2
2012
Is Free Agency Dying?
An article by XtreemIcon
In the last two months, the Mets, Rangers, Indians, Reds, Giants and Nationals locked up Jon Niese, Ian Kinsler, Carlos Santana, Brandon Phillips, Madison Bumgarner and Ryan Zimmerman, respectively. Niese was given a five-year deal with two club options that is guaranteed for $25.5 million, and could be worth as much as $46 million. Kinsler just inked a five-year, $75 million contract extension. Nationals franchise player Ryan Zimmerman will earn $100 million for the next six years of service. Carlos Santana’s deal is for five years and $21 million, and it comes on the heels of a three-year deal the Tribe gave to All-Star shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera. Brandon Phillips will earn $72.5 million over the next six years. Bumgarner’s deal is for five years and the value is dependent on his status as a Super-Two, the top 22 percent in service time among players with two-plus years. If Bumgarner is a Super-Two, his contract will value $40 million, but in the more likely event he isn’t, he’ll earn $35 on that contract. Let’s not forget the Giants also backed the money truck up for young stud Matt Cain, as well.
What we’re seeing more and more of these days, whether it be on the Joey Votto grand scale or the Cabrera smaller scale, is that arbitration and free agency scares the living bejeezus out of front offices. All these deals are designed to buy out arbitration and, in some cases, free agent years and lock up players for significantly less than what they might earn should they continue to blossom as players and eventually hit the open market. What the players receive in return is security, as it’s no safe bet they continue to blossom and could find themselves riding busses to games instead of charters.
It wouldn’t surprise me much if the last year of team control before arbitration eligibility becomes the new “walk year.” The general rule in baseball is that you can pay now, or pay more later. Just look what All-Stars are making on the free agent market. Consider the contracts of CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Johan Santana, Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols. Looking at the recent trend of locking up franchise players for the long term, we can see that there will be a dearth of stars hitting free agency over the next few seasons. Besides the above-mentioned players, in the past couple of years, studs like Troy Tulowitzki, Joe Mauer, Evan Longoria, the Justins: Verlander and Upton, Ryan Braun and Felix Hernandez are all signed at least through 2014. Alex Gordon and Andrew McCutchen have also been locked up very recently. That amount of talent in young players is not common, and kudos to their teams for understanding that and acting accordingly. It’ll be tough to find a potential franchise player in a pool of free agents in which an overwhelming number are 30 years of age and older, and that is what baseball is heading towards.
Let’s compare left-handed starting pitchers in the NL East. Think about Jon Niese, a young pitcher, with career stats that aren’t very inspiring. But he’s got good peripherals, has suffered through injuries that were non-pitching related, and when healthy, has, of course, pitched for the Mets. But now the Mets are on the upswing, with a better farm system than they’ve had in years, only one financial albatross remaining, a good looking offense that was sixth in runs scored in the NL last year without Ike Davis and David Wright and a full season of Lucas Duda. So you’ve got a much better offense, while Niese himself is maturing and getting stronger. Now I ask you, would you rather have seven years of a 25-year-old Niese for $46 million on an improving team, or seven years of a 31-year-old Cliff Lee for $150 million on a team whose best days are behind them?
While we’re on the Mets, if Ike Davis bounces back and has the type of year people project for him, and hits .270/.370/.500 with 26-28 home runs and 100 RBI, would you take him for Niese’s deal now, or wait a few years, a couple of All-Star selections and maybe a top-10 MVP finish just to make sure he’s the real deal, then pay him huge money at a more advanced age? Do we even need to ask?
It’s going to continue everywhere now. It’ll be like an epidemic. Young, sometimes even unproven players, are going to be making lots of money instead of older players with track records of making TONS of money. The ultimate result will be payrolls around baseball decreasing as a whole, with teams being able to maintain that one identifiable star the fan base can cling to. Sure, there will be the handful of players that never pan out, but doesn’t that happen anyway? If it’s widely accepted that you can’t win ‘em all in free agency (Jason Bay), wouldn’t you rather lose on a $10-$12 million yearly salary on a kid that could still be moved than a $15-$20 million salary, maybe more, on a guy with zero trade value? Ask the Yankees how much A-Rod is actually worth these days, and if they wouldn’t rather have Ryan Zimmerman at third base. Do we even need to ask?
