This Is the Slowest Offseason Ever
“I think prudence and judgment would indicate that those long-term, late-in-career deals in any era have generally not turned out to be very good decisions. I think we’ve been right to [avoid lucrative free agent deals]. I think we’ll be even more right in the next era.”
— Pirates owner Bob Nutting
“We believe [the players’ revenue share] is well below 50 [percent]. Show me a team, after you go through the general fund without selling a ticket, that’s not making $120 million. So where is it going?… Where are [owners] spending it?”
— Agent Scott Boras
This author gathered those quotes for a story that appeared on May 30, 2015, in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
For many players, trouble did not then seem to be on the horizon. When I asked then-Pirates player rep Neil Walker about teams running their operations more efficiently and the possibility of owners taking a greater share of revenues, Walker seemed untroubled. “Frankly, at this point,” he said, “we don’t see it as much of a concern.”
To be fair, owners went out and guaranteed a record $2.4 billion to free agents that following offseason. But then the trouble really began to bubble up for players. Spending declined by a billion dollars the following winter and sits at $746 million to date this offseason, according to Spotrac. As Craig Edwards recently noted, MLB Opening Day payroll could decrease for the first time in a long time.
As detailed here and elsewhere, this is happening for a number of reasons. In part, it’s due to the development Nutting addresses: clubs have more and more become leery of free agency and believe they can win largely through pre-arb, cost-controlled talent. Teams have also learned how to better quantify performance and account for the effects of aging. The new CBA, too, has established something of a hard cap, one without any mechanism forcing owners to spend at the lower range of payrolls. While next year’s historic free-agent class will likely set some records, the aforementioned issues could still present trouble for the vast majority of players.
These are big problems that face the MLBPA in the mid- and long-term. The economic model of free agency, from their perspective, might very well be broken. The market, players would argue, is not working properly. Players are available, but the demand for their services is lacking.
In the short term, meanwhile, the unemployed players simply want to find jobs.
The volume of unsigned free agents this February is pretty astounding — and unrest has begun to develop as a result. Multiple agencies have released statements condemning the lack of action on the part of teams. There was even talk that players would consider boycotting the early portion of spring training, a report which the MLBPA later denied.
Sources: Players briefly discussed the possibility of boycotting the first days of spring training in a conference call last week, among many other ideas. But baseball industry sources indicate it is not currently an option under any serious consideration.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 4, 2018
Tensions are rising and players like Brandon Moss seem to recognize that the union failed to anticipate certain challenges on the horizon, that the MLBPA could and should have probably negotiated a better deal.
The situation certainly feels unprecedented. But is it?
Back on Jan. 3, in an attempt to make sense of what had already developed into a slow offseason, I asked whether MLB teams had perhaps learned to wait out free agents. Even then, a month ago, it appeared likely that a historically low percentage of players would be signed entering February.
Last season, for instance, 65 players signed free-agent deals in February, the greatest number since 2009 and the third consecutive year in which February signings had increased in volume. This February, that mark will once again be broken — unless, that is, a large volume of signings move into March.
FanGraphs and Hardball Times contributor Ryan Pollack dug deeper, examining how the lack of signings through January compares to past years. Pollack included all signings, both major- and minor-league deals. What Pollack found is that, by percentage of players signed through January, there has never been a slower offseason in the history of free agency:
And it’s the slowest offseason in terms of volume of signings in at least the last 18 years, Pollack found:
Baseball has made history. And now the players, as a group, possibly face some hard decisions. As we saw last week, there is an increasing amount of anxiety present among them. The CAA agency, by way of an announcement released on Friday, says players are “outraged” and uniting in a “way not seen since 1994.” That was, of course, the last time the sport endured a work stoppage.
There are tough questions facing players individually, too. We expect that most of these available free agents will eventually sign. But it will be interesting to see what type of discount they are willing to tolerate. Teams generally gain leverage as spring training nears, and never before have teams collectively waited so long to sign free agents. Consider that 24 of our top-50 free agents remain available.
I’ve cited Max Rieper’s study from Royals Review on several occasions this offseason, but it bears repeating once again. Rieper found that, from 2013 to -17, free agents who signed before Jan. 1 received guaranteed dollars 4.0% above FanGraphs’ crowdsourced estimates. Free agents who signed after Jan. 1, meanwhile, received 25.3% less than FanGraphs’ estimates.
