December 23, 2002

PLAYERS AND AGENTS STARTING TO QUIETLY USE THE “C” WORD

      There have been some strange off-season manoeuvring by baseball executives this year as teams look to whittle salaries down to a manageable level.  High quality free agents are having trouble finding homes, solid veteran players find themselves left out of the loop after being released by their teams, and mid-level players are being forced to sign contracts far below their expected figures.  Welcome to the new economic landscape of major league baseball, and it has both players and agents anxiety-ridden and banging their heads against the proverbial wall.     

      The new labour agreement has fostered a sense of economic sanity among teams in baseball.  The luxury tax figure that, while considered excessive when signed, has affected the game quickly and enormously.  Team owners, afraid of the heavy fines for exceeding the cap, have insisted that their management teams get the payroll under the luxury tax figure.  For mega-spending teams like the Yankees and Dodgers this off-season has been more about ridding salaries than adding them; clipping—or, in the case of the Yankees, attempting to clip--expensive veterans from their roster and replacing them with cheap rookies.  Middle market teams have been very careful with their spending and the lower market teams have been sliding out their veterans.  For veteran free agents they are finding that the landscape—once lush and ripe with idiotic free-spending owners—has dried up.  The winter meetings were nearly a complete waste of time—except for the high number of players taken in rule 5 draft—as teams tried to unload expensive veterans onto each other.  The biggest news coming out of Nashville however was that frustrated players and agents began using a word that had been shelved for years; a word that may have been the darkest word used in recent baseball history and a word that evokes a grim period of time for owners.  That word is …collusion.

       Four time Cy Young award winner Greg Maddux couldn’t get the long-term deal he was seeking from any team in baseball and decided to take the one year contract, to be decided in arbitration, from Atlanta.   Former league MVP Jeff Kent nearly had to go back to San Francisco with his tail between his legs but decided to take a two-year deal from Houston, with much of the money deferred.   Six time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens wants desperately to return to the New York, but the Yankees are in the midst of severe financial constraints and cannot pay the Rocket what he thinks he is worth.  Cliff Floyd was close to accepting arbitration from the Red Sox before accepting a reasonable offer from the Mets.  Tom Glavine wanted a four-year deal but ended up accepting three years from the Mets.  Pudge Rodriguez is talking about going to Japan.  Outside of Jim Thome, who was handed the keys to the city by a desperate Philadelphia team, this year's prime free agents are finding that this year they are not totally free.    Perhaps once things settle down and teams become accustomed to the new economics then they will be better able to use their funds to sign available talent—one reason why Maddux accepted arbitration.  Next year may be a little easier for big time free agents, but times will certainly be tougher, from now on, for the baseball proletariat.

       If things are tough for players at the top of the food chain, think how difficult it is for those in the middle.  Players making between three and seven million dollars are caught in the vice-like grip of the new economic system.  Mid-level players—the middle class—have been on the wane in recent years anyway as teams prefer to have cheaper and younger players fill out their rosters behind the expensive stars.  Solid players like Jose Cruz, Robert Fick, and David Ortiz have simply been released as teams fear arbitration rulings that will damage their pay scale.  Good players like Ugueth Urbina and Reggie Sanders are finding that there is a very limited marketplace for their services and will need to lower their price in order to be signed.  Mike Bordick set a record for the most consecutive games played at shortstop without committing an error last season, but he couldn’t get a starting job with anyone and ended up signing a one-year one million dollar deal to be a back-up with Toronto.  The glut of mid-level players available on the market lessens each of their value and forces each of them to sign contracts below their believed worth.  Fred McGriff hit 30 homers and drove in 100 runs last season, numbers that, despite being 39 years old, would normally bring strong interest from teams.  McGriff was forced into signing a low dollar one-year contract with the Dodgers.   Somewhere Charley Finley, who said that all players should be free agents each year, is smiling.

       The collusion issue is being spoken only in hushed terms this time around.  Where last time agents pointed accusing fingers and players howled to the union chiefs—and the union in term successfully took baseball to court--this time there aren’t any howls just frustrated whispers.  Baseball had purposefully set in motion a chain of events in the eighties with the sole intention of bringing the players to their knees and severely reducing the power of the players union.  They were called on it, and lost.  This time around teams are merely setting payroll budgets that make business sense, and the large market teams are setting budgets that will keep them below the luxury tax figure.  The times they are a changing.  Fans have been making a drastic statement.  Fed up with the ongoing disputes and the blatant market differential fans have begun to lose interest in the game.  Revenue has started to drop—frightening the powers of baseball into finding an agreement in this round of negotiations that would benefit the game as a whole, and not solely their own interests.  Baseball teams now must watch their pennies.  This time there does not appear to be a collusive effort by baseball and its teams to attack the players—they have already earned a measure of economic sanity from the recent labour agreement.  But for the players and the agents, frustrated at the difficulties they are suddenly facing, they can only look back and wonder where paradise has gone.  Players had it their way for years.  Below average players were receiving above average salaries, and low hitting benchwarmers were signing multi-year deals.  Those days appear to be gone forever.  The time has come which will more than likely see players sign contracts below their estimated value just to ensure that they have a job come the spring.  Then more players will be forced to prove that they deserve high dollar multi-year contracts. 

       Hopefully this will cut down on the number of fat cats that inhabited baseball.  Maybe it will completely cut out those players with guaranteed contracts who argued with their managers, jogged their way down the line on ground balls, berated the media, and ignored the fans.   Their loss will certainly benefit baseball.  Then all that would be left to help baseball out of its doldrums would be competitive balance.  Hopefully that’s on the way as well.