Players/agents and MLB/owners feud

[Hollywood42]

This is going to be really interesting as we move forward over the next few years. This offseason has brought to light a few issues that the two sides (players and their agents, and the MLB/team owners) have with how things currently work. With so many of the top free agents still unsigned, they and many other players think that there are big problems with the current system. The owners, on the other hand, simply say the FAs have too high of demands.

Here's a statement from MLBPA executive director Tony Clark that gives a good idea at one side of the argument:

"Pitchers and catchers will report...in one week. A record number of talented free agents remain unemployed in an industry where revenues and franchise values are at record highs. Spring training has always been associated with hope for a new season. This year, a significant number of teams are engaged in a race to the bottom. This conduct is a fundamental breach of the trust between a team and its fans and threatens the very integrity of our game."

In response, the MLB released the following statement:

"Our clubs are committed to putting a winning product on the field for their fans. Owners own teams for one reason: they want to win. In baseball, it has always been true that clubs go through cyclical, multi-year strategies directed at winning.

It is common at this point in the calendar to have large numbers of free agents unsigned. What is uncommon is to have some of the best fee agents sitting unisgned even though they have substantial offers, some in nine figures. It is the responsibility of players' agents to value their clients in a constantly changing free agent market based on factors such as positional demand, advanced analytics, and the impact of the new Basic agreement. To lat responsibility on the clubs for the failure of some agents to accurately assess the market is unfair, unwarranted, and inflammatory."

So, needless to say, there's some real tension between parties right now. It'll be really interesting to monitor everything. Could we be in for a strike from the players? Will they reach a new agreement that the players are more satisfied with? Or will nothing change and the players be forced to adapt or be left behind? What do you think?


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I'll start things off with my thoughts. First, I think both Clark and the MLB have things that are valid in their statements, and things that are blatantly incorrect. With Clark, it's true that this is maybe the first time we've seen this many top free agents still unsigned this close to spring training, and that may not be a good sign. However, I think it's pretty bold to claim that "a significant number" of teams are tanking. I don't buy that. More on that later. With the MLB's statement, I think they're definitely right in that how teams are valuing players is changing, helped by sabermetrics and having seen the result of how some big contracts have turned out in their later years. While they're partially correct in that it's common for many FAs to be unsigned at this point in the year, they're ignoring that this many quality, top FAs still being unsigned is pretty eye opening. Lastly, I'd argue that someone owns a team solely because they want to win. Yeah, that's definitely (or at least SHOULD be) a part of it, but with how much money is involved nowadays, the investment side of things is undoubtedly a large factor.

So, where does the problem lie? I think it's in several parts.

1. "Tanking". The MLBPA pointed to a large number of teams not really trying to win, and actually trying to lose to get better draft picks. I don't think that's very fair. Let's take a look.

Baseball is unique from other sports in that a single player can't turn a team around all by themselves. You need a strong group of players to do that. Let's look at the Astros. From 2009 to 2014, they had losing seasons and finished no better than 4th in their division, 3 times losing more than 100 games. Then in 2015 and 2016 they won 80+ games, and finally, last year they won 101 games and were World Series champions. This was only possible because of how bad they were for an extended period of time. Almost their entire core was acquired through the draft- Correa, McCullers, Springer, Bregman, Keuchel, . Additionally, a few players they drafted were traded for players that helped them win the WS- Mike Foltynewicz was moved in a deal for Evan Gattis, Vince Velasquez was part of a package for Ken Giles, and Daz Cameron was a part of the package for Justin Verlander.

My point is, it takes a lot to turn a team around. This isn't like the NBA where you can score with a 1st rounder and become a significantly better team. It's a multi-year process. Now, are teams trying as hard as they possibly can to win while they rebuild? No, of course not. A rebuilding team COULD sign a couple of the top free agents in any given offseason, but why would they? Chances are they won't become a playoff team, or even be that close to one. So why would a team significantly add to payroll and worsen their draft position just to have a mediocre team? All that does is lengthen the rebuild

2. The current free agency system. It's flawed. Let's look at Carlos Correa, for example, to stick with the Astros. He's one of the best young players in the game, and has been since 2015 when he debuted. Despite that, he's make league minimum, or close to it, each year he's been up, and will continue to do so until 2018 when he enters his first arbitration. What would Correa make each year if he had a contract at market value? Probably close to $20 million per year.

Clearly something is wrong there. Given how players are reaching high levels of performance at a younger and younger age (we've been completely spoiled lately seeing guys like Trout, Harper, Correa, Lindor, Judge, Betts, Bryant, Seager, Springer, and more, come up and dominate right away). Having such young players reach high levels of success so early in their careers is great for the game, but from the player's perspective, if someone is that good, how in the world is it fair for them to make close to league minimum for (usually) 3 years before they have the change to make anything more through arbitration in which they're stuck for an additional 3 years before being able to become an unrestricted free agent.

There's definitely a problem, but it's not an easy one to solve. For every Trout and Bryant that dominates right away while earning league minimum, you have a bunch of players with the same MLB experience that aren't good at all and also earn league minimum. Let's be honest, while there has been more and more players each year that come to the MLB and find great success immediately, that's not the norm. Usually it'll take a few years for a player to figure everything out. It's hard to make a blanket rule that changes things for all players across the board. On the flip, if you tried to split players into groups based on performance and change their contract rules that way, where do you draw the lines? I don't see the PA ever going for something like that. I do think that something needs to change, but there's not a perfect solution out there

3. Market values and smarter baseball. An undeniable part of this is simply that teams are no longer as willing to shell out massive contracts and only get comparable production for half the length of the contract. And why would they? A vast majority of teams would be crippled by dealing with the last few years of a mega contract where the player no longer is much better than average. The Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and maybe a few others are pretty immune to it, but for everyone else, it would certainly have at least a notable impact on things if a team got stuck with a bad high value contract

In the past, teams have been willing to deal with that in the hopes of winning in the short term. Again, this points to the cycle of how so many baseball teams work. But in today's age of advanced metrics and being more and more aware of everything, teams are becoming less and less tolerant of bad contracts. So who's to blame? Clearly it's not just a handful of teams that care about this, otherwise all the top free agents this year would already be signed. Maybe Eric Hosmer would have been able to get a 7, 8, 9 year deal if he hit free agency in his age 28 season 5 years ago. But that simply won't happen anymore

At least part of the solution to this part of the problem is going to have to be these FAs lowering their asking price. The demand simply isn't there. And no, it's not collusion. Why would any team want to be locked in to paying a player 33 and up $15+ million per year for 2, 3, 4 years? Long term mega contracts simply won't happen much anymore unless rules change and players start hitting free agency younger

All that said, I understand the argument of "owners are billionaires, stop being cheap and pay the players!". I really do get it. But how players are valued is changing, and owners aren't going to shell out giant contracts just because they can unless it makes sense for the team. I get both sides, but I'd definitely side myself more of the opinion that asking prices are going to have to drop



So, it's a complex problem. Those are my thoughts on it all, hopefully that turned out to be semi-coherent, if anyone bothers to actually read it anyways So much of this all is intertwined with so many other things, so it's really going to be interesting to see how all this is resolved. I just hope we don't have a player's strike and don't get to see baseball!