Those numbers, of course, apply to “normal” offseasons. There has never been a market so flooded this late in the winter. In theory, there should be even greater discounts available as anxiety rises — and opportunities shrink — at the start of training camp.
This has been a weird offseason. Pollack has shown us that it is the quietest offseason of all time. February is the new March. We’ll have to see what that means.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
A lot has been printed about possible reasons for things being slow, but in my opinion the number 1 reason for this years slowness so far is that so many players at the top end have not signed contracts they have been offered. There is no team that is in the running for Yu Darvish that wants Arrieta instead. Until Darvish signs Arrieta will not (plus you know, Boras). Until Arrieta signs i don’t really see Cobb or Lynn signing (especially Lynn because you know, Boras) etc. you can show this pattern with basically every position. High end guys havent signed, lower end guys cant sign because they are backup options for teams.
However, as we’ve seen before, if teams don’t get the top player at a position, they swiftly go for players in a their below. So if a team doesn’t believe they’ll sign Darvish, they’d go for someone lesser. That usually doesn’t wait until after the top players sign.
Why haven’t teams done that, then?
Agents often hold out until the top player at their position ‘sets the market’
This is being done moreso than in most offseasons, in coordination with the agent-led PR campaign to oust Tony Clark.
Wrong, and wrong.
The top few teams interested in the top of the market would wait, but other teams with no shot jump in regardless.
Proof of conspiracy?
Shocking headline!
From the viewpoint of a fan who can’t afford Yankee Stadium prices for more than a token appearance (with three kids) I view this trend with a big Meh. If the Yankees avoid the luxury tax maybe ticket prices will go down and I won’t have to deal with YES not being carried by my cable provider again like 2016. DRIPPING SARCASM. I love the game but really, now I’ve gotta deal with attorneys on fan graphs turning this into a political bruhaha?
All labor struggles are political.
Just take a break from baseball until season starts. This way you get to skip all the offseason drama and get straight into the actual sport.
Until then, this is what the offseason is like. People discussing why or why not players have signed where and where not. The only difference between this offseason and previous ones is that there’s more of the latter than the former.
No, this is a coordinated PR campaign, an anti-progressive agenda to carry water for Boras/CAA talking points every day.
Don’t bring “progressive” into this. You are not arguing for a “progressive” agenda. And I prefer not to get into an argument about our relative political stances.
You’re not even arguing for a “progressive agenda” in the MLB.
If Yankee stadium is generating max profit, the tickets are at the right price.
If nobody is buying them, then they’re too expensive.
But this labor issue IS political, the politics of ownership and player union relations.
Don’t hold your breath on the Yankees ever passing any of that potential savings on to you. Why would they?
Players and agents look at past free agent contracts and see the donuts. Teams that are paying for them see the holes. It’s merely a reality check for everyone. Things can’t be grim for players if Eric Frickin’ Hosmer turns his nose up at double the amount he truly merits.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure JD Martinez, Darvish, Arrieta and Hosmer are going to get at least one year too many as far as being at least average player.
Man, you couldn’t have written that better if you actually worked for the owners. That’s a perfect expression of a bizarre point of view that is absolutely CERTAIN Eric Hosmer is “worth” $80m but definitely NOT $120m. Why? Never a response. The numbers are just picked out of thin air.
There’s no way to determine what a player is intrinsically worth. MLB is a zero sum game and every dollar that the players don’t earn, the owners do. So it’s a struggle for fairness. And why people on sites like this instinctively side with the billionaire owners (whom they couldn’t care less about) over the millionaire players (whom they spend all kinds of time and money to watch) is one of the great — and fascinating — mysteries of life.
It probably has to do with the fact that most of us are employees with bosses, like the players, but are overwhelmingly not in the same position as the players when it comes to the ability to negotiate our salaries or wages.
And we don’t get multi-year guarantees. We have to continue to perform or we lose our jobs and get replaced. A player might be replaced on the field for poor performance, but continue to draw his salary. That doesn’t happen in real life.
It’s really not that much of a mystery. At least not to me.
Pretty sure multiple articles have been written about what Hosmer is worth in the current market
In the current market.
Which is limited by a flawed CBA (from player perspective) and should be changed, but with what leverage?
Maybe it’s in part BobbyJohn’s answer, but I’d go with that most regular readers of an analytical baseball site are inclined to think that Hosmer is highly overvalued in the popular imagination. Two replacement level seasons by fWAR out of his past four (2014 and 2016). Four Gold Gloves despite the fact that both UZR and DRS have consistently ranked him as somewhere between average and bad at defense.
