that we live in an age of such great talent across the league and baseball’s economy is just…foreign. It’s just another reminder that the game that should be for us fans, really isn’t. It’s for the owners, and the corporations, and the shareholders. Baseball should be a reminder that something as pure and joyful as this beautiful game exists, and free agency, where great players get signed and make teams better, should be a reminder of that.
Decent article but seems like the same tired Boras theme from fangraphs, same as ESPN & FOX and other bit money outlets are pushing- i.e. that FA spending is the morally correct type of MLB spending.
This is such a bogus meme, I may not have articulated my complain well but it seems more readers are tiring of the tonedeaf push for big money/big agency talking points. Even so, with so many articles from all big sport media constantly shouting ‘real baseball is about paying FAs big money immediately, anything else is an outrageous tragedy;’- the result of the poll is not hard to guess.
Using ‘anti-owner’ logic to push for the Machados & Harpers to get 10 year deals is illogical- they are just future owners. The ‘not actually liberal or progressive, just printing agent copy’ aspect of Fangraphs push to get all the Derek Jeters and Joe Blatons paid is phony corporate and slick: nearly all readers are extremely clear that, while we agree on the anti-owner points, we want almost all the focus on encouraging owner spend to be put into the low-end of the wage/rights employee spectrum: minor leaguers, fewer years of team control, more roster spots, more pay to staff.
MLB are meeting right now to discuss more roster spots. If Fangraphs’ Meg/Craig/Rian/etc ‘Boras squad’ writers really want to push for more pay & rights to player, let them get behind more roster spots. And if they would be less tonedeaf and seriously agitate for minor leaguer rights, they’d have more followers for the Davie Freese testimonial contracts.
TLDR: Mega-millionaire players are future owners and owner class, could fangraphs (apart from Jeff, Dan & Zimm whose work is excellent) focus their corporate astro-‘phrogressivess’ on the MLB and MiLB players and staff making under 1m pa.
Free agency used to be more fun back when fans and clubs were stupider- sure.
Back then clubs would pay for someones peak and buy their decline- and we were dumb enough to say ‘wow my team got two 30 year olds ive heard of, both have been all stars, one had 40 saves just two years ago and the other is a lock for 20 HRs, cowabunga!’
Then after that, when Tango et al first started to show the value of things, we at least had the fun of all the rich clubs still paying for peak & saves a handful of poor teams fleeced the dumb teams trading now (or used to be) for later.
But in general off seasons are boring. The Boras publicists have picked an ironic time to moan given that the Harper/Machado and Ohtani offseasons have been more entertaining than most boring winters in baseball.
I’m a Reds fan, and even I find this off-season to be a bore.
I don’t care if the activity happens all at once or is spread out. I have a problem with a third of the league, and maybe more like half of it, deciding before the season that there’s no point in even pretending it wants to win more than 70 games. It’s like the baseball version of tank-a-thon.
OTOH: Did anyone watch the Arenado highlight reel in that post the other day? Look at how empty the stands are. Denver sucks in April and October, I’d imagine, but, it’s also an easy perennial MVP candidate on a competitive team. You see the empty stands, or Cleveland’s attendance not following its contention window up… most of the money is in TV now, and a lot of people can’t afford to or don’t want to pay what it costs to go to games, so at both ends, competitive and non-competitive teams, there seems to be this paradigm now where you’re not going to make any money off of flirting with a wild card berth before falling off, so why even bother. It sucks.
Arenado should be a marquee star in MLB – he would be if he was in New York, and it’d be a lot better for the game if he stayed in Colorado.
Also, while we’re at it, I don’t mind a long, stagnant offseason, but it was a disaster for most teams and players who were signing well into exhibition play last year. Guys aren’t affected by training on their own? They missed a month of team activities. Can they just put in some signing deadline, like March 1, and make players ineligible to sign until June 1 or something if they can’t come to terms first? Not sure who that would be a concession for – honestly, don’t care
Just skimming and scanning the posts today, I cannot reiterate enough how disgusting the state of sports fandom is. The owners are at least acting in their own best interest by taking such slimy and disgusting positons. That fans as a whole leaning with them? Warped at best, pathetic and gutless if still being kind, and they don’t even get anything out of it. It’s a gd shame, just on a basic human level. These are beliefs held by people who very likely work for a living, are likely raising children who also are very unlikely to become world shaping uber billionaires to blindly believe the same garbage, and this is the mentality towards labour that labour itself as a whole (yes, that is the endgame) *chooses* to breed. It’s sickening , un-American, inhumane, and just really really really gets to me.
Fans love describing player contracts as albatrosses, can’t wait to throw that word out based on $/WAR and imaginary baseless budgets. You know what’s an actual albatross? How easily we allow billionaires and corporations – literally some of the most powerful entities on the planet – to rob taxpayers blind, no votes, of public funds for private ventures. Or anti-trust and min-wage exemption on a federal level…Or the consistent -and long history of owner collusion in the sport (regardless of admitted or pronounced guilt as these accusations are never made lightly)…or on our end the heinous willingness to support these disgusting pigs and their actions for *no reason* beyond things like jealousy (that players make a living playing a sport most people really suck at but really wanted to not suck at) and hate (ESLs, player salaries again, etc)….I have no clue how we got here as a people but it’s only going to take us down a darker and darker path.
Strike and revolution, please!
I thought it’s been an interesting off season, with all the trade talk and such. Nice comparison with NBA.