College football season is over, and the NFL already has trimmed its field of championship hopefuls from 32 to eight. The NBA has only 11 days left in its All-Star balloting process. On Sunday, will we be one month away from the initial spring training reporting date for pitchers and catchers. Yet we do not know where this year's top free agents -- Manny Machado and Bryce Harper -- will be playing this season.
Is this unusual? You bet it is. I maintain a database of various free-agent-related data, which ranks each class according to a simple 10-year projection, even if that length of projection is likely to extend well past the end of a player's career. The error bar on any one of these projections is enormous, but it's meant more to look at group dynamics than to pin down a decade of any individual's future production.
Anyway, including this hot stove season, there have been 86 players ranked first or second in a free-agent class by this system. Only 15 of those elite targets were unsigned as of the month and day on which you are reading this -- Jan. 11. That includes the system's top two last winter (Lorenzo Cain and Jake Arrieta) and this winter (Machado and Harper).
That means only 11 of the first 82 (13 percent) top-two free agents since 1976 lasted this far into the offseason. And the vast majority of those 11 had easy explanations for why it took so long for them to sign:
• Doyle Alexander (5/5/1987, collusion)
• Tim Raines (5/1/1987, collusion)
• Larry Walker (4/8/1995, 1994-95 strike)
• Bill Swift (4/8/1995, 1994-95 strike)
• Alex Rodriguez (1/26/2001, Scott Boras)
• Carlos Beltran (1/13/2005, Scott Boras)
• Barry Bonds (2/15/2007, agreed to deal earlier but there was lingering disagreement over contract language)
• J.D. Drew (2/14/2007, Scott Boras)
• Max Scherzer (1/21/2015, Scott Boras)
The only two top-two free agents (again, by this automated system) to sign this late for no obvious reason were Michael Bourn, who signed a four-year, $48 million deal with the Indians just as spring training was starting in 2013, and Reggie Jackson, who was heavily courted by several teams before moving from the Yankees to the Angels in 1982, even though he was 35 at the time.
So, yes, this is very unusual. Sure, Arrieta and Harper are Boras clients, but it's pretty clear that this is not business as usual -- that is, if we can define "usual" by how teams approached free agency for three decades.
One of the most shocking aspects of the slow Machado/Harper markets has been just how few teams have emerged as likely suitors through the whisper mill. The Phillies, Yankees, White Sox and Nationals have been the only emergent aggressive pursuers, per the rumors, while clubs such as the Dodgers and Cardinals are sometimes mentioned but have generated little smoke.
We continue to speculate on what has happened to free agency the past two winters and what it means going forward. On the latter front, if this is indeed the new normal, you can bet it's going to mean some contentious negotiations around the next collective bargaining agreement because a frozen marketplace isn't really serving anybody. As for the root causes of all this, we might be sorting that out for years to come.
In a way, this has been pretty disappointing. We've been looking forward to this free-agent class for a few years. But its stature was gradually whittled away by players signing extensions with their existing clubs or losing value through performance decline, injuries or both. Still, we had Machado and Harper, a pair of elite talents who broke into the majors at age 19, thus putting them in the open market in time for their age-26 campaigns. Players this good, this young, have been a rarity in the free-agent era.
The early projections in terms of probable contract terms were staggering. FanGraphs.com has an annual crowdsourcing initiative to set the baseline of expectation on free-agent deals. This year, the median deal the crowd saw for Machado was eight years, $256 million. For Harper, it was 10 years, $330 million. Over at mlbtraderumors.com, they predicted 13 years and $390 million for Machado and a surreal 14 years, $420 million for Harper.
At some point, Harper and Machado will sign, and $300 million total contract values are still being tossed about. However, as this process has dragged out, an old debate has reemerged: Is it wise for any team to commit that level of investment to any one player for that length of time? Or if, in theory, the club is willing to spend $300 million on free agency, might it be better to spread that money out to fill multiple roster holes?
There have been quite a few academic studies done on the issue of payroll dispersion. Just search the term and you'll find them, though most of the papers can only be read by subscribing to an academic journal. The core question is whether it's better to have a roster where player salaries are all kept within a certain range (low dispersion) or if teams are better off concentrating salary on one, or a handful, of star players atop the roster (high dispersion -- the stars-and-scrubs approach). Pretty much all of those kinds of studies I have seen suggest that low-dispersion teams tend to outperform high-dispersion teams.
That is a question at the core of "Moneyball." If you remember, the big dilemma for Billy Beane and his staff was how they were going to replace megastar Jason Giambi (who, by the way, signed with the Yankees a week before Christmas in 2001) when Oakland couldn't afford a comparable player via free agency, even if such a player had existed. The A's responded by spreading out their expenditures on lower-cost, on-base-proficient players like Scott Hatteberg, whom the market was overlooking. That book was about market inefficiency, but the question of roster-building was certainly a major subplot.
