January is halfway around and Spring Training is not far away. Nevertheless, more than half of the 166 free agents in the MLB have not yet signed a new contract. Why is that so? SPOX focuses on cause research and identifies possible explanations.
Certainly, the big name of this winter – Giancarlo Stanton – is already off the market and will play for the Yankees in the future. And Marcell Ozuna, too, have already brought the Marlins to the people. However, these players are known to be those who are under contract, traded and therefore not really on the market – the free agent market.
The free agent market is still hibernating. Some deals have already been closed, but for their lesser-known players. Relief pitcher in particular quickly provided clear conditions. A Pat Neshek has already signed with the Phillies, Fernando Rodney with the Twins and Hector Rendon with the Astros.
But the really big fish continue to swim in the pond and it doesn’t seem that this will change a lot soon. This in turn makes the market stagnate.
In the past, the MLB was always in such a way that the competition looked at what the supposedly best player of each position gets, in order to then build on it and try to make a contract relative to it. But as long as pitcher like Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta as well as Hitter a la J. D. Martinez and Eric Hosmer don’t sign anywhere, the rest of the market won’t gain momentum.
It’s not that extreme, because the first-basemen Mitch Moreland (Red Sox) and Yonder Alonso (Indians) as well as Carlos Santana (Phillies) have already signed before the class leader Hosmer, contrary to the usual formula. But other hitters keep a low profile.
Hosmer’s team mate, Third Baseman Mike Moustakas, is still waiting because he apparently also expects a boost for himself. That, in turn, stops people like Todd Frazier. In the Outfield, Jay Bruce recently signed a three-year contract with the Giants. But even he might have been better served if he had waited a little longer for Martinez. This is probably what Lorenzo Cain does, who might be the bargain of the winter, after being considered one of the best outfielders.
This list can be continued at will, but the bottom line is that the top people are currently unwilling to sign contracts. Of course, it is all about money and the length of the contract. Both do not yet seem to correspond to the ideas of the players.
In a free market, everything depends on supply and demand. The latter does not seem to be too big at the moment. For Martinez, for example, the expectation is that he will end up going to the Red Sox because the demand for power upgrades is probably greatest.
Rumour has it, however, that they offer “only” five years and no more than 30 million per season. Agent Scott Boras had once declared seven years and $210 million as a guideline. And so Martinez continues to wait. He should even be prepared to wait until the jumping practice before signing a contract.
Whether the offer will then improve, however, can at least be doubted. Times have changed. A few years ago it was still a sure thing that the Free Agents with the biggest names would get big and exuberant contracts, but nowadays this is far from being the case.
Today, nothing is possible without analytics and modern data designed to find talents who are likely to advance their teams in the foreseeable future. Talents are cheaper than expensive free agents, which also reduces the risk for teams. Especially the long, high-end contracts tend not to pay off for a team. Rather, they tend to become a real strain in the back of the deal.
In a way, the teams have learned from their past mistakes and drawn the right conclusions. The recent successes of the Royals, Cubs and Astros prove them right. All of them have carried out their respective rebuilding efforts through draft, trades and international amateur commitments rather than expensive free agent purchases.
However, this development to the disadvantage of the players as a whole is largely caused by their own actions. When the new CBA was negotiated and decided upon, the otherwise so strong players’ union and the team agreed to introduce spending limits for international amateur players and draftpicks.
The idea was quite simple: If the teams can put less money into young players who have not yet proven themselves in the league, then surely there is more money left for the veterans. In the past, manual money and salaries for amateurs degenerated into MLBs, just like in NBA and NFL. Undoubtedly also because teams lacked self-control at that time.
In the meantime, however, this seems to have arrived. The same goes for the realisation that this new capping of amateur income does not necessarily have to be seen as an incentive to invest in established players. The new CBA has made sure that teams are now more motivated to invest in their own families and to maintain them in the long term. But real free agents are now also suffering from this development – at the end of the day, the teams spend less money on players.
What should not be forgotten, however, is that some of the teams with really deep pockets are currently pursuing the goal of lowering their luxury tax rates. For the Yankees, this roadmap for 2018 was envisaged a few years ago. The goal is clear: the payroll for 2018 must not exceed 197 million! Managing General Partner Hal Steinbrenner has had enough of setting new records in luxury tax payments. The Yankees are the only MLB team to have sold more than $300 million in luxury taxes.
In addition to the Yankees, however, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who since their takeover by the Guggenheim Group had brought money to the people literally like drunken sailors, have meanwhile moved on to saving. They also want to lower their tax rate. An important step in this direction was the trade, which sent the highly paid legacies Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy and Scott Kazmir – including the capable all-purpose weapon Charlie Culberson – to Atlanta.
In return, they got the overpaid Matt Kemp back, but reduced their expenses significantly. Their payroll is currently 187 million dollars for 2018, based on the average salaries of each player. However, since five players are “arbitration eligible”, L. A. will be called “Arbitration eligible”. will probably continue to pay luxury tax next year, but presumably at a lower tax rate, as there are further steps north of the 197 million for harsher penalties. The Dodgers have consistently and consistently reached the highest level in recent years.
Other teams that are already coming dangerously close to the threshold in 2018 or are already on top of it, such as the Giants and Red Sox, who are correspondingly cautious on the free agent market. However, it is said that the latter would be willing to stretch Martinez, even if not after years.
So the free agent market in 2018 is not as slow as ever for no reason. It is to be expected that a whole wave of players will soon come to contracts, but perhaps not at the conditions they would like to have.
The market just doesn’t seem to be ready for that at the moment – unless people like Darvish, Hosmer or Martinez are still quite long enough. This is never ruled out in the MLB, but at least it seems unlikely.
This article was published without prior view by the Major League Baseball.