Ordinarily, I'm not one to compare baseball to other sports.
It's a fool's errand. Each sport is unique, with its own traditions, its own culture, and its own labor agreement. Comparing one to the other isn't just comparing apples to oranges; it's more like apples to asparagus. Completely different.
But one comparison is striking and worth examining: the free agent market.
For the NBA, NHL and NFL, the onset of free agency is like some combination of the last day of school, New Year's Eve and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during a bull market. In other words, it's chaos, with signings taking place at a breathless pace. The action is dizzying, and within the first 48 hours, the top stars are almost always signed, sealed and delivered. A few stray Grade A names may linger, but not for long.
Executives act swiftly, executing plans that have been formulated for weeks. If a team doesn't move quickly, it's likely to be left empty-handed, picking over the remains.
Baseball? That's a different story.
Here we are, almost exactly a month into the 2022 offseason, and fewer than 10 players have signed deals with new teams. Of the players who had signed by Saturday night, just three would qualify as big names: Edwin Diaz (who stayed with the Mets), Jacob deGrom (who left the Mets for the Texas Rangers) and Jose Abreu (left the White Sox to sign with Texas).
Trades? A few here and there, including two by the Seattle Mariners, though neither could be properly classified as blockbusters.
That's it.
Two of three best starters -- Justin Verlander and Carlos Rodon -- are still available as the Winter Meetings get underway Sunday in San Diego. Need outfield help? Aaron Judge and Brandon Nimmo, the two best in that category, are still sitting there. And four super shortstops -- Xander Bogaerts, Carlos Correa, Trea Turner and Dansby Swanson. -- are ripe for the taking.
Imagine an NFL offseason in which Tom Brady, the two best running backs, best receiver and three of the top edge rushers were still looking for work a month into the signing period? It's unimaginable. The same goes for the NBA and the NHL.
But baseball is different. There's no sense of urgency, no scrambling to secure the top stars right away. It's baseball -- what's the hurry?
Ironic, isn't it? The same sport that has big issues with its pace-of-place, with complaints that its product is too slow-moving with too much inaction, suffers the same fate off the field, too.
Starting next season, MLB will introduce a few rule changes intended to speed up the game. For the first time, a pitch clock will be in use, with the hope of shaving 25 or more minutes off the average game time. It's worked in the minor leagues, and MLB dearly wishes it has the same impact in the big leagues.
But no such efforts are being made to incentivize more offseason action. It was thought that having settled its labor mess last year, with a new collective bargaining agreement in place, the COVID pandemic largely behind us and an influx of cash to every team thanks to the sale of BAMTech (Baseball Advanced Media) to Disney for $900 million, teams would be eager to spend.
Despite the laughable protestations of a few disingenuous owners, the sport is profitable and popular. So, the start of free agency should have been like the start of a race. Gentlemen, start your checkbooks! Instead, it's more of the same -- more dawdling, more deliberation, more....nothing.
We checked in with a half-dozen MLB executives, most of whom were happy to contribute anonymously, since if there's one thing MLB hates more than teams spending big bucks on free agents, it's apparently MLB executives talking about spending big bucks on free agency. Or not spending, as the case may be.
They offered a number of theories on why things are the way they are.
1. Lack of a salary cap.
For the longest time, I resisted this theory. But the longer this goes on, the more I'm willing to concede it's at least a factor.
Baseball is the only one of the four major sports without a cap. Sure, the CBT exists in baseball and teams pay a penalty (or penalties, if they do it often enough) for going over the prescribed limit. But teams are not forbidden from spending in a big way. Both the New York Mets and New York Mets spent $280 million or more in 2022, some $50 million over the first CBT threshold. Three other teams, the Red Sox included, also were over the CBT.
If teams wish to spend big in baseball, they can.
But that also had an adverse impact on the pace with which signings happen.
In the NFL, NBA and NHL, there's a finite amount of money to spend for each team. If you don't jump at the chance to get the best players early, you run the risk of being left out.
"You don't want to be left out in a game of musical chairs,'' is how one MLB executive put it.
But with no cap in baseball, there's no urgency.
Another executive noted, without capped payrolls, there's no reason to get a deal done within an allotted time period. In other words, there's no reason to act quickly, because a player targeted is likely to be there the next day, and the day after that and the day after that....