The number of factors that go into those studies on dispersion are endless, and I wonder, given the new realities of free agency and the related topic of more-efficient player valuation, if those studies might prove to be outmoded. That is to say, if you were to ask me whether I'd want my team to sign Bryce Harper for $300 million or split that money up and land, say, Craig Kimbrel, A.J. Pollock and Dallas Keuchel, I'd probably lean toward just signing Harper.
I equivocate with the "probably" in there for a few reasons. Such a decision would obviously be affected by core factors such as market size, where my team resides on the contention continuum, the other options in the marketplace or within my organization, the number of active bidders in the market, and the state of my future payroll obligations. If I have a foundation of ready-to-win talent but a few key roster holes to fill to get over the top, then maybe spreading out that money on shorter-term deals on multiple players might be the smart play.
In fact, that's the way I would approach this topic if I were the Yankees and were legitimately concerned about the luxury tax. We'll see if New York gets serious about Machado, but if it doesn't, then this is indeed how the team will have approached its winter -- by spreading out resources to retain J.A. Happ, CC Sabathia and Zach Britton while adding Troy Tulowitzki on a no-risk deal and trading for James Paxton. Of course, if I'm not really worried about the tax line, then what the hell -- I'd splurge for Machado as well, because I'm the Yankees. Much of this mostly applies to the Nationals' pursuit of Harper.
For the Phillies, the calculus is a little different. Philadelphia is in the process of ramping its payroll back up to its previous levels, which annually ranked in the top 10 in baseball. After building organizational depth and adding a number of quality veterans through trades and free agency, the last thing the Phillies lack is the cornerstone piece that might bring it all into focus. Such a piece might not exist in any given free-agent season, but in Machado and Harper, there are two such players who fit the bill. Coming away this winter without either of them would be a significant letdown for the Phillies, and there is no guarantee that such a player will become available down the line. Now is the time to strike.
For the White Sox, splurging on Harper or Machado would largely be a leap of faith. Not on either of those stars, but more on the potential of the talent Chicago has collected during its rebuilding process. While the White Sox now possess a tremendous collective level of upside, the fact of the matter is that no one who is expected to be a primary piece of their next contending club has proven themselves at the big league level. Not Yoan Moncada, not Eloy Jimenez, not Lucas Giolito -- not any of them. They might start proving themselves very soon, perhaps this season, but it hasn't happened yet.
However, Chicago has set down this path, and in doing so, it has largely cleared the books of future payroll. The opportunity is there for the White Sox to add a finishing piece even while the overall puzzle is still being put together. They could wait a year or two to pursue that final piece, when they would have a better idea of what holes remain that they hadn't filled from within, but they might never again have this convergence of factors: money to spend and young, elite veterans on which to spend it. As with Philadelphia, the White Sox landing Machado or Harper would put a face on everything they're doing. A Machado or Harper White Sox jersey might immediately surpass a Khalil Mack Bears jersey as the hottest sports merchandise item in Chicago.
Signing a package of free agents -- or, to be academic about it, dispersing your payroll -- would not fit the plan the White Sox have set for themselves. It would only make them marginally better in the here and now, with no guarantee that the older, second- and third-tier free agents will still be effective when their homegrown talent begins to ripen. Collecting too many declining veterans can set the entire process back, as we've seen with the Giants and, to a lesser extent, the Angels.
So the answer to this question of resource allocation has to be tailored to each team's specific situation. Still, in a vacuum, I would rather splurge on the star, and I'm not sure I would have written that a couple of years ago.
For one thing, consider this week's news that baseball again surpassed $10 billion in revenue and, according to Forbes, that doesn't include the reported $2.58 billion Disney paid to acquire BAMTech. (Disney is the parent company of ESPN.) Also, there's this: Despite the sport's soaring revenue figures, which aren't likely to abate anytime soon, payroll expenditures actually declined last season.
The players' association probably wouldn't agree, but I suspect that fact has a lot to do with the reality that clubs are just more efficient with their spending than they used to be. It's not a collusive effort but simply a product of, case-by-case, teams valuing players in a cold, analytical fashion. Teams just aren't laying out huge, multiyear contracts that leave us scratching our heads any more. They have discovered that a lot of veteran production can be replaced by cost-controlled talent on the ascension, which in turn puts more of those veterans on the market and creates a dynamic where, for many roles, the supply simply outweighs the demand. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with any of this. That is, unless it is determined that the overall percentage of baseball's revenue that is going to players is shrinking. That's when we run into labor problems.
