Just sign already

Spring Training has already started for Major League Baseball teams, and the 2019 season is about a month away. Yet there are once again many free agents still unsigned.

By my count on the ESPN MLB Free Agents website, when I click on the available tab, there are at least 80 free agents still unsigned. Among those names include the likes of Bartolo Colon, Jose Bautista and Edwin Jackson. Not to mention the superstar types like Craig Kimbrel, Bryce Harper and Dallas Keuchel.

As anyone who follows Major League Baseball will tell you, this has been a frustrating off season when it comes to free agent signings. It’s frustrating to unsigned players looking for jobs to support themselves and their families, frustrating for rebuilding teams trying to trade away good players for top minor league prospects and frustrating for fans who would just like to know what’s going on.

Why is this happening? It’s a combination of teams getting smarter with how they spend their money and the demand from players increasing each year.

From the perspective of the teams, they’ve learned from teams like the Chicago Cubs who took their time to develop their star players. Once they reached the majors and are at their playing peak, where they have to play for that team for several years, then that teams spends money on free agents to give themselves the best chance possible to win the World Series.

For rebuilding teams such as the Detroit Tigers, they do what they can to trade away their expensive stars such as Justin Verlander and Justin Upton, and then wait out the other large contracts nobody else will be interested in while they develop their minor-league talent until they are superstars one day. At this time, they appear to be trying to trade away one of their stars, but a factor for why they haven’t is due to all of the unsigned free agents still leaving options for teams.

For the players’ side, it’s getting what they think they deserve based on what other players like them got in the past. In 2000, Alex Rodriguez, then 25, and his agent shocked the world when he signed a 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers. While A-Rod’s performance met the expectations of that contract, many other talented players since then have signed similar deals or extensions, pointing at contracts like that as a bench mark.

Players know teams have the money and are deciding to give it to the players. Players like Justin Verlander, who will soon be a free agent, have gone to Twitter to express their concerns about the state of the free agent system.

It’s not just this year, either. Last off season, certain players had wait to sign until late February for less than what they wanted, which appears to be turning into a more common tactic for teams.

This year, there appears to be two superstar players everybody keeps talking about. Both want record-setting contracts, both appear to have rival agents playing the “don’t be the first one to sign” game with each other, and both have very few teams pursuing them. The teams that are pursuing them are playing the same waiting game with them hoping to give them less than what they asked for.

This casual MLB fan’s amateur knowledge on the sport suggests once one of those two signs, then the other will sign, and teams will see the market change to sign the other remaining free agents, and the domino effect will begin.

It’s late February now. Have you two waited long enough? Because we sure have.

Contact Orrin Shawl at
oshawl@newtondailynews.com