The destructive tension that exists between the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League Baseball has been fueled in recent winters by the slogging nature of the bidding on free agents, with journeymen and even stars waiting longer than they felt they should have for suitable offers to take shape. For example, two winters ago, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado didn't sign until February.
Management's perspective is that the slowdown manifests when aggressive agent demands clash with market realities. On the other hand, some players and agents believe that more teams should spend more of the industry's revenue, particularly the handful that appear to be tanking. Either way, it's inarguable that the distrust and suspicion have seriously damaged the relationship between players and owners.
The forecast for this winter's market is brutal conditions for free agents, and if so, this will only exacerbate the ugly MLB-union dynamic just months before the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement.
Not good.
If you were hoping for a more productive collaboration to develop between the two sides, well, that seems just about impossible given the wreckage on the horizon. It appears nearly certain that the market will slow down for many reasons, and here are just a few:
1. The uncertainty about where the pricing is going to fall. The general expectation is that because of revenue diminishment this year, yes, the prices for players might fall -- mirroring rollbacks that have happened in many businesses, and among front-office employees in baseball.
Will they drop 5%? Fifteen percent? More?
Some clubs will probably be wary of stepping out with an aggressive offer early in the winter, fearing that they might overpay significantly. This is what happened with the spring contract talks with Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto and Cubs infielder Javier Baez -- they were tabled because nobody really knows where the new reality is going to land.
2. A lot of teams might look to immediately attempt to retake ground on the financial landscape, after a season of games without fans in ballpark seats, and inject little or even no money into the upcoming market.
3. Some teams might prefer to wait for the international fight against the coronavirus to gain clarity before they set their budgets, so that they have a better sense of what their revenues will be next year. Everyone is waiting and hoping for a vaccine -- club owners among them -- because the sooner that happens, the faster baseball gets to the new normal, whatever that turns out to be.
Will the vaccine arrive in November? December? January? Later? Nobody knows. Until then, some teams likely will back away from adding financial obligations.
4. Some players and agents might want to wait for a vaccine, as well, knowing this could help to loosen the market. So if the best players in the upcoming market -- Mookie Betts, George Springer, J.T. Realmuto -- don't get suitable offers early, it's possible they will wait as Machado and Harper did. And because of that, players who are behind them in the pecking order will also need to wait.
5. Unless there's a vaccine by the fall, then two events critical to the goosing of the market might not happen at all: the general managers meetings in November, and December's winter meetings.
6. The looming labor talks, which could include the reimagining of service time, arbitration and free agency, in addition to on-field initiatives, anti-tanking measures and, presumably, adjustments to the competitive balance taxes. It's just about impossible for front offices to know how a multiyear deal signed in the upcoming winter will fit under the CBA terms of the future.
What baseball could really use, following this mess of a 2020 season, is a winter as robust as it had in 2019-20, when the signings of Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg and others generated excitement and at least temporarily soothed the problems between MLB and the union.
But it's hard to imagine anything like that occurring, with another storm brewing.
• Baseballs rocketed all over ballparks last year, with the home run numbers surging to record levels, and there is a lot of curiosity about how the ball will travel this summer. After more than a week of intrasquad games, some folks in the game believe that we're about to see the baseballs flying like super balls again. They tell tales of incredibly long home runs, of home runs produced by awkward swings and mishit balls, and many home runs flipped easily to the opposite field. There are others who say they have not yet noticed a distinct characteristic to the 2020 baseballs that they've been using.
• Players, agents and front-office officials won't have a true sense of market prices until the free-agent auction begins heating up in the winter slogs, and owners competitively bid for players and start the process of reconstructing a value hierarchy.
• The baseball season in history most comparable occurred in 1976, with the first wave of free agents. Through contractual loopholes smartly exploited by the players' union, a few had moved into free agency -- Catfish Hunter, Dave McNally, Andy Messersmith -- and the legal momentum compelled the owners to agree to a system in which veterans could move into the open market. But just as nobody really knows now what to expect when Betts, George Springer and J.T. Realmuto are up for bidding this winter, nobody really had a sense in the fall of 1976 where the numbers would fall.
In 1976, Oakland owner Charlie Finley had cut the salaries of his players by 20%, and Rollie Fingers remembers that his salary was something in the range of $67,000. Just before the June 15 trade deadline, Finley sold Fingers and outfielder Joe Rudi to the Red Sox for $1 million apiece, and dealt Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. In a phone conversation the other day, Fingers recalled being amazed by those numbers, a hint of what his actual value might be. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn stepped in and reversed the deals, and Fingers pitched for the A's for the rest of that season before being part of that first large group of free agents.
Fingers had seen Hunter get a massive deal from the Yankees two years before, but Hunter was an All-Star starting pitcher, and Fingers was a reliever. Fingers was unsure of the offers he might hear. "I think everybody felt that way," he said.
Fingers' agent, Jerry Kapstein, got a call that Padres owner Ray Kroc and general manager Bill Bavasi wanted to meet with the reliever, and after the initial greetings, Bavasi explained how much San Diego wanted Fingers, generally regarded as the best bullpen piece in the game.