Free agency as an institution will never go away, but the days of depending on it to push a team over the top appears like it will soon become a distant memory.
About the Author: Jesse Elgarten
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Ask the Yankees how much A-Rod is actually worth these days, and if they wouldn’t rather have Ryan Zimmerman at third base.”
uhhhh, WHAT?????? Isn’t zimmerman hurt? again?? is he worth $150+ million?? Learn baseball man, the yankees have made enough $ on arod to already paid his entire salary, it’s not about how much a player cost, it’s how much the team can profit that player as well…
You should know that Zimmerman is not making close to $150 million.
LOL don’t let the facts get in your way!
Year Age Salary
2012 27 $12,000,000
2013 28 $14,000,000
2014 29 $14,000,000
2015 30 $14,000,000
2016 31 $14,000,000
2017 32 $14,000,000
2018 33 $14,000,000
2019 34 $18,000,000
2020 35 $18,000,000 $18M Team Option, $2M Buyout
Is he worth all that money???
Great question, off the top I would say no. I would think that whomever OK’d the deal would have placed injury considerations into the equation. However, they have to take some responsibility in allowing or forcing him to change his throwing motion that well could have caused or accelerated the shoulder issues. That being said, this is the organization that spent about double of what it should have at worst on Jayson Werth and did not pony up the extra to get a real difference maker in Prince.
Yes FA is dying to an extent in terms of true franchise players. That is why some of them are getting the money they are getting. However, I wrote a post over in the desert yesterday about how the productive players are getting younger and younger. Looking at OPS there are not many guys over 31 on that leader-board. (For those afraid of OPS or that don’t like anything but traditional stats it still applies there because go figure they are all correlated.) In FA you often pay for what a player has already done instead of what they are going to do.
“In FA you often pay for what a player has already done instead of what they are going to do.”
Exactly, and that seems to be less and less the mindset of front offices the past year or so. It seems they’d rather pay a third of the price for their own guy with a boatload of potential instead of the old guy who already did it, but doesn’t project to do it again. Baseball as a whole should benefit from this mindset.
Not only that but it minimizes risk. The Mets sign Niese at the contract they did. He flops, that contract doesn’t hold them back from pursuing another option. The Mets sign Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo and Jason Bay…
Luis Castillo made 2 Mil more per year than Francisco does and performed far better!
If Luis Castillo and 8M per is paying too much then so is Francisco!
You MAY be right, fortunately for the Mets Frankie is only here for 2 years and will most likely still be tradeable.
Who would take him today?
This year there were a ton of BP arms looking for teams!
We may have gotten one of the worst of the bunch unless he changes his tune real soon!
And I’m not saying he can’t turn it around but a player making 6 Mil per should not be inthe position of having to trn around anything he should be one of those things you don’t worry about!
I agree to an extent. Not making excuses for him but he is not an 8.00 ERA pitcher. He’s not a 2.00 either. He’s a mid 3′s 1.30 WHIP pitcher. I do not think he has been healthy all year and I think they should shut him down for a couple of weeks and get a fresh arm in. That doesn’t mean the signing was a good signing but it’s too early to say it was a bad signing as well. I think looking at what was available, there were not many “healthy” guys with closing experience on the market so that most likely set FF’s price. Now it appears he wasn’t healthy either, LOL. I guess it is good that we signed Rauch which was the move I questioned to start with.
I’ll quote Parcells….
You are what your record says you are!
I didn’t see any excuses made for signing reyes who despite injuries managed to win a batting title!
It would be one thing if he was the best or only closer available in FA this year…
But there were tons of good relievers available!
You think that francisco is showing any difference from his past performances? This is precisely why he has lost the closer job everywhere he has ever been!
Yes he is showing much different. He is not an 8.00 ERA pitcher, LOL. If he loses his closer job to Rauch so be it but he has had to get that mid 3.00 ERA from somewhere so if it’s as a setup man then so be it.
You say plenty of better names were available, who was out there, healthy, better and willing to sign for that price? Again, he went with having 2 guys instead of one. Can’t you see at least the merit to that decision? Not saying it’s right.
Well just going to point out that the ERA may be a product of being here but the pitching itself is quite the same as his previous…
But lets for a second say it isn’t….