And, while Lee doesn’t go through the math, start a 28 year old player out at around a 1.9 WAR (ZiPS) or 2.6 WAR (Steamer) projection for 2018, and you don’t get to a player who is “worth” a 7 year / $140 million free agent contract based on what after the fact research has said that WAR costs on the FA market in recent years (~$9 million per WAR).
Also, while I can’t speak for Lee, it could also be tied to the fact that I (and I think a lot of other commenters) would feel pretty disappointed if the team that I support signs Hosmer for 7 / $140 million when I could think of ways that I’d much prefer them to spend that money to actually make the team better.
It also almost certainly doesn’t help that there’s a well-know story from several years ago of Hosmer being a huge jerk to beloved Fangraphs writer Eno Sarris.
Every fact-based commentator will sound a perfect owner rep by simply giving an honest assessment of Boras clients-
not worth what they are asking.
Anytime one unethical party tries to sell snake oil to another unethical party, an honest assessment that the product is not worth the quoted price will, unfortunately in a way, help the unethical potential buyer.
The authors try to make this ‘owner v overpriced Boras FA, please someone thing of David Freese!’ but the reality is that there are more deserving candidates who have been screwed for way to long (major league minimum players, int’l FAs, staff, minor leaguers, etc).
“people on sites like this instinctively side with the billionaire owners”
You couldn’t be more wrong- where are you getting this idea from? Nearly every commentator is strongly on the side of the players- just not Boras’ overpriced clients.
“MLB is a zero sum game and every dollar that the players don’t earn, the owners do.”
First, that’s nonsense, staff is wildly underpaid in MLB and are generating more revenue than ever. Second, having all the payroll dollars allocated to an overpaid, Boras-FA instead of a deserving underpaid player, is nearly as bad as having the underpaid players being ripped off by ownership.
So, how many unsigned free-agents who were forecast to make six to 14 million annually will wait much longer to sign contracts at half that rate? Todd Frazier was forecast by FanGraphs writers and readers to sign for $14 million annually…just signed for 17 million/2 years. What will Lucroy do? Neil Walker? I don’t think the upcoming signings are so much about JD Martinez or Darvish-they’re gonna get paid. But bargain hunters are ready to pounce. And let’s face it, at the end of the day, even if we thought we were gonna get paid $10 million but our best offer was 5, we’d sign. And they will too.
Yes, this is the market dynamic I’ll be interested to follow. What happens with FAs like Duda or LoMo if Hosmer continues to sit on his 7-year offers? What happens with Cobb and Lynn if Arrieta holds out for a price commensurate with his performance three years ago, rather than the last two years? Do teams just sit and wait until those players sign no matter when they do, or do they start to move on the second tier guys.
One could argue Frazier is a data point, but you could make an argument either way.
The players who are refusing to sign very prolific offers (and their agents) are just as much to blame as the owners.
Why on earth should an employee, especially one who might be one injury away from the end of his career, not try to get the best wage possible?
What is the ‘best wage possible’, though? Right now their wages are $0. They absolutely should try to get the best deal they can, but the ‘best wage possible’ isn’t up to the seller, it’s up to the buyer as well.
I think blame is the wrong word, because it implies that somebody has done something wrong. On the one hand, some of the best players are quite reasonably deciding to wait out the market and see if they get a better offer before they take what’s on the table. On the other hand, owners/front offices are quite reasonably deciding not to pay players more than they think is reasonable. Who’s done anything that we should blame them for?
I don’t fault them for that. I do have an issue with them playing the ‘victim’ card as part of the process.
Sure, they should try to get the best deal they can. And they are probably best served in that regard by listening to their good, experienced agent.
But I don’t have to believe that there are fundamental problems with free agency, or the CBA, or overall competitiveness in baseball simply because they think they can get better deals by waiting, when I already don’t think their expected baseball performance is worth the contract amounts they have reportedly been offered.
“Sure, they should try to get the best deal they can. And they are probably best served in that regard by listening to their good, experienced agent.”
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. “Agent leads player to overvalue himself, disaster follows” is a story we’ve seen before. Certainly a guy like Boras has made his rep by being able to get top dollar, not for crafting easy, unacrimonious win-win agreements. In many ways, he’s better off — from a personal brand standpoint — with a public defeat that he can allege collusion about.