2. There's more movement at the July-August trade deadline than in other sports.
In the NFL, only recently has activity picked up for its in-season deadline. The NBA and NHL each have a decent amount of in-season deals leading up to their trade deadlines, but often, the players who get moved then are more complementary players -- spare defensemen and physical players in hockey, and off-the-bench shooters in basketball.
Seldom do actual superstars get moved.
That's not the case in baseball. Juan Soto is one of the handful of most coveted stars in the game, and he was dealt last summer. So, too, was Luis Castillo, an All-Star starter. The year before, Max Scherzer and Trea Turner were dealt....in the same trade.
It's the same every year. Some teams may proceed cautiously in the winter, figuring they'll be able to add (or subtract, as the case may be) at mid-season the next year, when they have a clearer idea of what they need and where they stand relative to other teams.
3. Analytics.
The avalanche of data has changed the game dramatically on the field, so it's only natural that it would have an impact off the field, too.
And, indeed, with every team using detailed analytics to evaluate players, there's less subjectivity about players. In the past, a half-dozen scouts could watch a player and walk away with six different projections.
With the increased reliance on analytics, there's less room for differences of opinion. Each team may have its own proprietary method or set or numbers, but in general, those numbers and accompanying projections are going to arrive at basically the same conclusion.
Whereas in the past, evaluations differed wildly -- especially when it came to young players -- that's no longer the case. There's a great deal of homogeneity at work.
Put another way, player evaluation used to be like a Rorschach test -- teams could see vastly different things with the same player. No longer: the data is the data, and everyone essentially regards them the same way.
4. The creation of the Prospect Industrial Complex.
More than ever before, teams value prospects. Actually, they over-value prospects. They prefer nothing so much as a 21-year-old player in the prime of his athleticism, and not so incidentally, making next-to-no money for the first three seasons.
Veteran stars are nice, of course. But because they're older, they're far, far pricier. And also because they're older, they're far more likely to be injured.
That's not the case with that shiny prospect parked at Double A. So, naturally, teams are extremely reluctant to give them up, which leads to stalled trade talks.
"I swear,'' said a long-time executive, "some of these GMs would rather have their system ranked No. 1 by Baseball American than have a World Series trophy.''
A system stockpiled with young, inexpensive talent is a boon for job security. A GM can show his owner that better days are just around the corner. Meanwhile, if you give up too many of those prospects for established players and then fail to win it all, the clock begins to tick for even the most successful executives.
5. The general absence of deadlines.
General managers are no different than the rest of us. They have a tendency to procrastinate, to put off work until they have to, and respond best under pressure.
Think back to a year ago. Everyone in the industry knew that a lockout was coming as the CBA expired, and as a result, there was a flurry of activity. (In the week leading up to the lockout, the Red Sox traded for Jackie Bradley Jr. and signed free agents James Paxton and Michael Wacha). Why? Because every executive knew that a transaction freeze was coming during the lockout, lending a sense of urgency to teams.
Most of the trades at the deadline happen in the 48-hour window beforehand.
In a typical offseason, there's no such deadline to force activity. You can make a trade (or a signing) in November, or, if you choose, January. In recent winters, some of the top free agents (J.D. Martinez, Manny Machado, Bryce Harper) haven't signed until February. It's as if agents and GMs are engaged in a long, drawn-out staring contest, with each side waiting for the other to blink.
That's led some to suggest that MLB should implement an offseason trade deadline. If trades aren't completed by, say, Dec. 15, there could be a moratorium on deals until the start of spring training.
One executive joked that families of baseball's front office workers would vote for such a rule, if only to guarantee that GMs wouldn't be consumed by potential deals from the end of one season until the start of the next. Some sanity would be introduced into the process.
Another executive acknowledged that might spur activity, but quickly added: "I wouldn't be in favor of that.''
So, is there any hope ahead? The return to in-person winter meetings -- the first, really, since 2019 -- may go a long way toward igniting activity in the next week. When teams all gather under the same roof, there's more opportunities for face-to-face meetings and an increased likelihood for deals to get done -- both free agent signings and trades.
"There is something to the frenzy (the winter meetings) create,'' acknowledged one executive.
We'll see.