But this is also why I, as an executive, wouldn't mind locking in a premier, high-dollar young star like Machado or Harper. With more revenue and a better ability to plug roster holes effectively in low-cost, efficient ways, I'm not as concerned with limiting my flexibility in filling out the rest of my roster. I can find an alternative to Pollock or Keuchel, and probably pretty efficiently, because of a flooded marketplace. This is augmented by teams' improved collective ability to develop and enhance the skill sets of players who might have once been dismissed as marginal talents. This, too, is a by-product of analysis. And because of all this, we've seen more pillow contracts, where contending teams outside of big markets like the Braves (Josh Donaldson, $23 million), Twins (Nelson Cruz, $14 million) and Brewers (Yasmani Grandal, $18.25 million) are willing to spend on a player for one season when they know their long-term exposure is limited and it's the best way to fill a glaring hole.
However, teams can't find an alternative to Machado or Harper because they don't exist. That's especially true if your analysis tells you what mine tells me, which is that, barring a major injury, both Machado and Harper are highly likely to justify whatever dollars and however many years they ultimately command. That kind of certainty is what I'd want to pay for, insomuch as there is any such thing in professional sports.
Free-agent WAR update
As mentioned, the market for the elite free agents this winter is unusually low in the context of the last 30-plus years, even if it does echo last winter. However, the overall market has remained slow, as well. Of course, these issues are probably related -- key parts of the market are frozen, waiting for movement on the Machado and Harper fronts.
In the early stages of the offseason, I wrote about the first few signings, comparing the initial winter movement to the initial phase of past roster-building seasons. I identified various phases: the fall phase, the winter meetings phase, the post-winter-meetings phase (which we are in now) and the spring phase, for players who don't sign until after teams begin to head for spring training. With Grandal agreeing to terms with the Brewers on Wednesday, let's see where this year's market stacks up in terms of these phases against previous hot stoves.
Let's focus on the years since 2000. Coming into the winter, the top 50 free agents in this class projected to be worth 514 WAR over the next 10 years, ranking fifth among the top-50 groups from the 19 classes this century. Some observations on what has happened so far:
• Through the winter meetings phase, 109 projected WAR had been signed, representing 12 top-50 free agents. That ranked 15th of the 19 classes since 2000.
• Since then, another seven top-50 free agents have signed worth a projected 32 WAR. That's right about halfway to last year's numbers for this post-winter-meetings phase, which takes us all the way to spring training. Over the years, this has been the phase in which players worth the most projected WAR have signed.
• In total, 19 top-50 free agents worth 183 in projected future WAR have signed. That means 331 WAR for 31 top-50 free agents remains unsigned (64 percent) with a month to go before the first spring reporting dates. Believe it or not, that 183 signed WAR is just 10 shy of last season. Half of last year's top 50 didn't sign until the spring phase, more than doubling the previous high for that late phase.
• Since 2000, the average number of top-50 free agents who had not signed before spring training -- before last season's staggering total of 25 -- was five. In 2004, there were zero. Again, through Thursday, we had 31 unsigned top-50 free agents.
So there is work to be done, but the market is still moving marginally better than it was a year ago. If the big guys sign and the floodgates open, this might not look like such a winter freeze as it does right now. But it will still not look anything like a normal free-agent season.
Shrinking capacities
Last week, the Rays made news when they announced that they'd be closing the upper deck at Tropicana Field, shrinking the capacity at the stadium to between 25,500 to 26,000. The Trop already had the smallest seating capacity of baseball's current group of regular venues, so this only increases that lead. Second smallest is Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, at 37,903, per seamheads.com, only a few seats smaller than Boston's Fenway Park (37,949) and Cleveland's Progressive Field (38,000).
The Rays' stadium situation is a mess, of course, and the reduction of capacity at the Trop can't really be looked at as any part of a trend. But there does seem to be a definite trend toward smaller stadiums in sports. The Rays' now-defunct stadium proposal for Ybor City in Tampa had a projected seating capacity of just 31,042. Oakland's proposed new park along the waterfront in that city calls for a capacity of just 34,000. The design unveiled recently for expansion candidate Portland, Oregon, was for a 32,000-seat venue.
The capacities of some of the now-gone stadiums from the 1960s and 70s, such as Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, were all well over 50,000 and sometimes over 60,000. But this new trend is more in line with the interior size of the classic stadiums from prior to that -- the great "green cathedrals" that are so lionized now. Ebbets Field (Brooklyn), Shibe Park (Philadelphia), Forbes Field (Pittsburgh), Crosley Field (Cincinnati), Griffith Stadium (Washington D.C.), Sportsman's Park (St. Louis) and League Park (Cleveland) all seated fewer than 35,000.
If intimacy at the ballpark is your thing, we might be seeing lots more of it in the future.