Agent’s incentives do not always line up with their clients.
Saying ‘just as much to blame’ simply means there is no collusion, deflating the Boras-talking-points article.
No one is saying that players shouldn’t try to maximize pay.
Why on earth should an employer, especially one who might have losing season no matter whom he sign, not try to get the lowest costs possible?
The Yankees and Dodgers both staying under the cap is the biggest reason why it’s slow. When they put in the luxury tax it was just assumed that the big clubs, but especially the Yankees, would blow past the threshold every year. But now you’ve got the two richest teams in the sport both sitting on their hands and taking something on the order of $80MM out of the market. Combine that with the Cubs, Nationals, & Giants doing the same (and the Tigers rebuilding) and you’ve got a situation where none of the clubs with the cash flow to pay these guys are bidding (except the Red Sox, but really just for JD). Take the biggest spenders out of the market and this is what you get.
I think the effect of the Marlins fire sale is significant as well, because it’s let teams fill holes via trade instead of free agency. If the Yankees, Cardinals, and Brewers had been looking to improve through FA signings instead of trades, the offseason would look different.
I think this is a great point.
But also, imagine there was no luxury tax threshold. What would the payrolls of the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Giants, and Dodgers look like? With no luxury tax you could easily imagine an arms race in the AL East with both teams trying to separate themselves from the other. Instead you have two teams with boatloads of money on hand willing to keep it in their pocket and roll dice on a coin-flip proposition that they can win their division. It’s nuts.
The Dodgers and Cubs would be waiting on next off-season, and likely stay below the tax line. NYY has tried to get below the tax line for a long time, they might also be under.
Agreed about BoSox and SF though, I think they’d be way over.
Clubs freely pass up many ways to improve their performance- of the many failures to try to upgrade, it’s easiest to understand passing up the $100m options. PR campaigns simply trick fans into shouting loudest for aging FAs.
Yeah, it’s the Royals and Padres bidding on Hosmer. The Brewers and Twins are making the biggest push for Darvish. None of the big spenders are competing with them to drive up prices and other small market aren’t going to bid into irrational territory (relative to their budgets)
Throw in the Sox knowing they are the only big market club in on JD, so they are rationally just sitting on their offer all offseason.
Also, Darvish waiting to see if the Dodgers can unload Kemp and free up the money to re-sign him.
The biggest issue for me is that if owners are going to suddenly realize cost savings on salary, that savings certainly will not be passed down to the fans. Pirates attendance is probably going to drop very close to the bottom of the league this year, but it won’t matter. Bob Nutting will still turn a profit with 10K in the seats. It’s a great investment for Nutting, but the system is broken for both labor and for consumers.
Ticket prices have almost nothing to do with salaries.
And because prices are set in October, it’s often hard for teams to cut them in the middle of a bad season when the stadium is 3/4 empty. But with dynamic pricing being used by a lot of teams, well run ticket offices should be able to cut prices enough to bring in fans.
If the team is maximizing profits on seating, then the ticket price is right regardless of how many they sell.
Why should they pass it on to the fans, as the fans already create much of it? If the fans could strike, that’d be effective, but they won’t. There’s no reason to pass it on when they’re able to sell the optimal amount of tickets at the right prices for profit.
With all the data gathered for the graphs, by chance do you have easy access to WAR for the year before and year after signing? My impression is this is the worst free agent class we’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. There are maybe 5 players who are better than league average, especially when you start projecting 2020.
That lack of impact players (who still want $100M+) plus what Nutting said is the key driver in my mind.
5 is fairly aggressive.
Is Hosmer considered above average?
According to the 2018 team projections 2018 will be the most boring season ever, too many teams have decided they are contending not for a play-off spot in October but for the #1 draft spot in June 2019. Last year the MLB attendance figure went down 489,249 tickets, unless fans are willing to pay to watch lousy baseball, 2018 should see MLB attendance go down again and much more than that. The problem is that MLB is making huge money outside its core business (putting good teams on the field and trying to win games) so even a further attendance drop could not be enough to change MLB owners minds.
Yankees alone have sold 500,000 more tickets this year than last
league wide totals are more meaningful than single team figures, all the same the Yankees in 2017 sold only 83,561 more tickets than in 2016, in 2018 they will sell even more but why? because they added Stanton, because they are a contending team! the league as whole lost 489,249 in 2017, with so many teams not contending in 2018 it makes sense that at the end of the 2018 season league wide attendance numbers will be down again.