Fingers remembers being direct, asking Bavasi, "What kind of money are we talking about?"
Bavasi laid out the Padres' offer: $250,000 a year in a five-year contract, and a signing bonus of a half million dollars.
Fingers, nine years into a career that would eventually take him to the Hall of Fame, was stunned. "Just give me the pen," he replied. "I don't want you to think about it."
Rudi had a similar experience. A three-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glover, Rudi had watched Finley reduce his $84,000 salary by 20% before going into the open market. As a California product, he was happy to hear that teams like the Giants, Padres and Angels were involved in the bidding. At the outset, Rudi recalled, Kapstein -- the agent who represented Rudi, Fingers and many others -- was so concerned about owners bugging phones that he had Rudi leave his home and call from a nearby pay phone, to receive updates.
When the negotiations neared an end, Rudi flew to be closer to Kapstein's Rhode Island office, and after a visit to Carlton Fisk's New England home, Rudi got to hear his final offers, including the Angels' winning bid of $2.09 million over five years.
"It was very mind-boggling," Rudi said last week. "Two million dollars. I wasn't poor, but wasn't from a wealthy family. My dad never made more than $1,000 a month. To hear those kinds of numbers come out was incredible."
As mentioned before, the expectation among folks on both sides is that there will be significant payroll cuts for some teams in 2021, following this year's revenue losses. But there will inevitably be some clubs positioned to be buyers, like land developers following a real estate collapse.
"There's going to be opportunity for some buy-lows," one team official said. Teams like the Blue Jays, a corporately owned club with very little long-term salary obligations, could work to take advantage of the soft market. The Minnesota Twins are seen as a team that could be aggressive, because they have few existing contracts. Presumably, the incoming Mets ownership will want to make a splash in its first season, just as the Dodgers did following the sale of that team, and could be a wild card in the bidding for the best available players.
There will be bidders, and Fingers' question of 1976 -- "What kind of money are we talking about?" -- will be answered for a new class of uncertain free agents this fall.
• The group of players that could be most affected by the winter downturn might turn out to be the good-but-not-great arbitration-eligible players, with three-plus, four-plus or five-plus years of service time. Cash-strapped teams will continue to cling to their youngest, cheapest players, and will be responsible for existing long-term deals. There likely will be an increase push to maximize efficiency with those players about to go through arbitration -- especially because the financial modeling is based on industry standards established pre-coronavirus -- and teams will probably decide to cut players in line for big raises. The pool of free agents will grow, the supply and demand will tilt toward the teams, and many offers will likely reflect depressed prices.
But here's another concern for those players who get non-tendered: Because the contract decisions won't be due until the outset of December, their free agency will start a month later than that of a lot of their peers.
"It's going to be an absolute bloodbath for those guys," one industry insider said.
• Some team officials are very complimentary of the summer work put in by Dan Halem and Morgan Sword, MLB officials who have been laboring as fixers for when the inevitable complications with the health and safety protocol emerge. "I bet those guys are putting in 18-hour, 20-hour days regularly," one staffer said.
• As the 60-game sprint begins Thursday, there is going to be a lot of focus on the relationship of Yankees ace Gerrit Cole with catcher Gary Sanchez, who is regarded as one of the weaker defenders at his position. The sport has generally trended toward smaller, athletic catchers who move deftly and are generally better suited than bigger catchers to frame pitches. Sanchez is 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, and he has sometimes struggled with framing and blocking balls in the dirt.
He made an adjustment this spring that could at least help him with framing -- rather than setting up in the standard catcher's squat, Sanchez has placed his right knee on the ground, which makes it easier for him to anchor his body, set a low target and, perhaps, get strike calls at the edges.
There might be potential for a negative tradeoff in this style, because by planting his right knee on the ground, it's possible he will restrict his own movement and struggle even more at blocking pitches in the dirt. Given that Sanchez has not been good in his movements behind the plate, the Yankees see this as a worthwhile adjustment to improve at least one crucial element.
Baseball Tonight Podcast
Friday: Tim Kurkjian talks about Tony Clark and Alex Rodriguez swapping statements, and offers his breakout teams and players; Todd Radom with this week's quiz, and a rundown of Fenway Park.
Thursday: Eduardo Perez pinch hits for a technology-challenged Kurkjian and talks about the Angels, Padres and intriguing San Francisco closer Tyler Rogers; Jesse Rogers discusses the status of Anthony Rizzo, and the question of how many more players will opt out.
Wednesday: Houston's summer camp has been problematic, and Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle talks about that and the status of George Springer; Paul Hembekides makes his World Series picks, and gives us some mind-blowing numbers.
Tuesday: Mandy Bell talks about the Cleveland Indians' name change, and roster challenges; Derrick Goold discusses the emergence of Jack Flaherty as one of the faces of baseball; and Sarah Langs talks about the pitching hangover that might be mitigated.
Monday: Gregor Chisholm on the Blue Jays' uncertainty and moving Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to first base; Marly Rivera on Aroldis Chapman; Marc Topkin on the unknowns facing the promising Tampa Bay Rays.