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Baseball Has A New Free-Agent System, And Players Hate It

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Fear and frustration have set in.

Major League Baseball players, young and veteran, have watched the last two offseasons play out to this point, and the lack of aggressive movement and blockbuster offers from clubs have them in a state of subtle panic. Look no further than their social media accounts over the last couple weeks.

The latest player to speak up is San Francisco Giants third baseman Evan Longoria, who used Instagram to deliver one of the more uninformed takes we’ve seen on the situation.

For one thing, major league players aren’t starving, even the guys on the cheapest contracts. Discussing value and poking fans to side with them over owners isn’t necessarily a strong strategy, but it’s somewhat understandable. After all, owners have a lot to do with this trend along with their front offices, which brings us to Longoria’s next awful point.

Longoria is currently playing out a six-year, $100 million extension he signed with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2012 after a season in which he played just 74 games. The deal wouldn’t kick in until 2017 when Longoria would be 31 years old. It was a reward for Longoria’s previous production when he was a bargain star, but the outlook was terrible for the life of the extension. The Giants are now realizing that as Longoria is coming off the worst season of his career, finishing 2018 with an 89 OPS+.

His contract is turning into a really good example of why front offices and ownership are afraid of handing out several expensive years to players after their age-30 seasons. The return on investment just isn’t there, and the model is turning away from rewarding players for past performance and toward paying for what they can actually do during the life of that contract.

“It seems every day now someone is making up a new analytical tool to devalue players, especially free agents,” Longoria wrote on Instagram.

That’s not true. It’s also an irresponsible take on what is actually happening.

Those statistical predictors are why the Los Angeles Angels felt comfortable giving Mike Trout a six-year, $144.5 million extension after 336 career games, which will pay him more than $33 million in 2019.

Trout is not the only player to reap financial benefits from better ways to measure and predict player production over multiple years. Kyle Seager, Giancarlo Stanton, Freddie Freeman and Elvis Andrus are just some examples of player who have signed nine-figure extensions well before free agency because the number crunchers in the front offices of those organizations deemed it worth it to do so. Some work out, some don’t.

But the reason Longoria and his peers are going to social media to draw attention to what they see as injustice or possibly even collusion is because when players hit free agency, the length of contracts are no longer rising. And with Bryce Harper and Manny Machado still unsigned despite being two of the best offensive players in the game and just 26 years old, the writing is on the wall for older, less impressive players who hit free agency.

They won’t be paid like they used to be.

Sean Doolittle, one of the best relievers in baseball and one of the most forward thinking players in the sport, makes a better point with his social platform. He points out the game’s growing revenues but that teams are spending less on player compensation, as reported by Forbes’ Maury Brown this month.

Players and fans should be concerned about this trend. Doolittle is right to call attention to it. And billionaire owners should have to answer to being afraid of payroll tax penalties when their teams are making more money than ever before.

For Longoria to blame the game’s positive advancement, which has brought in new fans who view the game through an alternative lens and created front-office and scouting jobs for so many men and women who never would have dreamed in working in baseball just 15 years ago, is wrong. It also smells like panic.

Players, front offices and ownerships grew into a system that recklessly paid aging players for past production they could not possibly replicate in the new contracts – Albert Pujols is a prime example right now. Teams got burned, general managers lost jobs and fans sat in frustration watching highly paid players – many of whom were underpaid relative to market in their prime – become unproductive.

That system is changing to better value players’ worth and predict production. It’s an evidence-based market correction. And players hate it. Understandably so.