The January 1st cutoff is likely a spurious effect. It is almost certainly just a symptom of a weak free agent market, either because teams don’t need the players or the players themselves aren’t that good. In this case, it is probably more of the first one than the second.
I also just clicked over to Rieper’s study and his conclusion is radically different, and I’m coming to the conclusion Travis has seriously misread what it means because Rieper is saying the same thing I am:
“This shouldn’t be much of a surprise of course. The most coveted players are going to be inked to deals sooner. The players that sign later are those less desired, or who perhaps misread the market. Often times this seems to be sluggers with defensive concerns, and of course, the previous draft pick compensation system weighed some free agents down in the market.”
More generally, Rieper is arguing is that this year, teams have learned that you don’t need to pay top dollar for the 2.5-win player when you can get a 2.3-win player for 1/3rd the cost later on…in other words, that there is no scarcity of good players that you need to overpay for. There is no “January 1st” effect per se, just a situation where the demand outstrips the supply. It’s just classic supply and demand.
Well said.
Fangraphs in general, and this author in particular, has beaten this horse enough.
I get that you need to write about *something* to get pageviews – and with limited FA signings (and obviously no games being played), this is the topic du juor.
Yes, there appears to be a wide bid/ask between teams and players (agents). Yes, there is increased homogeneity in player evaluation (and fewer wildcard Steinbrenner types who were the living epitome of “it only takes one” to land a crazy deal).
Yes, teams appear to be more thoughtful about where they are on the win curve. (I would argue that re-allocating resources/wins from a 75 win year towards a potential 85 win year is not “tanking”, it’s smart management and GOOD for fans. Remind me again where all the Astros fans are who don’t like the way things have gone).
Yes, I think it was clearly a mistake for the MLPBPA to hire a former player to negotiate against a team of professional business people. (This is not an ad hominem, it’s an observation of fact about relative strengths. I think Brian Cashman would do terribly in a home run derby).
But No, I don’t think owners “owe it to the fans” to placate the loudest voices on the internet, any more than the purveyor of any other entertainment business does. (Should Paramount sell movie tickets at half price because people will be happier? No. They should deliver a product that people will vote for with their wallets. If fans are really that distressed, they will stay home/cut the cord, and you’ll get a change).
I can’t help but think this is a tempest in a teapot. The game is in good health, salaries continue to climb – and in 14 months, after a booming free agent class, I bet all of this will all seem a little shrill. (I understand Scott Boras’ incentive to fan the flames of hysteria. Just not sure why some corners of FG are on board).
Your parenthetical analogy is kind of funny because 1) Paramount doesn’t sell tickets to anything, film studios haven’t been allowed to own movie theaters in decades and 2) The economic model of the theater business is under threat by things like Netflix and MoviePass, and might be possibly be collapsing. So you may not have made the point you intended.
Understood on all of that. I was being a little glib.
Although you may misunderstand the economics of MoviePass; the theater owners receive the full retail price of the ticket; MoviePass is an intermediary who makes up the difference.
As for the Netflix threat, to date “collapsing” seems to be more noise than practical reality; 2017 was the 2nd biggest box office year in US history. Bested only by 2016.
But if streaming/SVOD does fracture the exhibitor business, I think it makes exactly my point: it’s incumbent on the legacy providers to deliver an entertainment product that consumers want, or they’ll go elsewhere.
And to date, the Astros/Cubs model seems to be doing a better job of meeting consumer needs than the Orioles model.
I read an awesome first-person account of moviepass lately.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/15/16781208/moviepass-hollywood-film-subscription-service-amc-terrified
I have no idea if it is true or not, but it’s a great story.
It is a little outdated on what the MoviePass business model actually is, but otherwise it is pretty accurate.
What they are really missing about the business model is that 1. It is pretty commonly known since about August that MoviePass is selling your data back to the studios (along with other places) 2. MoviePass is exploring becoming an all in one “Here is the theater, a restaurant nearby, and someplace to have a drink afterwards” type of service where they will make money off of directing business to the businesses near where the theater is at. And they have publicly stated they have a few other ideas as well to make money. Point 2 is not in effect yet, but they have been talking about rolling it out soon.
But yes, as far as the consumer is concerned, you pay $10 a month, and can go to a movie every single day. If works in 95% of theaters in the country. Most of the ones it does not work in are AMC.
