Why Baseball’s Free Agency Slowdown Kills my Enthusiasm
Why are good teams avoiding good players?
“Manny Machado.” That’s the name I typed into Google at least once a day, trying to glean anything I could from the nebulous swirl of free agency gossip and rumors. I know full well that a Manny Machado signing would light up my Twitter feed and probably send a few push notifications to my phone, but I persisted, in the blind hope that I’d somehow find his signing through Google before the alerts pour in.
As a Yankees fan, I hoped that he’d sign with my team. The fact that New York didn’t sign him immediately worried me. But I’m not the only baseball enthusiast concerned about my team signing the right players. It’s been a historically slow year for free-agent signings, following on the heels of what was already a slow year roughly 12 months ago.
The glacial pace of the free agency market undermines the competitive value of the game. Most simply, franchises are losing out on signing good players, players that they could easily afford, and choosing instead to willingly field worse teams. I find this especially true in the case of the Yankees, but there are plenty of examples to choose from. Whether or not there is a work stoppage on the horizon, teams’ reticence to sign the best players makes the sport less compelling to watch.
The League
First, let’s look at a few examples.
Many teams in baseball — including teams that played well in 2018 — are willingly avoiding veterans who could substantially improve their teams. A few weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight published an analysis of how slowly winter talks had been going. Travis Sawchik noted that the Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Cleveland Indians all chose to get worse this offseason by trading away players, even though each one of these teams was close to (or in) the playoffs last season.
Seattle’s and Arizona’s choices to rebuild their teams seems odd, but Cleveland’s recent moves are downright strange. For the Indians, the clear favorite in their division, choosing to actively get worse makes little sense. The should still be good enough to win their weak division next year, but making a choice to get actively worse still makes little sense.
The fact that these teams have more than enough money to sign players makes the entire free agency situation weirder. MLB revenue has been through the roof recently, so Seattle, Cleveland, and Arizona could all easily field better teams if they chose to.
The Yankees
Perhaps the best example of slow free agency is the Yankees’ pursuit of Machado. New York could easily afford to pay the superstar infielder the salary he requested, and there’s some evidence that he would prefer to play in the Bronx over anywhere else. However, the Yankees balked at his salary demands, and it looks like they’re going to lose out (as I type this).
New York is already a great team, but adding Machado would make them better, perhaps even elite. The Yankees, out of all the teams in the sport, are supposed to be the franchise that doesn’t care about salary and payroll, the team that will spend whatever it takes to win a World Series. Now, the team is missing out on star players because it wants to keep its salary below a certain threshold.
New York is only the second-best team in their division. They need to keep adding and they can’t afford to avoid players like Machado. The fact that the superstar infielder prefers New York should make this a no-brainer, but the team continues to hoard its money. Right now, it seems clear that the Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies are offering a better contract, and I can’t imagine that he’d turn down a significant amount of money to play alongside Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.
All of these factors — the Yankees’ situation, especially — make me a little less excited for baseball season. If New York lets Machado slip away, it’s clear that this team’s leadership doesn’t value a World Series win as highly as they once did.
It’s easy to see this saga ending in another labor dispute once the CBA is up. The players can’t do much right now, but I have to imagine they’ll use every tool at their disposal when bargaining time arrives. Baseball’s current system underpays players until they finally hit free agency with the expectation that this is the time to finally get adequate compensation. If that’s no longer happening, a peaceful resolution seems unlikely.
I still love baseball, and my enthusiasm will pick up again once spring is here. But the sport has a real problem right now, one that I hope doesn’t end in a work stoppage.