Much the same could be said for Perez too couldn’t it?
Did he come back to himself?
Past performance doesn’t always show you what you got or will get!
This is one of the fundamental flaws of using statistics to pick your players!
They are fine for evalating what they did or are doing but they are useless towards predicting what will happen. It’s a hope and a prayer that nothing has changed and thats it!
I’m not going to look for the list I posted days ago to repeat it here!
There were at least three or four with Lidge and Dotel being two I remember off the top of my head!
And as I said before Parnell seems to be close to winning the closer job if he keeps up what he has been doing!
Maybe you can forgive Sandy for not having faith in him from his last year showing but it is what Sandy gets paid to know and make happen!
Lidge would not count as a healthy closer. Sorry. Dotel? Maybe although you could say the same about him never being able to hold down a closer’s job.
Lidge? Was so called we didn’t touch that one. He’s held together with chewing gum and duct tape. Everyone knew it was not if but when he went down with the next injury.
If I’m not mistaken there’s currently 12 closers in MLB out on the DL. It’s an epidemic.
*so glad
Well you aleady have heard one knee and now a muscle strain as excuses for Francisco so really I don’t see any difference here!
Srt you could have hired 6 Lidges for the price of one Francisco!
Side note, I went to a coaching conference last weekend and Bobby Knight was there. I love Bobby and have heard him a few times. What I did not realize was that Parcells was at West Point with him. In fact he sat the bench with him for a lot of games when Coach K was there. K was often a 6th man. So sitting on that bench would have been Bobby Knight, Bill Parcells and Coach K. What a picture that would be.
In light of that he told a story about where Parcells was coming into the locker room behind Bobby after a big win and some fan was leaning over the railing cussing Knight and Bill punched him in the face and about knocked him off the rail. According to the story they had to sneak Parcells out that night because the police were looking for him. Most likely not a true story but oh the stories they have to tell.
I don’t find that story unbelieveable! LOL
Parcells is definitly a tough guy with a temper!
you can argue a bit about where the actual cut-off should be drawn (the age at which they stop ascending, and start coming down the other side of the hill). Is it 28? 32? 30? But what has neen pretty consistent is, big name FAs, other than the selct few that hit FA very early, are a much better deal for the original team. That is, the team that picks them up at 31/32/33 almost always pays a lot more, to get a lot less production, then the team they started with.
And yes, we do have a perfect example right now on the mets. But he is far from the only one. And as always, there will be an exception to the rule.
Not saying that you should never sign them, or that they can’t be good players, just that the cost/benefit calculation is going to suffer.
Flip side, sometimes the guys you sign young never do peak as high as expected, but you are still paying a fraction of the $ for what you get.
final thought, if you have a massive payroll, you can much more easily handle the big contract for a couple big years, and just eat the dead zone on the back end. For teams that have tighter budgets, that can cripple them. So no, the yanks don’t mind A Rod, but that deal on different team could be a killer
Right, as the buys on MLBN radio say you go into FA to get a player to put you over the top. Not to build a team. If you do then your window will be incredibly small and you will pay for it on the back end. Hopefully the Phillies will be a great example of this soon if not now.
I think it is cyclical. What is it going to look like when the players in question hit 30 and are about to enter free agency with real credentials like Cy Youngs and MVP runs?
What happens if this trend continues and veteran free agents go down in price? (Other than the players’ union forcing some sort of rule about that in the CBA).
Will this be affected by the new CBA rules for acquiring amatuers?
I don’t believe this is a cyclic ordeal. This is a result of the market reorganizing itself after the steroid era. No longer can a team bank on the productivness of 38+ players. In this way, what we are seeing is a return to the days of holding younger talent and then letting them go during their unproductive years. This is a process that should eventually lead to changes in the player agreement. Such changes may be to increase the percentage a team may cut pay from one contract to another. Another such change will probably revamp the entire arbitration process. The shift away from the steroid era will take along time to come to fruition due to union disputes and such. I think most can agree that older players are becoming increasingly less reliable and front offices (or at least most front offices) recognize this and unless backed into a corner, see little point to paying for a player in their decline.
Well all I’m going to mention here is that Pujols and Fielder got 250 Million dollar deals and from that Free Agency is dead!
Typical X post, ignore the facts draw the conclusion despite them!