Since I am actually in the business, I will try to make a brief comment on the movie issues to maybe provide insight.
I think you are misunderstanding what the box office actually means. Yes, the box office is growing year after year, to higher and higher records, but this is only indicative of the health of a very small handful of films. The vast majority of the box office is made up of a very small percentage of films that actually make money in large chunks. A great example to put this in perspective, the 9 films nominated for best picture for the Oscar all made less money combined than Star Wars: The Last Jedi brought in. It is not the big budget blockbusters that are getting hurt by Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, it is the small drama and comedy pieces that are not relying on multi million dollar ad campaigns.
The box office is also deceptive for another reason. It does not have anything to do with actual profit. The rough estimate for a film to break even is what the budget was and then an additional 50% on top of that for marketing.
As for the MoviePass aspect of it. The theater’s don’t care about their getting the full price for the ticket. The problem they have is that they see the business model is unsustainable. They feel there is no way a company can take a 1% loss on the first item they sell, and then a 100% loss on each item sold thereafter, which is what MoviePass is doing. The fear is that movie goers are going to be used to spending $10 a month for buffet style, see as much as you want viewing, and then when MoviePass collapses and the customers are left out in the cold, the pressure will be on theaters to drastically drop their prices as people will no longer go to a $13 film they were just getting for $10 or some fraction below that price. It is a legit fear, but MoviePass seems to have ideas on how to create profit from outside of the subscription fee.
Although studios haven’t directly sold tickets to consumers in nearly seven decades, they do control where the floor is on ticket prices. A reel or hard drive can cost a theater anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000+ for the first week of a screening on top of $8 or more a head for admittance.
If Paramount cut their prices to the theaters, you would see a near commensurate drop in price to the consumer.
“If fans are really that distressed, they will stay home/cut the cord, and you’ll get a change.”
That’s part of the problem. There are too many other revenue sources besides TV ratings and seat tickets. Plus, all TV deals are long-term and largely (except for those teams’ with their own network) fixed-price. So a bad season doesn’t really affect revenue from a TV deal.
Agree with lots here, but fyi, Tony Clark doesn’t negotiate directly against Rob Manfred in the CBA. It’s not a situation where one side has this former player, and the other side has “professional business people.” The MLBPA is represented by some of the best in-house and outside labor counsel in the country.
The PR campaign against Clark is pretty wild, anti-progressive and anti-factual.
This series is clearly a planned feature. The most astounding aspect of this ‘let’s link each other’s work in every article’ PR campaign is that it is based on Nathaniel’s claim that players only make 38% of revenue, which comes only from a defunct website called BizofBaseball.com.
Nathaniel has been recycling material on this topic for a decade. Craig & Travis write almost nothing else.
Meanwhile, a normal $1.4b+ will be spend on FAs this offseason, a record-breaking amount of contract extensions for young players is likely in these next two months, and a record-breaking $139m average payroll is likely.
There are tons of very important employee rights for the union to push for- minor league pay, improved minimums, less years of cost control, another roster spot perhaps, staff rights, etc.- but these authors only push the Boras/CAA agenda of paying more for aging FAs. It’s not just boring its disingenuous, anti-progressive, agenda-driven content with poor empiricism.
As a slight aside, Rieper lists four recent Royals contracts that fit that framework: Alex Gordon, Jason Hammel, Brandon Moss, and Travis Wood.
Since signing those deals – 2 years for Gordon, 1 year for each of the other players – they’ve contributed a combined total of 2.3 fWAR and earned a total of $56 million. Hammel worked out well in 2017 (at least by FIP), but the other 3 have been terrible contracts for the team.
I understand that we can’t generalize from a sample of four players, but one is tempted to say with the benefit of hindsight that the Royals would have been better off if Dayton Moore had just paid retail rates for players actually in demand, or simply not bothered to sign free agents at all.
Given how increasingly concentrated wealth is undermining civil society all over the world, it’s a bit funny to watch so many people push back on the idea that maybe it’s causing instability in our little corner of the world as well.
Wealth is increasingly not concentrated all over the world. International gini coefficient is the lowest ever. The big story is hundreds of millions of truly impoverished people rising to the middle class.
100%. I have no idea why this isn’t more broadly understood. It’s the single greatest development of any of our lifetimes.*
I realize it’s more fun to rail against the system, but the actual fact is that circa Mickey Mantle, the *majority* of the world’s population lived on <$1/day.
