Carleton: What’s wrong with the free agent market?
From Russell Carleton at Baseball Prospectus on February 14, 2017:
Hooray! Someone finally signed Yu Darvish! And to a fairly standard “you’re a pretty good no. 2 starter” contract at that. And it was the Cubs. Sure, it took until the weekend before pitchers (including Darvish) and catchers report to spring training, but it’s basically what everyone figured would happen, except we all figured it would happen in early December. So, maybe, just maybe, the free agent market is all fixed. Right?
The entire narrative of the offseason has been “why haven’t the free agents signed yet?” Sure, some have, but even now as pitchers and catchers put hats on and play catch, there are still several prominent ones (and a bunch of not-so-prominent ones) who don’t have homes yet. Enough that you could perhaps fashion a playoff-caliber team out of them, in fact. And plenty of people have been quick to diagnose the market as “broken.” Perhaps the owners were colluding to keep free agent salaries down. Perhaps the free agents on the market were simply asking too much. Perhaps the Collective Bargaining Agreement was tragically flawed in some way.
Or maybe … nothing was wrong.
Read the full article here: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/37814/baseball-therapy-whats-wrong-free-agent-market/
Originally published: February 14, 2018. Last Updated: February 14, 2018.