{"id":1219,"date":"2008-11-09T14:22:26","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T14:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1219"},"modified":"2010-04-02T15:34:38","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T14:34:38","slug":"free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1219","title":{"rendered":"Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

As with many ideals, freedom always sounds like a wonderful thing in an abstract way, but in its purest form it can actually seem less than perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 For people to enjoy freedom, they need to have boundaries within which they can exercise their rights.\u00c2\u00a0 Complete freedom tends to lead to anarchy and confusion.\u00c2\u00a0 And to Scott Boras claiming<\/a> that Oliver Perez is one of the top five left-handed pitchers in the game.<\/p>\n

Free agency can be a struggle for fans of sports teams to come to terms with.\u00c2\u00a0 We can stand against the clear injustice of teams being able to hold onto the rights (and the livelihoods) of individuals indefinitely, but at the same time we may bristle at the thought of players using their free agent status to grab as much money as they can, as though it is indecent or in some way immoral.\u00c2\u00a0 Throw in the thorny issue of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcloyalty’ along with \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfilthy lucre’ and it makes for a muddling mix.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This is particularly the case with football.\u00c2\u00a0 The transfer system means that fans are conditioned to seeing players being bought and sold and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfree transfers’, or \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBosmans’ as they are more commonly known, of top internationals are rare.\u00c2\u00a0 The line between loyalty and selfishness normally shifts for arbitrary reasons; generally so that a player can be attacked by his previously adoring public either way.\u00c2\u00a0 When a player wants to move to another team mid-contract, to get better financial terms and a better chance of winning trophies, he is vilified for lacking loyalty and selfishly wanting more money.\u00c2\u00a0 When a player honours his contract in full and leaves for nothing at the end of it, he is vilified for lacking loyalty and selfishly wanting more money.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the heart of the unease in football is the fact that those few free agents often receive salaries that seem out of kilter with their contemporaries.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMatsuzaka’ situation in reverse.\u00c2\u00a0 As the Red Sox had to pay a $51,111,111 fee to the Seibu Lions to earn the right to speak to the Japanese pitcher, their contract offer was lower than you would have normally expected for such a talent.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite his agent Scott Boras’s understandable attempts to deny it during the negotiations, the Red Sox had no choice but to take the posting fee into account when committing to the player’s contract.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the same way, teams can tempt a free agent into joining them by offering a contract based on the fact that there is no initial outlay of cash simply to gain the right to talk to them.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s one of the reasons why Matsuzaka got a six year\/$52m contract (which admittedly could go up to $60m) and Carlos Silva bagged a four year\/$48m contract a year later.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the other reasons is sheer madness on the part of the Mariners and that’s instructive in itself: the uncertain boundaries of free agency can make you do silly things.<\/p>\n

We are yet to see how the global financial crisis will affect MLB and whether this concentrates the minds of GMs a bit more on not letting the purse strings fly open, as is being predicted in some quarters.\u00c2\u00a0 Crises tend to lead to more irrational behaviour rather than less, so the free agents probably won’t be too worried in that regard.\u00c2\u00a0 What may make them sit up and take notice are the recent actions of the MLB Commissioner.\u00c2\u00a0 Bud Selig told<\/a> the thirty GMs that they should be aware of the financial climate when trying to improve their ballclubs this offseason.\u00c2\u00a0 On the face of it, that sounds like sensible and reasonable advice; however if you are a player who would have commanded a 4 year\/$40m deal twelve months ago and are now being offered a 3 year deal worth $28m , you might not be so understanding.<\/p>\n

The whole point of free agency is that the player’s value is determined by the market.\u00c2\u00a0 If all thirty potential suitors decide they are not going to spend so freely this offseason, there will be a deflationary effect on the market.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Barry Bonds was left sitting on the sidelines this year (possibly permanently) and while the Players Union have filed a grievance about it, you could put forward a genuine argument that all thirty teams looked at the pros and cons and came to the same conclusion: making the deal would be more trouble than it’s worth.\u00c2\u00a0 The same could be said for the current financial situation, but I don’t remember Bud Selig publicly telling all thirty teams to exercise caution if they were thinking of signing Bonds.\u00c2\u00a0 Had he done so, the claim of collusion would have been difficult to deny.\u00c2\u00a0 Selig’s financial advice might have been sailing a bit close to the wind in this respect.\u00c2\u00a0 Players and agents are unlikely to be slow in pursuing legal action if they think there’s a case to answer, so that could provide an entertaining sub-plot to the negotiations this winter.<\/p>\n

It would be foolish to think the financial climate will make paupers of pitchers and beggars of batters though.\u00c2\u00a0 When a player can opt out of a deal that would have earned him $24m for two years of work, as A.J. Burnett has just done, and most people think it is a sensible decision, you know we’re dealing with an extraordinary situation.\u00c2\u00a0 The finances in professional sports are difficult for many to comprehend (or, in some cases, accept) and nowhere is this more apparent than with free agents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As with many ideals, freedom always sounds like a wonderful thing in an abstract way, but in its purest form it can actually seem less than perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 For people to enjoy freedom, they need to have boundaries within which they can exercise their rights.\u00c2\u00a0 Complete freedom tends to lead to anarchy and confusion.\u00c2\u00a0 And to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7301,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions\/7301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}