Now it's fewer than 1/10. And the rate of improvement has accelerated. [And these are inflation-adjusted dollars, so it's not some "in 1920 a dollar could buy a loaf of bread and a 3 bedroom house" nonsense]
*Although SportFlics were also good
Inflation measures were de-coupled from actual cost-of-living measures in the 1990s- inflation is systemically under stated.
Are you living in the same world I am? In the past 25 years half of a billion people in just 2 counties officially have joined the world middle class.
People are pushing back on the idea of further concentrating the wealth by – again- prioritizing aging FAs over other MLB employees.
It’s not ‘Boras clients v owners,’ nearly all commentators would support Boras clients over owners, but would rather see the real low earners who make baseball great get paid. This nonstop Nathaniel/Craig/Travis series is just carrying the water for the Boras/CAA types trying to conduct a PR campaign to put their interests front and center.
Major collusion going on with the owners.
We know what players are worth. easily quantified these days. When players make less than that, the owners pocket the rest. Time to go on strike and fix this collusion issue.
“We know what players are worth.”
You ought to be an agent, then. Or in someone’s front office.
So why is this a surprise?
MLB implemented a hard salary cap to hold down spending by the richest teams.
The stats revolution has shown how inefficient a lot of the deals given to veteran free agents, especially long term deals. So smart teams, which is most teams now, aren’t biting.
This is not an exciting free agent class.
Next year is, and teams need dry powder for next winter.
So we are right where we should be.
then the whole system needs changing. 1 player can make an owner 100’s of millions of dollars and the owner only has to pay him 550k a year for 3 years until arbitration.
Then in arb 1, 2, and 3, owner only pay him about 25% of the value he brings to the owner. By that time the owner has made 200$MM off of him. Then when the player finally gets through with this bs control system that only benefits the owner, he becomes a FA and hes 30 years old and now the owner doesnt want to pay him because hes too old.
Tell me how that benefits the player and how 50% of revenue goes to the players, which is rule in MLBPA? it doesn’t. Only benefits the owners and the players get screwed. Time do away with the entire arb and control system and go towards NFL contracts with no salary cap.
Tell me how that benefits the game, where guys like the best players like JD Martinez and Darvish arent playing?
Then tell those guys to sign one of the offers they have in front of them and get on with it.
what about for the other 90 FA that don’t have offers?
It may well be that they are viewed as worth less than the minimum salary they would be required to be paid under the CBA.
You ought to be an agent, then. Or in someone’s front office if you knwo what players are worth
I still don’t care about this.
If the players have solid evidence of collusion, take it to arbitration, and win the case, as the MLBPA did 30 years ago.
Otherwise, I assume teams are acting in what they see as their own best interests, long-term.
Any other job action while there is a Basic Agreement is in place would be the players breaking their word.
Here are some ideas where fangraphs could add something to the discussion, as opposed to similar question-begging articles like Olney and Heymann do (including carrying Boras’ water through out-of-context quotes).
– Explain what MLBAM is and relatedly, what BAMTech is. Explain how the companies came about, who invested in them, how that was done, and what risks there were. Explain where BAMTech’s and MLBAM’s revenues come from (including from non-baseball content, like HBONow, or majority-non baseball content like WatchESPN). Explain the difference between net and gross revenues and why both MLB and the MLBPA include MLBAM’s and BAMTech’s net revenues for purposes of estimating player costs, but not gross revenues (which Boras does – in this context, you might also explain Boras’ motive for claiming that gross revenues should be considered). Explain the effect of one-time payments to MLB owners as part of Disney’s majority-purchase of BAMTech and how one-time, non-recurring payments for businesses are usually treated in closely-held companies. Likewise you might address MLB owners’ expected future revenues based on their now-minority ownership in BAMTech. To be informed about some of these issues, you would likely need to interview M&A attorneys experienced in these kinds of deals (similar to the ones at SullCrom who represented MLB in the deal)
– Do an assessment of Project Wolverine – the investment document circulated by Jeter. I found that document pretty surprising insofar as the unrealistically optimistic expectations for increased revenues due to supposed attendance gains, corporate sponsorships, and an expected (early) payment for a new local TV rights deal. What was shocking was how poor the Marlins revenues and expected profits were based on the franchises’ current costs. Jeter’s expected salary was also surprising. Again to be informed about this, you should likely interview an experienced person in investment banking/private equity.
Yes.
