Sea change....

For years you could chart it. The best free agent would sign someplace in December and after the best had established a market value, the next best would sign and so on down the line till the reds signed Jimmy Haynes or somebody like that to a contract that was too long and too expensive.

The press would complain about the crazy money the players were making and then spring training would start and we would all watch the games for a bit.

The exception was the collusion years. All the free agents just sat by the phone and waited.

This year something different happened. The free agent starting pitchers, the ones who traditionally cash in, just waited and waited and ....the phone never rang.

Have the owners learned?
Or was the free agent class that bad?

Or will there be renewed cries of collusion?

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Originally Posted by dfs

Have the owners learned?
Or was the free agent class that bad?

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Why can't it be both? My guess is owners did call and inquire about these players but found their demands to be too high. Some thought Kyle Lohse would get upwards of $8mill/yr. Do you think an owner that decided to pass on that deal must have participated in collusion or are they just sensible?

For what it's worth I don't think the owners defended themselves well in court on that collusion case in the 80s but that's another chapter. If they had the NFL's legal team things would look much differently in MLB. The NFL has won cases the press never thought they'd win like issue of making players less than 3 yrs removed from high school ineligible for the draft and the anti-trust suit involving the USFL to name a couple.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gm

Or will there be renewed cries of collusion?

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This is entirely different than the collusion year - it was evident that MLB was not signing players from other clubs. Andre Dawson signed elsewhere only because he put a blank contract in front of the Cubs and said fill in the numbers. Tim Raines didn't start playing until about May when he re-signed with the Expos. Bob Horner went to Japan, IIRC.

bad class and GMs have learned ... some

Maybe this year's class of starting pitchers is guilty of a collusion of mediocrity.

I heard a radio interview with Theo Epstein today, He used either horrible or terrible(I forget which) to describe this year's free agent class. The part I definitely remember right was when he added, "basically bereft of talent".

When owners do it, it's called collusion. When players do it, it's called collective bargaining.