This is an issue that is so often misunderstood by FG writers that I am starting to doubt some of the financial fluency behind the site:
“Explain the effect of one-time payments to MLB owners as part of Disney’s majority-purchase of BAMTech and how one-time, non-recurring payments for businesses are usually treated … Likewise you might address MLB owners’ expected future revenues based on their now-minority ownership in BAMTech.”
The proceeds of the BAMtech sale are NOT operating income. They are an asset sale. An concomitant with that is decreased future income by the selling stakeholders. Disney did not agree to fork over $2B AND let owners keep the future revenues.
This has been routinely misrepresented in these pages.
IMO worst ever fangraphs series of articles (Travis, Craig & Nathaniel).
This entire series is based on Nathaniel’s original article, sourced only from a defunct website called BizofBaseball, claiming that revenue split had fallen under 50-50.
The head of the MLBPA says the split is 50-50
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-baseball-players-owners-tony-clark-scott-boras-20151203-story.html
The authors never really address this point, but instead constantly quote Boras, CAA & Olney.
This series of articles is so poor, IMO, because it is less earnest, less off-the-cuff, less spontaneous and brilliant that typical fangraphs content (Dave, Jeff, Blengino, Cistulli). Instead of analyzing data and presenting unbiased insights, this series of articles is coordinate, it’s 3-times-a-week or more, it’s synced up with ESPN content partners, it’s not related to performance- worst, it’s carrying the water for an anti-progressive agenda. They are simply recylcing old material- Nathaniel’s been writing his Curt Flood Act/baseball revenue split focused material for a decade, Craig writes mostly about the need for teams to spend in FA, and Travis writes a blend of the two- constantly, no other insights save these talking anti-progressive points.
Tony Clark is the elected head of the players union- but the Travis, Craig & Nathaniel articles all rip his leaders. Clark says the split is near 50-50%, but based off a defunct website this trio of offers won’t stop peddling their talking points. It’s anti-progrossive to constantly take Scott Boras’s word over Tony Clark- Boras has a rational incentive to work only for his clients (aging FA) while Clark has broader reps.
Aging mediocre FAs are the least efficient and most overpriced players in the game- all commentators have been making this note, and arguing for things like (1) fewer years of cost control, (2) higher minimum wage, (3) minimum wage for minor leaguers, (4) better pay for staff and other progressive items. But the anti-progressive Craig, Travis & Nathaniel PR campaign is focused only on more money for aging FAs.
These authors have misappropriated the term ‘middle class’ by using it to describe aging FA on their 2nd or 3rd deals. In reality, these players are upper class compared to typical MLB player compensation. These anti-progressive authors keep trying to use ‘plight of the middle class’ arguments to pretend that all MLB money, including MLBAM money, ought to go to the Carlos Gonzelez types. Typical of this disingenous agenda is suggesting that all revenue either goes to FAs or owners- cutting out the under-represented small earners.
The authors only suggested points of action are anti-progressive: run out Tony Clark; disband the union; push for a salary floor (which favors rich FAs and Boras/CAA clients moreso than lower earners); or restricted FA (which again only benefits star clients). While everyone recognizes that a major ethical issue with MLB is that nearly all CBA terms are heavily slanted towards the interests of power-rep’d free agents (and against all other players), these authors only push further in that wrong direction.
These three writers use anti-empirical methods to make push their anti-progressive agenda three times a week: comparing opening day spend to February spend; building a “WAR” projection that is based on only RC+ and excludes defense and running for JD Martinez, in order to boost his projection and try to justify a huge spend, and other nonsense about how the Braves need to spend big, etc.
You used “anti-progressive” 7 times in one internet comment.
Is it too late to expand? Fill a team with free agents and give the new owners a 5-year exemption on luxury taxes on deals signed in this offseason.
That would be a terrible team with no tradable MLB assets.
the problem is its a race to the bottom to tank like the astros. The owners have no incentive to put good teams out there because of revenue sharing etc from MLB. They makes 100’s millions regardless of how good they are so why be good. Tank, be bad, and make even more margin.
IMO, the union needs to fight for cutting the free agency timeline shorter, similar to the NBA, maybe, for at least a restricted free agency after just four years.
>While next year’s historic free-agent class will likely set some records
I feel like this should have been expanded on a bit more. If teams are doing any type of medium-term player planning, they would be forecasting payrolls for AT LEAST one year from now. All of the other points could be true, but passing this point off as a minor variable is naive.
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